The Lizzie Borden Story has viewers dissecting more than the infamous 1892 axe murders. A dinner scene featuring celeriac soup has also drawn attention, with the show’s depiction of the Borden household raising questions about what Lizzie Borden and her family actually ate.
The scene appears early in the series, which premiered on September 17 and stars Ella Beatty as Lizzie Borden, Charlie Hunnam as her father Andrew Borden and Rebecca Hall as her stepmother Abby. Netflix describes the drama as a fictionalized interpretation built around details from the historical record.
Did the Borden family really eat celeriac soup?
The celeriac soup shown in Monster is part of the series’ reconstruction of life inside the Borden household. In the scene, a meal is discussed after a servant apparently prepares potato-leek soup instead of the requested celeriac soup.
However, surviving records from the Borden household and the 1893 trial provide a more concrete picture of what the family ate around the time of the murders.
According to testimony from Bridget Sullivan, the Borden family’s live-in maid, the meal planned for the day of the murders was soup and cold mutton, with potatoes in the soup. Sullivan testified that the soup was to be warmed up, while the mutton had already been cooked.
That detail comes from historical trial records rather than the Netflix dramatization.
What did the Bordens eat before the murders?
Food became particularly important in the days leading up to the killings because several members of the household fell seriously ill.
Two days before Andrew and Abby Borden were killed, the couple became sick after eating leftover swordfish. Andrew’s brother-in-law John Morse and maid Bridget Sullivan also became ill. Abby subsequently consulted a doctor and expressed concern that someone might have poisoned the family.
The illness later became part of the suspicion surrounding Lizzie. Historical accounts say the household became sick again after eating mutton stew.
The incident eventually acquired significance because a local druggist testified that Lizzie had attempted to obtain prussic acid, a poisonous chemical, shortly before the murders. She reportedly said she wanted it for a sealskin cape.
How Monster changes the food poisoning story
The Netflix series takes that historical episode and substantially reworks it.
In Monster, Lizzie and Bridget are depicted as deliberately attempting to poison Andrew and Abby. The show uses oysters rather than the swordfish and mutton linked to the real-life illness, turning the dinner into an intentionally grotesque sequence involving vomiting and diarrhea.
Netflix says the series takes real details from Borden’s life but creates a “very fictionalized” version of the woman and fills historical gaps with imagined events.
That distinction is important when watching the food scenes: the existence of illness in the Borden household is historical, but the show’s portrayal of Lizzie deliberately poisoning her family is a dramatic interpretation rather than an established fact.
What happened to Lizzie Borden?
Andrew and Abby Borden were found dead in their Fall River, Massachusetts, home on August 4, 1892. Lizzie was accused of killing them but was acquitted at her 1893 trial. The question of who committed the murders remains unresolved.
The real case contained evidence that prosecutors used to build their case, but the Netflix series also changes or rearranges parts of the historical record. The show’s creators have described it as a fictionalized interpretation rather than a literal reconstruction of every event.
