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During this era, known as the Gilded Age, the wealthiest families in America, such as the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts, formed a new social elite akin to European aristocracy.

As an American woman who married into the British aristocracy back in 2004, the countess knows firsthand the challenge of slipping between two cultures.

For decades, it was a popular party drug among the English aristocracy, who reveled in “laughing gas parties” before it was first used as an anesthetic and analgesic in medical settings.

Clear-eyed and steady today, she finishes her earlier thought while piling salt on her arancini: “It’s forbidden for the aristocracy to speak to the press. But in my case, I had no choice.”

Oysters were beloved by the aristocracy at the same time as they provided protein for the very poorest.