Acknowledgments
Introduction: The First Toast
1: The Forerunners: Lessons From The Balloon Era
2: Luxury In The Skies—The Zeppelin Era
3: The Early Days of The Airplane Age (1920-1930)
4: Sidebar—The Technology of Heat in Flight before 1940
5: From 1930 to the Second World War—Diverging Paths
6: Land-based Craft From 1930 to the Outbreak of War
7: Sidebar—A Window Into The Design Process
8: World War II and the Postwar Bonanza (1941-50)
9: Sidebar—Physiology of Taste in Flight
10: Competition, Regulation, and the Jet Age (1950-58)
11: Sidebar: Airline Food in Popular Culture
12: Jet Age Mass Transit and Luxury Competition (1958-66)
13: Sidebar: Technology of Heat in Flight, Part Two
14: Jumbo Jets, Excess, and Cultural Expression (1966-75)
15: Sidebar—The Elusive History of Special Meals
16: Years of Chaos and Change (1975-85)
17: Sidebar—Designing The Flying Meal
18: The Decline And Fall of Inflight Dining (1985-Present)
19: Tubes and Cubes: Food in space (1961-65)
20: Commercialization of Space Food on Earth
21: Apollo, Soyuz, and Variety In Space (1966-1994)
22: Sidebar—The Difficulties of Cooking in Space
23: Shuttles, The ISS, and Taikonauts (1981-Present)
24: Recipes
Recommended Reading: Books and Websites
Appendix: Unsolved Questions
Index
Richard Foss has been writing about food and drink since 1986, when he became restaurant reviewer for the Los Angeles Reader Newspaper. Since then he has written for over twenty different publications, both journalistic and academic, authored a book on the history of rum, and written scholarly articles for the Encyclopedia of World Food Cultures and Oxford Companion to Sweets. He is currently on the board of the Culinary Historians of Southern California and is the California Curator for the Museum of the American Cocktail and the SoFAB Institute. You can see a full bio and read more of his writings at www.richardfoss.com.
Since 1783, when the first passenger balloon was launched, the
history of food has included the challenge of preparing and serving
food while airborne. Foss offers a historical look at how meals
have been prepared and consumed, in wartime and peacetime, during
air travel in vehicles ranging from balloons to zeppelins, from
airplanes to spacecraft. Drawing on archives and interviews, Foss
includes photographs, diagrams, and menus depicting the fabulous
and the rudimentary, everything from gourmet meals to snacks. As
air travel evolved from a luxury for adventurers, with meals to
match, to fairly mundane, crowded journeys offering peanuts,
inventors and airlines have struggled with the dangers of
maintaining safety and hygiene thousands of miles in the air. Foss
offers details behind the technology and culinary arts in flights
from the 1928 Lufthansa flight that first offered hot meals to the
Hindenburg in 1936 to the food technology, including Tang, that
grew out of the space-exploration programs. This fascinating book
includes recipes the airlines collected and adapted for home
use.
*Booklist*
Food in the Air and Space and Food at Sea, the second and third
titles in Ken Albala’s 'Food on the Go' series, trace the
surprising, sometimes humorous, histories of food prepared for
long-distance air, space, and ocean voyages. Foss and Spalding both
bring unique perspectives to these works. Foss is a culinary
historian whose areas of expertise are beverages and the history of
immigrant contributions to California cuisine, while Spalding is a
consultant for historic programs, a maritime historian, and a
musician. Each well-researched book follows a chronological
sequence that clearly shows how the food prepared and served on
watercraft, aircraft, and spacecraft developed in conjunction with
the vehicles themselves, as well as the advancement of nutrition
studies, technology, military science, and the tourism industry.
Food in the Air and Space includes special chapters on the design
of food trays and servings for airlines, the effects of altitude
changes on taste, airline food represented in popular culture,
space food commercialization on Earth, and the challenges of
cooking in space. . . .Summing Up: Recommended. General,
undergraduate, and professional culinary history collections.
*CHOICE*
Richard Foss' Food in The Air and Space: The Surprising History of
Food and Drink in The Skies explores the fascinating history of
culinary fare off the earth, the adventures, the mechanics of in
air cooking, and serving, and the characters who pursued good food
and drink in the air. . . .The book is well illustrated with
posters, menus, maps, and photographs of "stewardesses" and pilots
in their kitchens. . . .Food in The Air and Space would make a
great gift for anyone interested in flight - especially a younger
person thinking about a career. It's more than just a history of
the food - it's a book full of fun facts about the history of
aviation - the characters, the stories, and, of course, the
cooking.
*Super Chef*
From the soil to the plate, the story of food is a fascinating, and
at times unpalatable journey. An often overlooked aspect of the
gastronomical journey has also grown from the ground, but much
higher than our tables, up into the atmosphere on balloons to
commercial airlines and beyond into Earth orbit and even to the
moon, where simple plates become irrelevant. Many of us now fly
around the world and either enjoy, or complain about the meals we
eat in that journey. In Food in the Air and Space Richard Foss
reveals the surprising and at times challenging
developments over the past century in the quest to make
food palatable in the air and beyond.
*David J. Shayler, FBIS, Astronautical Historian, Astro Info
Service, Ltd, UK*
Richard Foss invites us on a food journey, one many of us have
made, and yet forgotten about: What we eat while flying. The trials
and tribulations of humanity’s struggle to fly are matched only by
one other quest: what’s for dinner? With verve and wit, Foss
uncovers many nuggets of information that describe how a most basic
human activity becomes a logistical nightmare in flight and in
space.
Where flight was cause for celebration, the appropriate menu was
always available, only on the ground. On the other hand,
entertaining passengers on board with food became a whole new
challenge that also helped airlines brand themselves. And just when
one thought that a measly peanut was just that, Foss notes how it
became as much part of a marketing identity as a fine “Côte du
Rhône.”
Readers will derive a new understanding and appreciation for how
hard it actually is to develop a proper airline menu. And our
admiration for astronauts and cosmonauts should increase when
considering what they were told to ingest to survive in space!
Jaded travellers as much as casual ones will find Foss’ survey
quite informative, and might want to add their experiences to it.
It is an enjoyable descriptive survey on a long discussed, yet
rarely researched topic.
*Guillaume de Syon, professor of history, Albright College*
Whatever you might want to know about the history of eating in
flight Richard Foss has the answers. Foss is particularly strong on
the relationship between technology and food and food and the
airlines’ commercial priorities. The research underpinning the text
is impressive. While starts with eighteenth-century balloon flight
and ends with space travel, the focus of the book is commercial
aviation. A valuable contribution to the history of airline food, a
genre of cuisine that most of us frequently experience but know
very little about.
*William Rubel, food historian*
In a world where food is something we share socially with friends
and loved ones, Foss' illustrative history of food in the air sheds
light on why and how airplanes have slowly but surely become the
one place where food doesn't foster a warm social environment.
*Amy Shira Teitel, Spaceflight Historian and Writer, Popular
Science*
While you are flying somewhere, crammed into a narrow space like a
canned sardine offered only a meagre soft drink or maybe tiny bag
of peanuts, or even a barely edible meal, leaf through your copy of
Food in the Air and Space and dream on about the glory days of
dining while flying. This is a totally engrossing survey of what
people have cooked and eaten while hurtling through or above the
skies, from the Hindenburg’s Fattened Duckling, Bavarian
Style to TWA’s Le Canard a L’Orange Au Grand Mariner, to
“Tubes and Cubes” food aboard spacecraft, and more. You will even
look fondly back to days when people actually looked forward to
flying and dining.
*Bruce Kraig, professor emeritus of History, Roosevelt University,
Chicago, Founding President, Culinary Historians of Chicago;
author, Man Bites Dog: Hot Dog Culture in America and Hot Dog: A
Global History*
Richard Foss’ book Food in the Air & Space is remarkable for not
only telling the remarkable history and strategy story of cuisine
above the clouds, but in an unexpected parallel intricacy weaves
the tale of commercial flight and the passenger experience. From
the first meal served in a balloon to French aristocracy, gourmet
meals aboard the Graf Zeppelin & the Pan Am Clippers to the more
prosaic fare offered as flying became more routine, and finally to
the disparity gap that exists today between the well fed have’s in
premium cabins and the have not’s in economy, this story is spiced
with many delicious facts that will leave you never looking at or
tasting airline food the same way again.
*Chris Sloan, Editor-In-Chief/Founder AirwaysNews.com*
Deeply researched and beautifully written, Food in the Air and
Space brings history to life and will be enjoyed by aviation buffs
and foodies alike. In all the aviation and space research I have
done, I never once considered the food…but a people, be they
travelers or explorers, need to eat. Food in the Air and Space, by
gifted author Richard Foss, brings this little known history to
life.
*Eric Boehm, curator, Aviation and Aircraft Restoration, Intrepid
Sea, Air, & Space Museum*
An engaging history – and nicely illustrated too – for anyone who
is either a fan of aviation history or food, and doubly so for
anyone who has a foot in both camps. Well-researched, the book
delves into areas of commercial and military flight, as well as the
technologies that made dining aloft something more than a matter of
mere sustenance. No matter how much you already know about
aviation history, Food in the Air and Space will leave you better
informed, and enjoying the journey too.
*Doug Miller, website administrator, Pan Am Historical
Foundation*
Reducing airborne catering to a question of 'chicken or beef?'
pokes fun at complex technical, social, and health considerations
that have evolved to accommodate changing aspects of flying such as
air journey schedules and lengths, passenger and crew demographics,
cabin luggage allowances, airline economics, and aircraft size.
Food in the Air and Space is a fabulous feast of fact, anecdote,
and memory about carrying, preparing, serving, and eating food and
drink. The vessels are balloons, airships, aircraft, and
spacecraft. Foss delves into food streams and technologies: weight,
packaging, storage, freezing, heating, sourcing, ingredients, and
waste disposal have been the main difficulties. Laid out elegantly
and served with panache, Food in the Air and Space shows that for
300 years, airborne catering and eating have been sources of
nutrition, technical inventiveness, artistry, differentiation of
carriers and social classes, passenger distraction and control ...
and humor.
*Gordon Pirie, professor, University of Cape Town, African Centre
for Cities*
Aviation has always pushed innovation. Eating in the air is a
fascinating subject and this history has done it justice.
*David Crotty, Curator, Qantas Heritage Collection*
It’s about time someone wrote a book about the appealing (and
appalling) foods and beverages consumed in flight from the balloon
era to the space age; Richard Foss’ Food in the Air and Space meets
the need, and it’s a delightful read filled with unexpected
departures and the occasional crash landing!
*Andrew F. Smith, culinary historian*
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