Food in the Air and Space
Page 23
Given that the sandwich wars were such a notable incident in airline food history, it seems fitting to include a recipe for one of the inflight appetizers served aboard SAS. This recipe for a tangy anchovy salad is very easy to make and colorful, and it’s a good party item—or as noted, it can be made into an interesting fish hash.
Fagelbo (Bird’s Nest)
4 to 6 Scandinavian anchovy filets, chopped
3 tablespoons chopped onion
½ cup diced pickled beets
1 tablespoon capers
1 raw egg yolk
1.Arrange chopped ingredients in rings, using anchovies for inner circle. Place raw egg yolk in center.
2.The first person to serve from the dish should mix ingredients well.
If you are not fond of raw egg yolks, mix ingredients, fry lightly in butter, and serve on toast. Note: Scandinavian anchovies differ completely from the Mediterranean variety; special aromatic spices used with Scandinavian anchovies are necessary for this recipe.
(Preparation notes: Use only a very fresh egg if you are making the raw version, but consider poaching the yolk instead—it is every bit as good a presentation and flavor, and safer. Scandinavian anchovies are also called sprats, and the direction to not use Mediterranean anchovies is not mere national pride—Mediterranean anchovies are much saltier.)
Once broiling steaks inflight became possible, Northeast Airlines served theirs with one of the classic midcentury salads—lettuce with Green Goddess dressing. This recipe was published in 1968 in the Montreal Gazette and is not exactly like any other I have seen. (Glenn Howe, Dinner in the Clouds: Great International Airline Recipes [Glendale, CA: Interurban/Pentrex Press, 1985].)
Green Goddess Dressing
1 tablespoon dried tarragon
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon chopped chives
2 tablespoons chopped watercress
2 tablespoons chopped spinach
1½ cups mayonnaise
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1.Combine herbs, spinach, and lemon juice.
2.Whirl in blender. Strain and push through very fine sieve into mayonnaise. Stir to blend well.
3.Refrigerate. Makes 1¾ cups.
(Unlike modern versions of Green Goddess that use avocado, this can be made in advance and will keep for at least a week. This is good, because the amount produced by his recipe is enough for a large party or three or four meals. The original probably used iceberg lettuce, but I got excellent results from a mix of romaine and red lettuces, which have a slightly bitter flavor and contrast well with the dressing.)
Airline kitchens have always had to be creative with their desserts, trying to come up with items that have broad appeal but can stand some bouncing around both during loading and in flight. One of the popular items was TWA’s Banana Brunch Cake, which was introduced in 1974. The recipe was printed in the Los Angeles Times “Kitchen SOS” column on August 1, 1994.
TWA Banana Brunch Cake
½ cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed banana
½ teaspoon vanilla
½ cup sour cream
2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
Nut Topping:
½ cup finely chopped nuts
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1.Cream butter until light, then gradually add sugar, beating constantly. Beat in eggs, 1 at time. Mix in banana, vanilla, and sour cream.
2.Sift together flour, baking powder, soda, and salt and fold into creamed mixture, stirring just enough to moisten.
3.Combine nuts, sugar, and cinnamon to make topping.
4.Sprinkle half of Topping over bottom of well-greased 9-inch square pan or 10-inch molded pan. Spoon half of batter over Topping. Sprinkle remaining Topping over batter, then cover with remaining batter.
5.Bake at 350 degrees 45 minutes or until cake springs back when lightly touched. Makes 10 servings.
Each serving contains about: 363 calories; 215 mg sodium; 72 mg cholesterol; 16 grams fat; 50 grams carbohydrates; 6 grams protein; 0.24 gram fiber.
(Note: The original recipe did not specify what kind of nuts to use—I tried both pecans and almonds, and slightly prefer the pecans. Both gave excellent results.)
No airline recipe list would be without one that was first served on the ground in an airport terminal, but is the single most famous product of the flying boat era. One of the only overseas routes on which Pan Am continued to fly civilian passengers during World War II was their service to Shannon, Ireland, which stopped at the Foynes Harbor seaplane terminal. As the staff at the Foynes Flying Boat Museum explain it,
In 1943, Brendan O’Regan opened a restaurant and coffee shop in the Foynes terminal building. This restaurant had been considered to be one of the best restaurants in Ireland at that time. Chef Joe Sheridan, originally from Castlederg, County Tyrone, had been recruited by Brendan. Late one night in the winter of 1943 a flight departed Foynes for Botwood, Newfoundland. After flying for several hours in bad weather conditions, the Captain made the decision to return to Foynes and await better conditions. A Morse code message was sent to the control tower at Foynes to inform them of their return. Staff were contacted to return to work and when the flight landed they were brought to the Airport Restaurant for food and drink to warm them. When Joe was asked to prepare something warm for the passengers, he decided to put some good Irish Whiskey into their coffees. One of the passengers approached the Chef and thanked him for the wonderful coffee. He asked Joe did he use Brazilian Coffee? Joe jokingly answered, “No that was Irish Coffee!!”
Director Margaret O’Shaughnessey of the Foynes Flying Boat Museum provided this recipe:
Original Recipe Irish Coffee
1.In your Foynes Irish Coffee Glass, place a teaspoon and fill with boiling water for five seconds.
2.In this pre-warmed glass, put one teaspoon of brown sugar and a good measure of Irish Whiskey.
3.Fill the glass to within 1cm of the brim with really hot, strong black coffee.
4.Stir well to melt all the sugar. Then carefully pour lightly whipped cream over the back of a spoon so that it floats on top of the coffee.
5.Do not stir after adding the cream, as the true flavour is obtained by drinking the hot coffee and Irish Whiskey through the cream.
Suggesting recipes from space is also problematic—you can get a vivid sense of early astronaut food by rehydrating dried mashed potatoes and sucking it through a tube, but you will have to figure out your own proportions for that one. My editor wants me to try the recipes I include, and I refuse to undergo that experience.
I was only slightly more enthusiastic about eating a Tang pie, but as it is a valid expression of the 1950s space craze, I have included it for your pleasure, if not mine. The recipe was widely distributed by General Foods, for obvious reasons—it included their products Cool Whip and Tang. It’s very easy to make, and since it’s sweet, creamy, and a lurid orange, it’s popular at children’s parties and in some parts of the American South.
Tang Pie
19-inch graham cracker pie crust, baked
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
18-ounce carton of sour cream
¼ cup + 2 tablespoons Tang powder
18-ounce tub of Cool Whip
1.Mix milk, sour cream, and Tang together.
2.Fold in half of the Cool Whip.
3.Spoon into the pie shell.
4.Top with the rest of the Cool Whip.
5.Chill for at least half an hour before serving.
Another recipe from the early rush of enthusiasm for space is this fruitcake, which
was published in the Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Daily Telegram in 1968. I can’t resist including the original introduction, which has the breathless writing style of the era. Note that the original recipe called for “Bordo” dates—this was the name of an importing company, and any type of dates may be used.
Although the U.S. Army Natick Laboratories originally created this fruitcake recipe for space food for the astronauts, there is no reason why you can’t prepare this simplified version for the youngsters at your house. Surely they will like the idea of eating the same delicious dessert the astronauts eat. Furthermore, you’ll like all the energy power and nutrients packed into each scrumptious slice, right along with glace cherries, chopped pecans and Bordo imported dates. So bake this very special “Astronaut Fruitcake” for your children this week, and stand by to receive a hearty “A-OK!”
Astronaut Fruitcake
1 cup sifted all-purpose flour
½ cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoon salt
8 large eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla
1½ cups chopped pecans
3 cups imported diced dates or whole pitted dates, cut up
1 cup glace cherries, quartered
1.Sift together flour, sugar, and salt.
2.Place nuts, cherries, and quartered dates in a bowl and mix until pieces of fruit no longer stick together and nuts are well dispersed in the fruit mixture.
3.Sprinkle the flour mixture over the fruit mixture, while mixing by hand. Beat eggs and vanilla until frothy. Add to the fruit mixture and mix until all ingredients are completely moistened.
4. Generously grease bottoms of 4½ x 9½ inch loaf pans, and bake fruitcake in preheated 300 degree (F.) oven for two hours, or until firm. Store in airtight container.
(Unless you enjoy very sweet desserts, you probably should use half the specified amount of sugar. For the cherries, stay away for the bright pink cocktail cherries and get real glacé cherries—modern cocktail cherries are nothing like a real glacé cherry.)
Appendix
Unsolved Questions
There were two questions I had hoped to address in this book but was not able to find authoritative enough information to cover properly.
One was the nutritional changes in airline food over the years. Though airline chefs mentioned the importance of balanced meals as early as Don Magarell’s interviews the 1930s, not enough details were published to estimate calorie counts, fat levels, or vitamins. Detailed data doesn’t become publicly available until the 1970s, and the information was too scanty and over too short of a period to come to any meaningful conclusions.
The other question was about when airlines began to recycle the waste from their trays, and how much is now recycled. No caterer or airline was willing or able to give any meaningful data, probably because they don’t actually know. Recycling is handled by local waste companies, and though the airlines hand bags of recyclable material to them, they don’t actually monitor what happens to it. There is no way to give a useful estimate of the current amount recycled by percentage, weight, or volume. It can only be said that it varies by the jurisdiction in which it is offloaded, but the percentage is probably increasing worldwide.
Notes
Chapter 1
1. According to T. L. C. Rolt, The Aeronauts, A History of Ballooning 1783-1903 (Longman, 1966), 73.
2. According to Constance Hieatt and Robin Jones, “A Cuire Chaire Sans Feu,” from “Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections,” Speculum 61, no. 4 (1986): 874, note 6.
3. According to T. L. C. Rolt, The Aeronauts, A History of Ballooning 1783-1903 (Longman, 1966), 125.
Chapter 2
1. International Year Book, Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1901.
2. Politiken, September 19, 1912.
3. Sydney Morning Herald, September 21, 1912.
4. Nelson Evening Mail, September 21, 1912.
5. Harry Vissering, Zeppelin: The Story of a Great Achievement (Chicago: Wells & Co., 1920), 18–22. Full text available on Gutenberg.com.
6. August Seim, “The Rigger Tells a Tale,” in The Zeppelin Reader, ed. Robert Hedin (University of Iowa Press, 1998), 77–78.
7. Douglas Robinson, The Zeppelin in Combat (Schiffer, 1994).
8. The first practical oven thermostat came on the market in 1915, but zeppelins of this era did not have them.
9. Vissering, Zeppelin, 53.
10. “Zeppelin Books 18 for Passage Here,” New York Times, October 7, 1928 (p. 1).
11. Hugo Eckener, “A Sentimental Journey to Egypt,” in The Zeppelin Reader, ed. Robert Hedin (University of Iowa Press, 1998), 195.
12. “Zeppelin Takes Off on Trip to America . . . ,” New York Times, August 1, 1929 (p. 1).
13. Sample lyric from “Graf Zeppelin” by Trinidadian musician Attila The Hun:
I gazed at the zeppelin contemplatively,
And marveled at man’s ingenuity
The whirring of the engines was all I heard
As it floated in the air like a giant bird.
As for Tennessee, there is the deathless lyric,
I left Memphis on the Robert E. Lee
Going to go back home on the LZ-3
Unfortunately, there is still no zeppelin service to Memphis.
14. Flight Magazine, December 6, 1929, article bylined “F.A. de V.R.”
15. “R-100 Sets Fast,” Los Angeles Times, August 15, 1930 (p. 1).
16. Douglas H. Robinson, LZ 129 “Hindenburg, Famous Aircraft Series (Dallas, TX: Morgan Books, 1964).
17. Webb Miller, I Found No Peace (Simon & Schuster, 1936). Text republished on airships.net website.
18. Harold Dick and Douglas Robinson, Golden Age of the Great Passenger Airships (Smithsonian Press, 1985).
Chapter 3
1. Per e-mail from Peter Elliott, head of archives, Royal Air Force Museum, December 16, 2013.
2. Paul Jarvis, curator of British Airways Heritage Centre, interview with CNN, May 2, 2012.
3. Aeronautical News, Reuters/Lismore Northern Star, June 2, 1922.
4. Paul Van Weezepoel, Dutch Aviation History, http://www.dutch-aviation.nl/Index3/1919-1939.
5. “London’s Amazing Express Aeroplane Liners a Hundred Miles an Hour—Modern Fulfillment of Dreams of Jules Verne’s,” Reuters Aeronautical News, October 20, 1923.
6. Albany Advertiser (Australia), April 14, 1928.
7. “Paris-London Airway Has First Aerial Cafe,” Daily Record (Morris County, NJ), October 2, 1925 (p. 14).
8. E-mail of January 22, 2014.
9. Frank J. Taylor, High Horizons (McGraw-Hill, 1962), 41. Hereafter cited as HH.
10. George H. Foster and Peter C. Weiglan, The Harvey House Cookbook (Taylor Trade Publishing, 2006), p. 160.
11. T. J. C. Martyn, “Air Liner Provides Luxuries of Travel,” New York Times, July 16, 1929 (p. 2).
12. Helen McLaughlin, Footsteps in the Sky (Aviation Book Company, 1994), 19. Hereafter cited as FITS.
13. FITS, 20.
14. DailyNews (Perth), January 30, 1928.
Chapter 4
1. Per Peter Elliott, head of archives, Royal Air Force Museum, 16 December 2013.
2. Article on backpacking stoves, “Zen and the Art of the Alcohol Stove,” zenstoves.net/stoves. No author name given.
3. Patent #US2024259A, Halstead & Troeber.
Chapter 5
1. HH, 112.
2. Peter Jones and Michael Kips, “Introduction,” in Flight Catering (London: Longman, 1995), 4, citing “Bruce 2001 and Wright 1985.” Hereafter cited as FC.
3. George Banks, Gourmet and Glamour in the Sky: A Life in Airline Catering (UK: GMS Enterprises, 2006), 19. Hereafter cited as GG.
4. E-mail of January 14, 2014, from Gordon Pirie.
&
nbsp; 5. Ibid.
6. GGITA, p. 7.
7. Martin Staniland, Government Birds: Air Transport and the State in Western Europe (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 23.
8. FITS.
9. The British RAF had installed heaters in their flying boats five years before, but for military and government flights only.
10. Those flights left from a location called Dinner Key, which is occasionally misunderstood to have been named because Pan Am loaded meals there. This is incorrect, as the area had that name as early as 1914.
11. Martha Ellyn, “160-Mile Airline Meals Good to the Last Mile,” Washington Post, July 25, 1941 (p. 12).
12. FITS, 8.
13. San Francisco Airport Commission Aviation library—Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum Oral History Program interview transcription. Interview recorded February 26, 1999, by Maureen Jane Perry. As of the writing of this book, only a few copies have been made, but the museum was considering making them available. Hereafter cited as Toaramina.
14. Even when only cold food was available, it was rarely served shortly after takeoff because seaplanes took off with a full load of fuel that was very heavy—it took as much as an hour for the aircraft to struggle to cruising altitude of seven thousand feet. By the time an hour had gone by the aircraft was usually in calmer skies and less likely to need to maneuver suddenly.
15. Lufthansa also briefly operated service to South America, but primarily carrying mail rather than passengers.
Chapter 6
1. HH, 27.
2. Testimony before the Black Committee, January 1934.
3. FITS, memoir of Trudy Pracny, 33.
4. HH, 116.
5. HH, 40.
6. Audrey C. McCool, Inflight Catering Management (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995), 26. This reference says this happened in 1937, but Jones in Flight Catering gives the date as 1933 (p. 4). The 1933 date is more consistent with other sources.
7. FITS, 11.
8. FITS, 22. Also, Velma Maul Tanzer Scrapbook, Item 2005-0036, Smithsonian Institution.