As its titanic anniversary time I'm going to I'm going to recreate some recipes served aboard the titanic this week.
Today i made a few 3rd class menu items-- currant buns and rice soup. I saw currant buns on this website and used tasting history with max miller's recipe for rice soup.
The rice soup was basically rice gruel but I liked it. Nothing fancy! Not much to this recipe so the cayenne and mace really go a long way, but still it's hard to have bad soup. I liked it enough i just had a big bowl by itself.
But as i understand it it would've been a first course option on the last day before the sinking.
I made a gf version of the currant buns--they were sweet and still yeasted. Again nothing fancy but a totally enjoyable.
If you've ever looked at any of the 1st class menu items you know the 3rd class menu is much much simpler but honestly there's a lot there and I'd be totally happy with the 3rd class food.
BUT as the week goes on I'm gonna try some fancier stuff.
Today I did some 2nd class menu items
I made "cocoanut sandwiches" which are delightful sandwich cookies i would eat any time.
Big success for a coconut fan like me. There was nothing in this recipe that threw me for a loop except nutmeg, but that was nice.
I also made roasted turkey (i did 2 breasts and some drumsticks bc getting a whole unfrozen turkey outside of thanksgiving is um $$) and cranberry sauce and puréed turnips.
The pureed turnips were, um, not my fave lol. The recipe for this and the cookies both is from downton abbey cooks, and I'm unsure of the historical veracity. But it had honey and cardamom which sounded interesting but didn't really compete against the turnip.
No one who's tried it has liked it yet lol. I've had reactions from neutral but wouldn't choose it to weird to spitting it out.
I had to do a bit of research to find a gilded age recipe for cranberry sauce to see if it would even be substantially different. And i found one from 1905 that is basically familiar with the exception of a substantial amount of vinegar.
I liked it a lot! I didn't make as much as listed and i think proportionally used less vinegar (apple cider vinegar) but it added a fun tang. But I'm a huge cranberry fan too.
And the roast turkey is just roast turkey. Altho in trying to nod to baking techniques of the day i used more fresh herbs instead of like a dry rub, which is probably what I'd do on my own. Herbs were thyme, sage, rosemary, and brushed with butter.
I roasted the turnips under the turkey, with celery and fennel (bc i can't have onions and fennel is my main substitute) and and carrots. The carrots were great and maybe the turnips would have been better plain than they were puréed.
Continuing this thing I'm doing now! I returned to tasting history with max miller and recreated his choice for the fanciest of crew meals the captain and purser would have eaten-- sirloin steak with chateau potatoes and bernaise sauce.
The château potatoes were definitely on the menus elsewhere for 1st class and maybe even 2nd. But they're potatoes carved down to a sort of olive shape and size, fried in clarified butter.
Its a pain in the ass and i didn't even try to do a better job. They're fucking delicious but just get teeny tiny baby potats for the same frying experience.
The big complex part, if you're really confident in your steak and potato cooking abilities i guess, is the bernaise sauce.
Which is just like a hollandaise sauce with an herb reduction in white wine and tarragon vinegar. And I'm a freak who makes hollandaise sauce sometimes so this didn't really scare me as much as i thought it would.
If you're not familiar with tarragon its a bit like anise but way less potent which makes it very preferable to me.
Just getting it all done at the same time is the hardest part but it was goddamn delicious. A+++ check out the tasting history for details about the crew which were really interesting. If i wanted to make something more representative of the crew experience tho, it'd probably just be more like the 3rd class menu but i wanted to make things I've never tried before.
And the finale of this little cooking adventure, 1st class recipes from the titanic's final night
I made poached salmon with mousseline sauce and creamed carrots and oysters a la russe, with champagne and sorbet.
I enlisted my sister's help in making and eating this, and in watching titanic 1997
Went to the fresh meat market near my sisters for the salmon and oysters which was an excellent choice. They were very good.
I undercooked the salmon a bit but I've never poached fish before so ☹️ i did recently fry salmon in oregon perfectly tho so I'm gonna blame poaching and not me. The salmon was still tasty tho bc salmon just is and I'd rather undercook salmon than over cook it.
Also salmon's best friend is mousseline sauce, everyone. Holy cow. It's like dilly extra creamy hollandaise. If you know how hollndaise sauce is made, do yourself a favor and make salmon with mousseline sauce. You don't even need to poach it.
As a side for this i picked creamed carrots which were surprisingly cinnamon heavy and surprisingly good.
And oysters a la rousse was an appetizer on the titanic but we had them last. The a la rousse is a relish with tomato, vodka, lemon juice, and horseradish and it is dope. I know oysters are divisive but this tomato relish would be good on any seafood i think.
And i just didn't have the energy in me to make the actual 1st class champagne punch, punch romaine, since you make a champagne sorbet which sounds great but. Like. Ive done so much already.
So we had some cheap ass korbel champagne with a store bought raspberry sorbet and it fucked.
Anyway, i rewatched titanic for like the 30th time and still cried. My heart will ho on etc. What a great night.
