Research info help needed for Steamboat menus

Oops, I should have clarified about the date as well. I'm looking for steamboat information during 1840s through 1860s. Sorry about that!

I'm sure you will be hearing from those who have better access to that information, but you might want to expand your time period to include the 1870's, when some of the grandest of steamboats were built.

Your professor must have taken a class from George Ellsworth at Utah State. He gave the kids some hard things to find when I was a half time librarian in the Reference room and halftime curator of Man and His Bread Museum.

Anyway here are two sightly helpful references. Steamboating on the Upper Mississippi by William J. Petersen and Steamboats on the Western Rivers by Louis C. Hunter. Look in their indexes under food. I tried food and dinning in several other books that had indexes with no luck. I think the subject of Menus has come up in this series So have a look at past postings.

Sorry most general books didn't get around to what was eaten. or the indexer didn't think it was worth adding to the index. So your best bet is to find diaries of passengers. mainly those of women. If I remember right in Wagon Train Women There is an account of a woman traveling as a deck passenger and I think she may have has some comment on what she and her kids had to eat. I think it is in the book for 1852 and Lucy Rutledge Cooke's diary. Good Luck

Utah Riverrat

*RE: Steamboat food/Menus Etc.*
Hi, Bonnie & Steamboating colleagues:
Your project is a fascinating one focusing on an aspect of steamboats/steamships that has only recently been researched in depth. This topic discussed on Steamboats.org in recent years with much in-put. I draw you to the work and book by Cynthia Nobles who has published a work on steamboat cooking focusing on the DELTA QUEEN. Capt. Doc Hawley and I assissted in her initial research with Doc doing final editing. Others on this web also contributed. Remember, steamboat cuisine then not all that much different that what was offered in leading hotels, clubs and restaurants of the day on shore. Those old boat cooks were masters of the art using coal fired cook stoves with limited means of refrigeration, preservation. Washing of all done by hand in the 'cook house' scullery before automatic dish washers were invented. Many boats, in season, purchased fruits, vegetables, chickens, hogs, beef etc. when stopping at wharfboats or landings. Doc Hawley and a number of us remember this years ago on the DELTA QUEEN. Corn, beans, tomatoes, greens would be purchased with some of the galley crew on the lower deck shucking corn, snapping beans. All breads, rolls, cakes then and before baked aboard. There were meat thermometers then for cooking but the method for most cooks was to 'sniff, probe' to determine the cooking time. The term 'Steamboat Round of Beef' so common was no different than similar cuts of beef roasted ashore. The term came from English steamships along with being served in railroad dining cars here of the day. I uncovered a few period recipes on how the beef was cooked and what 'cut' it was with weight. Some 'Steamboat rounds' could weight up to 40 lbs. with most lesser in weight. In season fresh fowl, fish, clams, oysters etc. could be included. Milk would also have been loaded in the home port or purchsed along the way. The 'night boats' from here to Louisville and return mostly loaded provisions in Cincinnati or even Louisville. Most night boats ran a distance between 125 and at most 200 miles before turn around. Tending to soiled cabin or table laundry another issue to be discussed.

Menus as such didn't always exist on the old boats except for special events like 'Steamboat Open House,' holidays, visiting dignitaries, company officials/stock holders, christening days, maiden trips. Food selections were given orally with the passenger picking; yet some old menus do crop up in collections. There is mention of 'buffet service' on some of the boats but most food served by the waiters from dishes, bowls etc. to each seated person with much style and fan fare. The famed ANCHOR LINE out of St. Louis did in time experiment with a kind of 'open seating' for passengers wishing to dine at their convenience as a number boarded or left the boats at different landings during the day. The old term 'lunch' implied any snack during the day or late at night. Most daily meals spread on the long tables down the middle of the cabin. Cold iced punches with or without liquor were special offerings with some recordings of their ingredients. As early as the 1830s European travelers on our steamboats were amazed/impressed with the food selections but less pleased with the 'classless' system of being seated together at the long tables. Southern fried chicken was a novelty to many English and continental Europeans they delighted in. Some English travelers here commented that the black waiters on steamboats more refined with polished manners than the often rough provincial passengers they served. More on this in time if you need help. No doubt others here can add their information. Well, what do I know?

R. Dale Flick
Coal Haven Landing, Ohio River, Cincinnati.

Bonnie: The steamboat ARABIA was snagged in the Missouri River in I believe 1856. Some years ago said boat was found under many feet of earth that is now a corn field. Much of the boat's cargo and part of the boat itself was salvaged. Among the artifacts recoved is an original menu for the cabin passingers. Search their web site to see if you can find it. If not, a phone call to the museum should get the answer. I took photos of the menu some years ago on a visit to their museum in Kansas City...but finding it would be a problem. You should find exactly what you want there and as I remember the menu was pretty fancy. If I remember correctly back nearly sixty years, Herbert and Edward Quick in their book MISSISSIPPI STEAMBOATIN' (Henry Holt 1926) had comments on food served to cabin passengers on steamboatsand and how the remains of the fancy food was served to the deck crew like slopping the hawgs! I found this while doing a term paper for English Composition in 1953 I have a copy of the book but there is no index so if you cannot find a copy I will try to find the passage for you. Cap'n Walnut

ps: I think that Dale is right on as to what you will find when the menu...think fancy hotels ashore. ts

Wow! Thank you all so so much because these book suggestions already help a great deal! I'm beginning to feel better about this project. The information y'all have is invaluable. Thanks again!!

I know I have seen menus in the S&D Reflector or somewhere. It's just that I have to dig this stuff out and haven't had the time. It's a nice day so maybe I can find something in one of our garages.

Here's one. Go to books.google.com and search for Old Times on the Upper Mississippi by George Byron Merrick. They have the book on line so go to page 126, which is Chapter XVI, Mississippi Menus. This is a first hand account, six pages to add to your research. That one was easy. I will continue looking.

Actually, you might want to read the whole book, which is in paperback, once you finish your research.

Life on the River, Wayman, 1971, yielded a photo of a menu from the Steamer Magnolia in 1846. It was credited to the Boatmen's National Bank of St. Louis. I tried scanning it and it is fairly legible. I don't think the Boatmen's Bank has that collection any more, but I went to the website Missouri History Museum which has a Steamboats and River History Collection. Couldn't find the Magnolia menu, but ran across a menu from the steamboat Missouri, 1847 Jan 10, in Box 1, Folder 11. It was just a listing, but they may have an image available, just not on line. Maybe I could email you the scan of the Magnolia menu if you'd like. That's it for now.

Here are a couple of comments.

Dick Bissell's mother said that the fancy steamboat food was "slop."

Captain Frederick Way, Jr. wrote: Give one old those old-time cooks a gallon of lard and five pounds of sugar, and he could make anything on those fancy menus.

My comment is: towboat food was usually good and well-prepared and leaned toward meat and potatoes, hog-jaw-and-hominy and plenty of desserts, usually pies. As for the gourmet food served on the Delta Queen boats, I'd rather eat with the crew. Those string beans made of green-dyed sash cord do not appeal to me.

hogs at the trough

Well, some of us pined for dining room leftovers, especially if there was a creme de menthe parfait involved. If the DQ was docked and one was not impressed with the look and smell emitting from the crew mess steam tables, as was quite often the case, there were restaurants in almost every town to fall back on. As you mentioned, grease and fat prevailed. Under way, one could get a little box of Raisin Bran, milk, and a banana if all else failed. And the late night engine room popcorn concession was a winner. This is all coming from someone who loves to eat, and I'm making myself hungry.

Bonnie,

those elaborate steamboat menus for the cabin-class (or first class) passengers must be read with a trifle of circumspection. Most of the clientele were reared on and lived on plain foods. Few of them read or spoke French. Thus the boat's cooks could get away with murder. Europeans were dismayed and even shocked when Americans ate the courses out of order, mixed foods, ate with knives or concentrated on desserts to the exclusion of other viands.

This is not to say that the food was totally bad or that all of the passengers were ignorant, but the general level was low. Food was prepared hurriedly and in cramped cookhouses. Meats were slaughtered and dressed on the boat, for there was little or no refrigeration. Cleanliness was still in the future until The Jungle and other books had their effects.

As for the deck crew, their food was the left-overs from the cabin. It was served in tin pans and no allowance was made for appearance or delicate appetites. Deck passengers either brought their food with them or scurried up the hill at landings to buy it, for deck passengers bought only transportation from the boat.

The three classes were: 1) cabin passengers and officers, who ate the best the boat could afford; 2) deck crew, who ate left-overs; 3) deck passengers who got no food service at all.

Like a bunch of ....

The chow featured on the AVALON was plenty of fried chicken, greens, and white beans - foods that I still savor, today, as they remind me of those salad days when I was young and living the dream life - steamboating on the great rivers. When I asked Cap'n Doc why we had those wonderful morsels so often, he replied simply, "Cheap."

Then there was the episode aboard the DELTA QUEEN, during the early '70's, when the company was trying to appease the African-American members of the crew during those hectic days of racial unrest in those turbulent times and the fare served in the crew's mess consisted of sow's ears, collards, and such that the Cincinnati office figured would be what the majority of the crew wanted to find on the steam table. After a time, a deadheading travel writer, who was enjoying the fancy feasts served on the ironwood deck, above, asked Captain Howard Tate how he "found the food served on the DELTA QUEEN." Without hesitation Tate shot back at the startled woman ... "LADY, THEY SLOP US LIKE A BUNCH OF HOGS!"

Some of us white folks like that kind of cooking, but they must've gotten over it by the time I got there (on the DQ). And Mexican food was unheard of unless you could luck into someone selling hot tamales on shore.

Back in the old days, in spite of, or maybe because of, the bad food, there was no obesity problem. Hm.

*RE: Steamboat food/Menus/Calories*
Dear Steamboating colleagues:
Fascinating postings above from all of you who were there THEN with us all here NOW. Alan's and Shipyard's comments/observations on the money. Those old formal menus were not common. Steamboat 'legends' over the years have given a romantic slant to the history--not that the big gold braid 'brag boats' didn't offer all and more. In later years a number of travel articles on cooking by food writers 'tripping' on the DELTA QUEEN blew their visions of what they'd heard or read. Yet, I found the food good. The working crew victuals just as reported above. Today the big blue water ship/cruise lines dish up food 24 hours a day. Cruise ship crews today generally eat about the same--with certain limitations, naturally, as the passengers in their own dining rooms with added ethnic dishes. I observe many of the present officers, crew eating lightly so unlike most of the passengers. Crews on cruise ships today also have their own gyms with equipment to exercise.

John Burns, son of old Jim Burns who designed/built the DL/DQ, recalled the rich foods on the C.T. Co. boats on the Sacramento. Old Jim Burns early on had some kind of digestive problem causing him to eat carefully over the years. John recalled the cook houses on their company boats keeping large "cans to collect the ham and fat drippings for later use...many of those men were hitting 300 lbs." Capt. King on the DQ was not one of them. John, while working for his boiler license, ate sparingly and "kept a wood crate of fruits and vegetables under my bunk to snack on." John also was even then a physical fitness advocate who exercised, boxed and "did pull ups using deck beams while on the boats." Diabetes, sugar/salt intake problems were as common then as now but not all that well understood with no insulin available. Doc Hawley, Shipyard, Alan recall the famous plate of bread on the AVALON'S meal tables. The top piece of the bread never eaten as "that was for the flys" and the 2nd piece down being taken. Poor refrigeration or lack of sanitation made "the complaint" common aboard especially in the warm summer months. Steamboat enginner Charlie Dietz had lots to say about "the complaint" from food and what the remedy was back then.

The 'night boats' generally dished up the same food day in and day out with little variation except for fruits, vegetables in season. Remember, most until recent years never ate oysters or other sea food except for the months of the year with an 'R' in the name. The DK/DQ hired about 14 young Philipino men to tend all the boat cabins while standing duty in the boat's dining room. Schedules and brochures Judy Patsch and I have reveal that meals on the DK/DQ didn't come with your basic fare. The menu quoted prices for meals that seem low by our standards today. The Japanese and Chinese deck passengers--and others--riding on the cheap up the Sacramento to the towns and agricultural fields to work--received nothing. Quick in and out landings there called 'brush landings.'

Ice for food cooling and other beverage needs was an expensive commodity then. Refrigeration/freezing appeared in the very late 1880s to 1890 on some steamboats and ships. Europeans were horrified seeing Americans consume ice in drinks except for punches etc. along with passengers gulping down their food in record time and jumping up from table. I've uncovered one old account from the 1850s in which a testy lady passenger demanded the 'Mud Clerk' run up town at a landing to find fresh milk for the dog she had aboard. In the 1840s/1850s accounts also mention passengers noting drinking water taken directly from the river with a dark appearance for the cabin tables. Bottled table water did exist but was a luxury item for the most discriminating who could afford it. Well, what do I know?

R. Dale Flick
Coal Haven Landing, Ohio River, Cincinnati

Like a Taste ...?

It wasn’t that some of us didn't like a taste of soul cookin', but twice a day? Before long, we, at the Captain's table, looked over at where the intended recipients of the specialized cuisine were seated and saw their plates were piled high with the "good grub" they got at the back door of the kitchen from their pals who manned the stoves and served the meals on the passenger deck. The “grand culinary scheme” dreamed up at the Cincinnati office didn’t last long after that, and we went back to the regular fare that included lots of fried chicken, greens, and white beans … my favorites.

The best, and only, Mexican meals I enjoyed on the river were aboard the DIAMOND LADY, in Bettendorf, Iowa where the Hispanic cooks made special dishes for themselves and their friends. Once they got to know you, the cooks were more than delighted to share.

To lapse into the contemporary food scene. The Belle of Louisville borrowed cooks from the Louisville Fire Department for Tall Stacks and those guys could cook. While at Tall Stacks we ate what Alan Bernstein fixed for passengers. I do not recall the menu, but it was rich.

Kadie Engstrom, the gift counter lady, went up the hill in Cincinnati and brought back an enormous bag of fruit - bananas, apples, oranges, pears and the like - for the crew. They disappeared in an hour or two, for the crew were full-up with cheese cake and murky strawberry gravy, potatoes au gratin and good cuts of meat. You'd have thought we were coming down with scurvy! All were much relieved when we departed and the firemen resumed.

On the last (so far) DQ trip, the menus became slimmer and slimmer as the trip wore on--and even then the Menu was quite a bit of "what's not available." We referred to them as "faux menus."
Also, our first trip was also MAL's first one (March, 07) and we were greatly disappointed in the menu--it was mostly California cuisine--hey we could have stayed home for that stuff!
S'
David D. (in N. Calif.)

Wow, once again, allow me to thank you all. This information is overwhelming and invaluable! Thanks so for the work y'all do! 🙂

Bonnie

When you're done, Bonnie, please post all, or some, of what you've written.

You'll find a little info in the book "River Boats of America" by Frank Donovan. On page 108 he talks about food on steamboats in the 1840s, and quotes the infamous Mrs. Trollope on table manners on steamboats (not pretty). On page 110 he says: "the deckers' diet was whatever they could bring aboard, usually sausage, fried herring, cheese and crackers--and, of course, whiskey. Captains frequently understated the length of a voyage to attract passengers, and boats were held up by low water, accidents, and ice. When such delays exhausted the deckers' meager stores they went without for the rest of the trip, unless kind-hearted rousters let them share the grub pile."