Monday, September 07, 2009

Eating in the Air, Part 2.

Today I will be travelling to London after a couple of days in Singapore, so my thoughts are on airline food. I do hope Singapore Airlines does not disappoint me.

We have had a previous post on the topic of early airline food, so today I want to continue the theme with an advertisement (circa 1967) from Trans World Airlines (TWA). Clearly, the airline knew that food was a big drawcard for customers.

Only on TWA: a choice of 7 great dinners … with the world on the side.
The TWA Royal Ambassador First Class menus are something to behold. On transatlantic flights: Broiled Filet Mignon, Curried Squab Chicken, Roast Sirloin of Beef, Roast Rib of Lamb, Poached Turbot in mushroom sauce, Maine Lobster Newburg, Sautée Chicken in sauce suprême. On non-stops coast to coast, another chance to chose from seven gourmet specialities. On all flights, the entrees are cooked to your order, right on the jet.

Robust, rich fare for the seat-bound, don’t you think? What would you have chosen?

The recipe for the day is for the classic Sauce Suprême, from one of my favourite resources - The Book of Sauces, by Charles Herman Senn, c1915

Suprême Sauce.
1 oz. butter, 1 oz. flour, 1 pint chicken stock, 1 small onion, 1 clove, ½ bay leaf, 3 oz. fresh butter, 1 tablespoonful cream, 1 yolk of egg, ½ lemon.
Make a white roux with the butter and flour, and dilute with the chicken stock. Boil up add the onion, clove, half bay-leaf, and let it simmer for fifteen minutes. Skim well, and work in the butter, cream, yolk of egg, and the juice of half a lemon. Whisk well, and pass through a tammy cloth.

[P.S. There is a 1994 menu from Air Force 1 here]


Quotation for the Day.

SAUCE, n. The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment. A people with no sauces has one thousand vices; a people with one sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine. For every sauce invented and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven.
Ambrose Bierce, Devil’s Dictionary.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd have definitely gone for the lobster - but only if there was a fish tank on board.
And while we're here .... what's a tammy cloth?

The Old Foodie said...

Hi Wendy. A tammy cloth was used for straining - a fabric sieve, essentially, which allowed the contents to be squeezed, if that was required. Not sure of the origin of the word "tammy" in that regard - fodder for another blog post, perhaps?

Doddie said...

Thank you Wendy for posting the question. I've wondered so many times about that and figured it would be like a cheesecloth type of fabric.

Yes, please post more about it!

Fay said...

It is is from the Old French:
a tamis cloth. But pronounced tammy.
It was a glazed woollen fabric back then, as you say open weave to strain the sauces.
My Grandmother's Pellarpat aslo makes reference to tammy as the colloquial form and mentions hair, and wire tamis.

Liz + Louka said...

I'm pretty sure tammy comes from tamis which Google Translate says is French for sieve.