Feeding in Flight, 1945. Part II, Menu Planning.

As promised, today I give you a little more from the U.S. Navy Department’s book Feeding in Flight, published in 1945.

MENU PLANNING.

The menus in this section are planned to cover as many situations as possible where special problems arise in connection with feeding flight personnel and passengers.

Ease in preparation and service of food from warming units or other equipment is also taken into consideration in the menus. Various types of airborne galley equipment provide different facilities for meal preparation. The result is that some of these facilities have more limiting effects on the menu than others.

TYPES OF MENUS FOR IN-FLIGHT FEEDING

Menus suitable for in-flight feeding have been classed in the following manner:

I. Precooked or partially cooked meals for holding in warming units, the AG-1 unit,

Helmco unit, FTG-3 food warmer, and AerVoid food carrier.

II. Frozen, precooked meals to be heated in Maxson" Whirlwind" oven aboard aircraft.

III. Hot meals to be prepared aboard the aircraft using hot plates, or grills and hot

cups.

IV. Sandwich meals for preparation in-flight.

Menu card.-When food for 2 or more meals is packed in a single provision box or warming unit, the selection of foods from the box for organizing a meal can be done more quickly if a menu card, for the use of the flight orderly, is packed with the pro-

visions.

Recipes. —Recipes for the suggested dishes on the menus can be found in the Navy Cook Book.

The following menus are based on the use of pre-cooked or partially cooked food and the preparation of supplemental food in flight.

The manual then gave sample menus for each day of the week. Here are Wednesday’s choices:

BILL OF FARE FOR FLIGHT RATIONS.

AG-1 Unit – Serves approximately 12 men, 3 meals.

The following menus are based on the use of precooked or partially cooked food and the 

preparation of supplemental food in flight.

WEDNESDAY

(c) Grapefruit secions	(a) Roast beef and gravy	(a) Vegetable soup (c) Crackers
(c) Dry cereal    (c) milk	(a) Escalloped potatoes	(a) Baked veal chop
(b) Fried eggs and bacon	(a) Buttered green beans	(a) Spanish rice
(c) Bread          (c) Butter	(c) Pickle relish	(c)Carrot sticks
(a) Coffee	(c)Bread                (c) Butter	(c)Bread    (c)Butter
	(c) Cherry cobbler (a) Coffee	(c) Iced white cake

 The recipe for the day is from the U.S. Navy Cook Book (1920)

Rissoles and Croquettes of Corned Beef.

Cut the cold corned beef in 2-inch cubes, place in black pans and sauté in hot oven, drain off the liquid, then brown some salt pork (cut in small dice) on the range, add some chopped onions, then add sufficient flour to absorb all the fat; reduce this roux with the liquid from some tinned peas and the strained liquid from the corned beef, season with thyme, pepper, and a little salt, then add some parsley and cooked diced potatoes; add the peas to the meat, pour on the sauce, cover with a good biscuit paste and bake in a good oven. The addition of canned tomatoes greatly improves this dish.