Airline Food During the Golden Age of Air Travel

Today on most domestic flights you're lucky to get a bag of pretzels and a ginger ale, but back in the golden age of air travel, the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, pretty much every ticket came with a luxurious meal. Meals like this one from United Airlines in 1954 which includes pot roast, Delmonico potatoes, and a heavenly delight salad. So thank you to Trade Coffee for sponsoring this video as we fly the friendly skies, this time on Tasting History. So based on the age of most of my audience I'm going to guess that you didn't get to fly during the golden age of air travel. Neither did I, I'm not quite that old. But I did get to be around for some of the vestiges of the golden age, like getting to go into the cockpit as a kid and have the wings put on me by the pilot himself. But when it came to food I wasn't around for any of the good stuff, it was always just peanuts and coke. And frankly it's probably a good thing because the quality of airline food when I was a kid was not great. But that was not always the case because like in the 1950s and 60s airlines prided themselves on the quality of food that they were serving. That's because during the time prices of tickets were regulated so they couldn't compete on price so they had to compete in other ways. Basically how to make the flight actually more pleasant for the passengers, and one big thing was food. And today I can actually travel back in time and try some of that luxurious food with this. This is a cookbook that was put out in 1954 by United Airlines. It's called Favorite Recipes of Mainliner Chefs, and today I've chosen three dishes from this book so I can create an entire meal that would have been served on an airplane in 1954. First is a beef pot roast by Chef Emile Zaltzmann from the New York flight kitchen, then the Delmonico potatoes by Chef Marc Grugier of the Honolulu kitchen, and finally the heavenly delight salad by Chef Edward Gerber of the Washington DC flight kitchen. And the flight kitchen is where they would actually prepare the food before they would put it on the plane just before takeoff. Now the second two recipes are pretty simple but the first recipe has a lot of ingredients. So for the pot roast what you're going to need is two and a half pounds of beef chuck or round, one pound of veal bones. Finding veal bones is quite the struggle so just use beef bones. Two cups of beef stock, two medium onions quartered, six ounces of tomato paste, two bay leaves, one sprig of parsley, one cup of diced carrots, a half cup diced celery, six whole cloves, ten whole peppercorns, two teaspoons of minced garlic, two tablespoons of butter or other fat, one cup of dry red wine, and then some flour and salt and pepper to taste. And as always I'm going to have these recipes all up on the Tasting History website with metrics so you can follow along at home. So first Chef Emile has you season the meat with plenty of salt and pepper, and then dredge it in flour. Then melt the butter in a large pot, and then add the meat and the marrow bones, and let the meat sear for several minutes on one side, and then flip it over and let it get some color on the other. Once it's lightly browned all over add in the onions, celery, carrots, parsley, whole cloves, bay leaves, and peppercorns, and let it cook for about 15 minutes. Then add the garlic, stock, tomato paste, and the wine, and then stir everything together and let it come to a simmer. Then put the lid on and let it cook at a simmer for about two hours or until the meat is just falling apart, and during that time you can make yourself up a cup of coffee from today's sponsor Trade. Now on an airline the coffee is never really good, and partly that's because our sense of taste is all wonky up there. We'll get into that later, but also the water tends to be really low quality and frankly the coffee is also often low quality as well. That last part at least can be rectified by getting your coffee with Trade. Trade is a coffee delivery service that delivers coffee curated to your taste right to your door, and since they work with over 55 local roasters they are able to roast that coffee and get it to you within just a couple days so it is at peak freshness. You just let Trade know what you like in a coffee, how you like to brew it, and how much you drink, and boom that little red bag arrives on your doorstep filled with coffee goodness. This week I received the Emporium House Blend from Cuvee Coffee. It's one of my favorites because it has a slight sweetness to it which actually pairs really well with creamer which is how I like to drink my coffee, and they have hundreds of different roasts so there is really something for everyone. And right now when you sign up using my link drinktrade.com slash maxmiller you'll get $15 off of select plans and your first bag of coffee is free. That's drinktrade.com slash maxmiller and I will put that link in the description, and you can use your Trade coffee to make Irish coffee which was actually invented for the airlines or by someone working for the airlines. It was invented in 1943 for passengers of a flying boat at Foynes Airbase in Ireland. Supposedly a bunch of disgruntled passengers got off a plane so the chef there just took some coffee and put some whiskey in it to calm everybody down, and there we have the Irish coffee, and you can drink some coffee Irish or otherwise while you make your Delmonico potatoes. For that you'll need eight medium potatoes peeled and chopped, a half cup chopped pimentos, two cups half and half, and then some salt and pepper and plenty of parmesan cheese to cover the top. So first mix the potatoes with the pimentos, and then add a teaspoon and a half of salt, and a teaspoon of pepper to the half and half, and set it on the stove to heat up just until it simmers. Then pour all of that over the potatoes making sure the potatoes are covered, and then set the dish in the oven at 375 degrees Fahrenheit 190 Celsius for about an hour and a half or until the potatoes are totally cooked through. Then take it out of the oven, up the oven to 400 degrees, sprinkle a bunch of parmesan cheese to cover the top, and return it to the oven for five more minutes or until the top is melted and lightly browned. Now before we make our heavenly delight salad which really stretches the definition of a salad make sure you subscribe to Tasting History, hit that like button it really helps the channel, and let's talk about the history of airline food. So before we get into history I want to mention this wonderful resource that I used called Food in the Air and Space by Richard Foss. It's a wonderful deep dive into the history of food in the air, not just airlines but in space, and even he goes all the way back to the 18th century with hot air balloons. It's fantastic, you should check it out if you are interested in this topic. I am not going all the way back to the 18th century, I am starting just after World War I in 1919 where on October 11th the first meal on a commercial airline was served during a Handley Page flight from Paris to London. This was a pre-packaged lunch box with a sandwich and a piece of fruit, and just like Spirit Airlines today food was not included in the price of the ticket so you had to shell out three shillings for this cold lunch, and pretty much for the next decade all meals on planes were cold. Like the Western Air Express meals on flights between Los Angeles and San Francisco where cold fried chicken, potato salad, and sandwiches were catered by the Los Angeles-based Pig & Whistle which sadly only closed a couple years ago. The same year that they were serving cold fried chicken 1928 Lufthansa upped the ante with the first hot in-flight meal on flights from Berlin to Paris where the food was made on the ground and then kept warm in insulated containers. This began airlines increasing desire to provide passengers with the best and most cutting-edge cuisine available. The issue was keeping it warm because especially on a longer flight those insulated containers just didn't really cut it, and so if you wanted to heat the food up on the plane you had to have an oven built on the plane and most planes just weren't that big, but the flying boats of the 1930s were and Pan American Airlines, Pan Am, installed galleys on many of their clippers so they could not only reheat the food but actually cook it. They even had a dedicated dining room aboard with tables and white tablecloths so it was more like eating in an actual restaurant. United Airlines soon followed suit and began installing kitchens on their planes where they would serve not cold but hot fried chicken as well as freshly scrambled eggs. This is also around the time when United Airlines really began priding themselves on the quality of their food. By the way this is not sponsored by United Airlines, just talk about history. Maybe it would have been nice if they had sponsored it though once I get to the part about flight attendants, stewardesses, and how they train them they'd probably revoke that sponsorship. We'll get to that. Anyway United made a huge leap forward in the quality of airline food in 1936 when in Oakland, California they opened up their first flight kitchen. They hired top chefs to design a menu worthy of a wonderful luxury restaurant on the ground but with the idea that these dishes could be served in the air. Far more elaborate dishes could be made this way by preparing them on the ground rather than in the air and that is what they called their mainliner cuisine and that is actually what we're cooking from today. It's those dishes that they created. Other airlines quickly followed suit and menus from this time period really show how fancy airline food could get. Mignon of veal with Russian sauce, Boston cream pie, or an entire Irish themed meal on St. Patrick's Day 1940 with a Dublin style Lego lamb stew. European airlines were going extra fine dining by serving everything from lobster to foie gras to peach melba. Now the next big technological leap came as many technological leaps do from a military contract. During World War II William Maxson or rather his company developed several inventions for the US military. In addition to the Maxson multiple gun mount which airlines never seemed to have adopted, his company developed the Maxson whirlwind oven which by circulating the air in the oven would heat things more evenly and much quicker. This was essentially the first convection oven and it was designed to fit these meals called Maxson sky plates which were served on airplanes for the navy and the army during the war and afterward. Then after the war Pan American Airlines took these ovens and installed them on many of their commercial planes so that they could get rid of the full kitchen or have the food that was being brought on heated at a much quicker pace. It was also during the war that several airlines hired their first all-female flight attendant crews. Now there had been female flight attendants or stewardesses as they were called since 1930 but during the war the lack of men saw the female stewardess become the standard for quite some time. In fact in subsequent decades many airlines refused to hire men for the job at all and they started using the female stewardesses as a selling point to their clientele who were mostly men basically saying, hey you want your food and drink served by a pretty lady. Now this meant that stewardesses really had to become the ultimate service provider. Back in the 30s and even the early 40s you actually had to be a registered nurse to become a flight attendant but by the 50s the airlines were doing all of that training themselves as can be seen in this one ad from United Airlines, told you we'd get back to this, where they boast, Two months ago Sherry Woodruff couldn't even balance a cup of coffee. She was friendly, intelligent, and attractive, and wanted more than anything else to be a great stewardess but then she had five and a half weeks at United's stewardesses school. We taught Sherry how to serve a gourmet dinner, how to sue the first flyer, how to apply everything from makeup to first aid. Today she can warm a baby's formula with one hand and pour four cups of coffee with the other. They actually use these ads to entice young women to apply to learn the They even went so far as to imply that on one of the flights is the best place for you to secure a husband as can be seen in this 1967 ad. Old maid, that's what the other United Airlines stewardesses call her because she's been flying for almost three years now. The average tenure of a United stewardess is only 21 months before she gets married. Maybe that's why more people fly United than any other airline. Everyone gets warmth, friendliness, and extra care and someone may get a wife. Of course as soon as they did get married United would fire them and that wasn't deemed illegal until 1971. They also had a mandatory retirement age of 30. Now during the 50s and 60s the airlines would actually use the stewardesses and the cuisine in tandem to sell passengers on their flights especially with something they called themed flights. Like TWA had foreign accent flights. These were themed Italian, French, Old English, and Manhattan penthouse. The flight attendants wore costumes like the English flight they would wear like a wench costume, and then they would also play music from whatever country it was and of course the cuisine was from the country as well. Northwest Airlines really doubled down on these theme flights with something called the Fujiyama room. On October 30th, 1955 they debuted these rooms featuring kitschy Asian decor on a number of planes, and they would serve food like shrimp, cheese, and fruit out of a pineapple with little umbrellas sticking out of it. It was sort of like Japan and tiki culture mashed up thereby ruining both. Then there was Western Airlines' hunt breakfast flights from 1957. This was styled in the tradition of an Old English hunt breakfast. Basically having breakfast out while you're hunting, and so all the food was themed that way too but when it came to the sounds it would be barking dogs and bugles. Now perhaps no flight married the idea of the pretty stewardess and the quality cuisine better than United Airlines' executive flight. Something I'm sure the company would like to forget. These flew from 1953 to 1970 and were men only. Women were not allowed to purchase a ticket on these flights. Aimed at the executive businessmen of New York and Chicago these flights would take off every day at 5 p.m. flying between the two cities, and there's an ad from the time that lets you know exactly what you can expect. United Airlines invites you to fly the Chicago Executive, a club in the sky for men only. You'll enjoy the informal club-like atmosphere, smoke your pipe or cigar if you wish, and make yourself more comfortable by using the pair of slippers provided. Enjoy congenial company in the lounge. A full course steak dinner is table served by the two stewardesses aboard. It's a delicious meal prepared by the experienced continental chefs. Now it wasn't just these themed flights but really all flights of the 1950s and 60s that tried to up their game when it came not just to food but just luxury in general. The seats became cushier than ever often fully reclining or on some longer flights there would be an entire berth with a lay down bed like you'd expect on a train or on one of the really top luxury airlines of today, and this is when the food really became a spectacle. There was a TWA flight where they would roll a trolley down the aisle with a whole piece of roast beef where they would slice it off and you'd be served roast beef au jus right there from the aisle. Other trolleys would include chilled seafood like lobster and crab legs. There were fresh fruit trays, salads, and charcuterie, and even a dessert cart where they would make a sundae right in front of you. Bring that back. I'm starting a petition. Now one of the splendid setups for food actually came from Scandinavian airlines where they offered the Scandinavian country style buffet during the late 60s where they would carve a ham right there in the aisle. Now while the food was getting more splendid that doesn't actually mean it was getting better because the flavor of the food wasn't exactly what it was on the ground. First of all if it was made on the ground and then kept on the plane and then having to be reheated you're essentially eating really fancy leftovers, but another big thing was that we don't taste the same when we're up in an airplane. Partly it's because the real, real lack of humidity messes with our sense of smell and hence our sense of taste. So you're not tasting the food as much as you would on the ground. So they started adding a lot more salt and sugar to their recipes to compensate, but while that may have helped with the flavor of the food there was something else coming along in airline travel that would really screw up the service and that was the adoption of jets. Airlines began switching over to jets which went much, much faster than the earlier airplanes and this meant that the seven course meal often served even on domestic flights was becoming a thing of the past at least in economies. Sometimes in first class now I guess you get it, but even so everything had to be sped up. The shorter service time also led to most airplanes swapping out glassware in China for plastic trays and plastic forks because unlike the China you didn't have to clean it right then and kind of stack it nicely which took a lot of time, but rather you could just toss it in a bin and deal with it when you landed. Though this was published in 1954 and they're already eating off of plastic so you know it was a gradual change and all of these changes going on gave airline food a new reputation of being rubbery and bland. There's actually a wonderful musical from 1965 called Do I Hear a Waltz and there's a whole song about the travails of airline travel at the time and there's part that is all about the food. The shiny stuff is tomatoes, the salad lies in a group. The curly stuff is potatoes, the stuff that moves is soup. Anything that is white is sweet, anything that is brown is meat, anything that is gray don't eat and you know that was kind of the reputation for the next few decades. Of course this change in the quality of the cuisine really only affected the economy class or coach class and nothing exemplifies this kind of divide between coach and first class at the time better than the Great Sandwich War. See it was 1958 and the International Air Transport Association who made sure that all planes around the world were following the same rules decided to allow for the first economy tickets to be purchased in transatlantic flights, but because they were going to be less expensive than the average ticket they had to take stuff away and this meant that nobody got any food who any hot food who purchased this all they could get was a sandwich, but there was Pan Am an American airline who said that a sandwich was some meat with bread and then there were the European sandwiches and they went all out. You'd get five slices of ox tongue, a lettuce heart, asparagus, and sliced carrots on a slice of bread, or five slices of liver pate, fried crisp bacon, mushrooms, and sliced tomato on a slice of bread. Basically it was a whole meal on a slice of bread so it was a sandwich and Pan Am was like well they're using that to their advantage. We're supposed to be on an even playing field so the association had to come up with a definition of a sandwich. A sandwich must be cold, largely of bread or something similar, unadorned, self-contained, and must not include such fillings as caviar, oysters, or lobster. Basically give the economy class passengers the meagerest food that you can possibly find, a theme which is still with us today. But should you have been able to afford a first class fare then the great meals would have continued, and should you have gobs of money available to you then starting in 1969 you could book passage on the Concord. The Concord flew between cities in western Europe and the east coast of the U.S. and did so at twice the speed of sound which would get you to your destination in just three and a half hours. Now these were flown mostly by British Airways and Air France, and the cost of a ticket depending on the time could cost as much as 30 times the average price of an economy ticket, but for that you got there a lot faster and you got quite the meal. What followed the coffee was a breakfast of fresh papaya, guava, pineapple, strawberries, and mangoes, croissants, and brioche that might have come from a Paris bakery, a pretty good approximation of eggs benedict, and a souffle gruyere all washed down with Piper Heidsieck cuvée diplomatique. The China of course was Limoges. What really ended the splendid food of airlines as well as the golden age of air travel itself was the age of deregulation which started in 1978. Airfare had been regulated for decades making it so that the only way the airlines had to compete was through perks like wonderful food, and their their flight attendants or stewardesses, leg room, the comfort, entertainment, or those flights where they had dogs and bugles playing throughout the cabin at hunt breakfast. I wouldn't like that, but with the deregulation they could start to do price wars, and this was good and bad. The good part was that it dramatically lowered the price of airfare. For instance this TWA list of flights from 1955 shows that a flight from Boston to Los Angeles cost $106. That's about $1,200 in today's money. Also since planes were a lot slower at the time and had to make multiple stops that flight took 12 hours. No thanks, but these price drops made it so a lot more people had had flying available to them, but that also meant that the quality of the flight would of course go down. More seats in planes were required to make up for lower fares which meant a far less comfortable flight, and there were also fewer options for food and on many flights no food at all. This is when Southwest distinguished themselves as the peanut airline, and for most of my childhood I recall fondly my dad coming back from business trips always on Southwest Airlines it feels like, and he'd have his pockets just filled with these little bags of peanuts or if I was lucky the honey roasted peanuts, and that was wonderful. Now the early 80s saw the golden age of air travel especially in economy class come to an end. Many business and first class flights still go to great lengths to offer quality food, often getting top chefs to prepare menus for the airline, but for me I don't really- I don't really mind. I'd rather pay less and get you know a stupidly expensive sandwich at the airport and just bring it on with me. The one food you should never bring on an airplane is french fries. I never do that. It just smells up the whole cabin. Don't do that. Though you could bring on this pot roast because it is also smelling up the cabin, my house, but it smells really, really good. So as soon as the pot roast is cooked through take it out and simmer down the liquid to about half, and then strain it out, and save the onions and other vegetables back to serve with the roast itself, and now to prepare a very quick dessert or salad because even though this is absolutely a dessert it's actually in the salad section of the book. You'll need four tart apples cut into small pieces, then add 32 mini marshmallows, and cut eight maraschino cherries in quarters, and mix those all together with the marshmallows and the apples. I'm also making a half portion because this is still going to make a lot of heavenly delight salad. In a separate bowl whip a cup of heavy cream into whipped cream, and then add a teaspoon of lemon juice, a teaspoon and a half of mayonnaise, and a teaspoon and a half of honey. Mix it all together then mix it with the apples and it's ready to go, and here we are a full meal worthy of a United Airlines flight from the golden age of air travel. I just have to show you this tray. I put the cups over there but how cool is this? It's actually not from the 50s, it's from the I believe the early 60s. I think they said it was about 1963 or 4, but I just thought it was so cool. It's an actual tray from the time it even has like little salt and peppers, and of course plasticware so I'm going to try to eat a pot roast with this. Let's give it a try. All right even after like 60 years the the knife is pretty good. Let's go. I knew it would be amazing because it smelled so good. It is so tender, it just falls apart. I really, really like the addition of kind of adding in the the onions, and the other things that we're cooking on top of it. Unless you get like a bay leaf, don't eat a whole bay leaf, but it just it's so flavorful, and I will be eating the whole thing over the next couple days. Now let's try the potatoes. So I think that I made a mistake and didn't um maybe didn't chop them as fine as I should have. I mean the flavor is great. It's cream, and potatoes, and parmesan cheese. What's not to like? I just think that if I diced them a little finer the texture would be a little bit better, or at least they'd be a bit better coated with the the cream mixture. Honestly even doing these as mashed potatoes, I think that's how I'd prefer them. And finally on to our salad dessert, and get a little bit of everything. A little apple, a little little cherry. It's not as sweet as I expected. Now the original recipe says you could actually add sugar. I wouldn't. These are tart apples but they're not, it's not tart. It has a little zing from the apples, and from the the lemon juice, but it's plenty sweet. It doesn't need to be any sweeter because I mean there's plenty of sweet stuff in there, but it's it reminds me of ambrosia kind of if you've ever had ambrosia. My nana would once in a while make that for Easter. It's fun. It's delicious. I wouldn't call it a salad. It is definitely a dessert but you know. So I gotta say all three dishes really good. I would make all three again. I'd probably mash the potatoes but that's the only change I would make. That pot roast is definitely going on my on my in my repertoire of weekly or probably monthly dishes to make, and I will see you next time on Tasting History.