The cooks aboard the RMS Titanic made hundreds of exquisite dishes
mainly for the first class, and so those passengers could enjoy
every course they often included a pallet cleanser like this recipe for punch romaine,
and we'll learn about a group of these cooks and exactly what happened to them on that cold April night in the north Atlantic.
Punch romaine and the cooks of Titanic this time on Tasting History.
So this was supposed to be a Drinking History because we're making punch but it is unlike any
punch that you would have today. It's more like an alcoholic sorbet
so it's not really a Drinking History episode though later interpretations do make it into just a plain cocktail which is a lot easier, but
we're doing it the hard way and that would be Escoffier's way.
"Mix dry champagne in five deciliters of syrup.
Add the juice of two oranges and three lemons, and a thin strip each of orange and lemon zest,
cover and allow to infuse for 1 hour. Pass through a strainer.
Freeze the punch in the machine until it's fairly stiff. Then mix in a quarter of its quantity of Italian meringue...
When about to serve finish the punch with rum added a little at a time."
By the way I have trouble saying the name of this recipe without wanting to
place it into the melody of Quiche Lorraine by the B-52s.
♪ Punch, punch romaine ♪
Anyway...
For this recipe what you'll need is: one and three quarters cup or 425 milliliters of dry champagne,
a quarter cup or 60 milliliters of simple syrup,
a quarter cup of orange juice, a quarter cup of lemon juice, small strips of orange and lemon zest,
one egg white, a quarter cup or 50 grams of sugar, a quarter cup or 60 milliliters of water,
and a little rum. I am using Smith and Cross which is one of my favorites, and I'll put a link in the description to where you can get that
but any rum will do.
So first mix the champagne with the syrup until dissolved. It helps if the syrup is a little warm,
and then add the orange and lemon juice
and the strips of orange and lemon zest.
And then cover the pot and let it infuse for one hour.
After an hour you can either strain it or if it doesn't actually need straining you can just
take out the lemon and orange zest.
Then pour the punch into an ice cream maker and let it do its thing.
Now it's not going to thicken as much as a normal sorbet even Escoffier says just let it thicken until it's fairly stiff.
It'll be more like a very thick slushie
but while it's freezing go ahead and make your Italian meringue.
Add the sugar and the water into a saucepan and set over high heat, and then don't touch it.
Don't stir it, don't swirl it, don't even look at it because if you do
it will get crystals and if it gets even one crystal it's pretty much ruined and you have to start all over again.
You're looking for it to get to 240 degrees Fahrenheit and if you just
leave it it'll do that in about four to five minutes.
While it heats beat your egg white in a clean bowl until you have soft peaks, and then with the beaters still going
slowly pour in the melted syrup, then beat on high for four to five minutes until you have nice shiny stiff peaks.
Then assuming that your champagne sorbet is ready you can go ahead and fold a bit of the Italian meringue into it
about a fourth of the total amount of sorbet.
This is gonna kind of undo a lot of the freezing that you did, and just make it into kind of a slush
but that's okay because then you're going to mix it together and put it into the freezer
for about three hours and it'll firm up real nice.
Now this was served in the first class dining saloon on the last night aboard the Titanic
and something identical or at least very similar would have been served to the passengers eating in the a la carte restaurant
which was another restaurant on the ship and it's the staff of that restaurant
that we're going to discuss right now.
So if you were a first class passenger and decided that the
first class dining saloon just wasn't nice enough for you, and you wanted to spend a little more money
then you could opt to eat at the À La Carte restaurant run independently by the Italian restaurateur Luigi Gatti
who ran Oddenino's Imperial restaurant in London.
Many of the 60 staff members that he had aboard the Titanic including 10 of his cousins came from that restaurant.
Most of his Titanic staff were Italian, French or Swiss and they held kind of a weird place amongst the crew of the ship
because they weren't passengers but they also weren't really White Star Line employees
and while it's not definite this separation from the rest of the crew may have had something to do
with their fate during the sinking.
Now as for the restaurant itself sometimes called the Ritz by the passengers
it had capacity for only 137 guests so it was seen as a bit more exclusive than even the first class saloon.
Especially because meals at this restaurant were not included in the price of your ticket.
So it was on George Widener's tab when he hosted a dinner party on that last night of April 14th,
but don't worry he could afford it, for as the opening of the Titanic musical reminds us
'He's the richest man in Philadelphia'
and he was. In fact he owned the Ritz hotel in that city.
So it's no surprise that guests of he and his wife Eleanor that night
included some of the wealthy Philadelphians on board the Titanic.
They were also joined by major Archibald Butt who was President Taft's close friend and military aide,
and supposedly their guest of honor was Captain E.J. Smith himself
there to celebrate this his last crossing of an illustrious career
with an impeccable safety record. >_>
But it's not the diners of the restaurant that we're here to discuss but rather the cooks and the waiters and the cashiers,
and a man named Paul Maugé who was the assistant to the head Chef Pierre Rousseau.
Now most of what we know about what happened to the staff that night comes from Paul Maugé.
He seems to have been the only staff member who went up onto the deck
after the ship had hit the iceberg and saw ice on the deck.
He also saw Captain Smith urging a woman into a lifeboat and so he knew that something was not right,
but a steward told him as he didn't have any official duties and he wasn't a passenger
that he needed to return to his cabin.
Well he went down but he didn't return to his cabin rather he woke up Chef Rousseau and
Chef Rousseau he says was rather agitated at being woken up with such alarming news
but eventually he got him to put on some clothes and both of them were in regular clothes rather than their uniforms.
So they start upstairs and by now they're joined by the cooks and the waiters of the restaurant
but as the restaurant had just closed they're all still in their work uniforms,
and Paul Maugé says that there are stewards blocking their way not letting them up onto the deck.
Maugé demands that they let them pass but the stewards only let Maugé and Pierre Rousseau pass,
and Maugé says that it was because they weren't dressed as cooks but were wearing clothes that made them look like passengers.
Then he testified that "the other cooks were obliged to stay on the deck there;
they could not go up.
That is where they die... 20 cooks and 40 waiters."
He and the chef waited for about a half an hour hoping that others would make it through
but nobody did, and eventually
they decided they had to go up on deck and by this time panic was starting to set in.
Yet they were still lowering lifeboats not entirely full.
As one of those boats was lowering Maugé saw that other men were jumping into the boat,
and now it was about 10 feet down but he decided to jump and landed in the boat.
And he looked up at the chef and shouted saute! Saute! Jump! Jump!
But the chef who was a large man said
No I won't jump,
and he never did.
Of the 69 staff of the À La Carte Restaurant
Paul Maugé and two female cashiers who had rooms amongst the passengers were the only ones to survive.
And the day after he testified to the inquiry a headline ran
"Titanic Cooks Drowned Like Rats."
Now while I can't relate to their situation that night,
I can relate to the unbelievable work
that the cooks and waiters aboard the Titanic did. I've worked on ships and I worked in restaurants
for much of my life and seeing the work that cooks go through every single night at a restaurant is
is mind-boggling. It's gotta be one of the hardest jobs in the world.
And I'd say let's raise a toast with a cocktail to the amazing restaurant workers aboard the Titanic but
I don't have a cocktail rather I have a palate cleanser. So we'll raise a toast with a pallet cleanser of punch romaine.
So once it's chilled for a few hours scoop the punch romaine into a chilled glass.
You can top it with a bit more of the meringue for presentation and then pour a bit of cold rum around the base,
and here we are punch romaine the first class palette cleanser aboard the Titanic.
It really is like a little alcoholic sorbet. You can-
well you can definitely smell the rum and it is quickly turning into just total liquid. It does not-
doesn't have a long shelf life so let's give it a try.
[Chomp]
Hmm!
Oh!
It's quite alcoholic.
They had wine with every single course and
before dinner drinks and after dinner drinks these people must have been sloshed.
I'm going to taste just-
the rum kind of overpower everything so I'm going to taste just a little bit of the sorbet alone.
[Chomp Chomp]
I like that.
Oh that's very, very good.
So you really get the champagne but then you also get
the orange and you know that that zesty citrusness, and and it's sweet.
It is a dessert but a super super boozy dessert,
but the one thing it does make you feel is just- just fancy,
just first class.
So make sure to follow me on Instagram and Twitter and follow the Discord and Reddit I'll put links in the description where
you can continue the conversation about the Titanic and other Tasting History episodes,
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.