Food in the Air and Space

by Richard Foss

  A high-ranking Swedish passenger on a recent Lancastrian service ex Singapore for Sydney has complained to me that the coffee was rather dreadful, while it was good at Karachi by flying boat to Singapore. These foreign people set great store by the coffee especially as Australian coffee is notoriously bad, it should be worth your while to see what you can do to buck up the coffee on our main overseas lines.

  The response has a somewhat aggrieved and defensive tone:

  For your information, we make every effort to serve good coffee, but unfortunately it is not possible to obtain a standard strength of coffee throughout the routes. Just recently, I endeavored to obtain from Nestlé’s Nescafe in bulk, but they would not agree to supply the company with 56-pound drums and owing to the scarcity of tin plate are unable to pack in the usual type of packing.

  To ensure good coffee, we dispatch ex Sydney to Darwin, Bowen, and Townsville, weekly, freshly ground mocha and Kenya beans mixed. With regard to Singapore, on my last visit, catering Ofc. O’Brien was having difficulty in purchasing a decent blend of coffee, but I will acquaint him with the facts of your memo, and ask him to take steps to improve this commodity.17

  The fact that Nescafé instant coffee, delivered in fifty-six-pound drums, was admitted by Australians to be an improvement over postwar Australian coffee makes one grateful to have never tasted the latter.

  Qantas had to improve their standard of service for the same reason American carriers did—an unprecedented wave of new airlines in their most lucrative markets. In their case the competition was even more severe, coming as it did from both ends of the spectrum. The same proliferation of charter airlines broke their monopoly on many routes and siphoned off the bargain-conscious, while new private and government-owned carriers competed at the high end.

  Among the domestic carriers, Trans Australian Airways started flying in 1946 with DC-3s. Pioneering stewardess Audrey Bussell reminisced that she hadn’t been fully trained and described the service for the book Gourmet and Glamour in the Air. “In the tiny DC-3 galley would be 21 plastic trays in a slot with each one containing ham or chicken, lettuce and tomatoes with tinned peaches or pears.” Audrey recalled her first flight alone on the DC-3 when she unfortunately put the mayonnaise on the peaches and the custard on the salad. “Not one passenger complained and all said the meal was lovely! In those early days after the war passengers were delighted even with the tea out of the urn and a biscuit.”

  Things improved after the airline purchased DC-4s—a TAA advertisement in the late 1940s showed a typical menu as follows:18

  Roast Chicken and Ham with Lemon and Parsley Seasoning

  Baked Potatoes, Garden Salad

  Apple Slice and Custard Dessert

  Cheese and Biscuits, Fresh Fruits

  Coffee and Mints

  Internationally, Qantas’s competition was even stiffer, including carriers from former British colonies. Once India became independent in 1948, the government immediately set up a national airline using new Lockheed Constellation aircraft. Air India’s service was a landmark because they were the first airline to serve an extensive selection of non-European food, with vegetarian options on all flights. Indians were used to eating snacks from metal lunchboxes called tiffins, a style of dining that was conveniently similar to airline meals, and the airline took advantage of the tens of thousands of restaurants in the country that already made these prepacked meals. Curries, chutneys, and other traditional items were served on board, all served along with European beers, wines, and Champagne.19

  BOAC also faced competition on many routes, including in Africa, where new carrier East African Airways and previously small South African Airways started rapid expansion. Neither made any attempt to innovate in catering or reflect their cultural roots, which was fortunate for the British carrier, as that company was in no position to improve things. The government-owned airline was under pressure to buy British aircraft, and none were ready that matched the American designs. BOAC had purchased Avro Lancastrian aircraft that were very fast but had no heating facilities, which put their meal service a decade behind their competitors.20 The carrier also continued to operate the slow but stately flying boats and even bought new ones like the Short Solent. These offered space and luxury but were up to a hundred miles an hour slower than their competitors. In order to not lose transatlantic business traffic the airline bought American Lockheed Constellations, their first purchase of foreign aircraft. Aboard these craft BOAC’s food options improved, though they did not match the standard of their competitors until the mid-1950s.

  As Europe’s economy revived, some carriers tried to compete on the basis of superior food and service. Alitalia started service in 1947 with meals made by the famous Rosati Restraurant on the Via Veneto in Rome, serving lavish dinners and plenty of good Chianti wine. The service did not become popular because the airline was forced to buy Italian aircraft, and the only ones available were obsolete Savoia-Marchetti 95s, probably the last passenger aircraft built with plywood wings and fabric-covered fuselages. The aircraft were not pressurized, so when they flew over the Alps passengers had to don individual oxygen masks. Only when Alitalia bought more modern aircraft did their service become competitive.21

  Air France was also under pressure to buy domestic aircraft but only operated those on uncompetitive routes; they wisely purchased Constellations for their Atlantic service. Ads proclaiming “The Magic Door to France” promoted their food service as a way to experience French culture the moment you started traveling. The pictures of happy people drinking Champagne in flight helped make them a popular choice, and they quickly gained a substantial share of service to Europe.

  The major American carrier across the Atlantic was Pan Am, once the United States’ only international carrier, and it too faced new competition. United obtained routes to Hawaii, Northwest to Alaska, TWA to Europe, and dozens of carriers to South America and Mexico. Pan Am continued to operate flying boats on some routes but also invested in what they hoped would be another game-changing aircraft—the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser. This double-decked aircraft carried 114 passengers in unparalleled luxury, with meal service called the President Special on flights from New York to Paris. This involved a staff of five serving seven-course meals after takeoff, then taking requests for morning breakfasts that would be cooked to order.22 After dinner, passengers could relax over drinks in a lounge on the lower deck.

  After decades of prohibiting alcohol on their flights, Pan Am had to copy their European rivals and serve it transatlantic, though at first they still charged for it in the Pacific. This policy caused confusion on Pan Am’s round-the-world flights—eastbound passengers had free drinks as far as India and had to pay for them the rest of the way. The policy changed in 1948 when a stewardess insisted on charging Pan Am’s president Juan Trippe $1.50 for a cocktail on a Pacific flight; he didn’t have any change and had to borrow it from another passenger. The policy was changed almost immediately after Trippe got back to his office.23

  Though the Stratocruiser proved too inefficient and costly to maintain for Pan Am and other airlines to operate profitably, it was a public relations coup for carriers that had it when they started flights in April 1949. The faster, higher-flying jets that would replace this aircraft were already making their test flights, and the 1950s dawned with the promise that everything would be faster and better.

  chapter 9

  Physiology of Taste in Flight

  Prior to 1935 most aircraft flew below three thousand feet, unless mountains forced the decision to go higher. Even though many airliners had the ability to fly far above this level, climbing to higher altitudes required so much fuel that pilots preferred to fly low. In an era before reliable electronic navigation, this also allowed them to keep track of landmarks on the ground.

  Unfortunately for passengers, flying this low means the aircraft is usually in more turbulent air, which is why as many as
a quarter of the passengers on any given flight were airsick.1 For those passengers who had a meal of any kind on the aircraft, the experience was much the same as it would have been aboard a boat in moderate seas—tight quarters and some motion, but no change in the taste of meals.

  Once airliners started routinely flying higher, airline caterers discovered something that people who live in cities like Denver or Mexico City already knew; food tastes different at high altitudes. This is partly because in conditions of very low humidity, the human sense of smell is much less acute, and scent is a major component of taste. This means that most items that are cooked at sea level and spiced accordingly will taste bland if eaten at high altitude. It is not too surprising that one of the major centers for research in this question, the Rocky Mountain Taste and Smell Center, is located in Denver at over five thousand feet altitude. Codirector Tom Finger, speaking at the 2008 International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste, said, “(When you) lose the olfactory component, you lose much of the flavor component of food,”2 and anyone who has ever had a cold is well aware of this fact.

  The dryness of the air inside an aircraft above five thousand feet is compounded by the lower air pressure at this altitude. A study by the German airline Lufthansa reviewed in the Wall Street Journal showed that even in a modern pressurized aircraft, the combination of the two makes human taste buds 30 percent less sensitive.3

  The fact that recipes need to be adjusted for altitude probably didn’t escape the people who usually live in these regions, who found that recipes straight from cookbooks were less appetizing. Until the era of flight there was no way of quickly going from one altitude to another without time to acclimate to the change. It is interesting to consider that the pioneering airline caterers like Dobbs, who started into the business because he was dissatisfied with airline food, did so after flights at higher altitude became commonplace. It may be, as Shakespeare might have put it, that the fault was not in their meals, but in themselves.

  Passengers aboard high-altitude but unpressurized aircraft like the Condor must have endured tasteless meals, regardless of the talents of whoever made them. Most flyers probably would have been unlikely to be hungry in any case, because long periods of low pressure suppress appetites and make people slightly queasy even when they are not in motion. The era of pressurized aircraft like the Stratocruiser helped alleviate these problems, but by no means eliminated them. Pressurized aircraft do not have an artificial climate that is the same as sea level; instead an aircraft flying at twenty thousand feet has an environment akin to that of normal conditions at about eight thousand feet.4 To pressurize the aircraft to sea level would require diversion of a huge amount of power from the engines, and would place such stress on the aircraft that it would risk blowing out the windows. To humidify high-flying aircraft to sea level conditions was not even tried until BOAC installed equipment on their 747s in the 1970s. This required huge amounts of water, which added weight, displaced paying passengers, and added to the risk of corrosion of the aircraft’s fuselage.5 Even modern aircraft have not overcome these challenges, so the problem must have been greater with the more primitive technology of early high altitude aircraft.

  The problems with the way our sense of taste works were compounded by the ways that common food items react under these conditions of dryness and low pressure. These challenges were recognized as early as 1939, when United’s Don Magarell gave a lecture at the St. Regis Hotel in New York that was covered in an article in the New York Times. That piece began,

  At 5,000 feet in the air it takes six minutes to boil a three-minute egg. Hot coffee packed in a thermos bottle for an airplane lunch is wont to expand rapidly and blow off the cork. Milk had better be drunk quickly because it curdles almost instantaneously. Freshly baked rolls will be dry as a bone within a matter of minutes, and dire things happen to inferior fruits and vegetables in the high altitudes of airplane travel.6

  Magarell and other prewar caterers did not have the scientific studies that would be available to later generations, and made adjustments based on their empirical studies and interviews with passengers. The early experiments with frozen food gave them valuable data, such as the advantages of using wine sauces and other fragrant preparations. Studies of human physiology in the 1960s revealed more details about the way we taste in different environments. These showed that when it comes to our taste buds, some flavors are more impacted than others. Perceptions of sweetness and saltiness are disproportionately reduced, and sauces that are tasty at ground level seem watery and insipid.

  It was not until 1973 that chef Raymond Oliver of the French airline UTA started reformulating that airline’s meals in light of that research. Oliver, who earned three Michelin stars at his Paris restaurant Le Grand Vefour before consulting for the airline, made drastic changes. He increased the salt, sugar, cream, and fat in recipes made in that carrier’s flight kitchens, and the improvement was recognized immediately. Even carriers that were much less ambitious about meal service or flew shorter routes learned the lessons about what made passengers happy, and sugared and salted peanuts became standard items aboard commuter flights.7

  Collaborations between scientists and chefs followed, and continue today. One sponsored by German caterer LSG in 2010 showed that while most mild European spices are much harder to perceive at high altitudes, strong flavors such as cumin and cardamom are only slightly diminished. Noting that these flavors are prominent in Indian food, LSG catering manager Ernst Derenthal was quoted in the Wall Street Journal in 2010 as saying that airline food might be better if he only offered curries inflight, “but the passengers wouldn’t let us.” In stating this, he might have identified why some travelers like to fly Air India transatlantic despite that carrier’s dismal on-time performance.

  Another study by British Airways focuses on one of the sensations less affected by altitude: umami. Chef Heston Blumenthal did a series of taste tests with researchers from the London-based Leatherhead Food Institute in 2013 and found that manipulating recipes to heighten this sense of savoriness improved the satisfaction of diners. Blumenthal’s first idea about what to do to make meals more enjoyable was to issue everyone on the aircraft saline nasal spray that they could use just before meals to temporarily restore their senses, but this was vetoed by the airline. Blumenthal then devised recipes with enhanced umami so that even impaired palates could be stimulated.8

  The taste of wine is even more affected by altitude, because humans lose the ability to taste sweet, fruity flavors and to perceive alcohol itself. Wines that are well balanced at sea level taste watery and acidic at mealtime inflight. In an interview with CNN in 2012, Meininger’s Wine Business International editor-at-large Robert Joseph said, “Within your body you perceive less of the fruit that is in a wine and more of the acidity and more of the tannins, the hard texture, you’ll get in red wines. Ironically, some of the finest wines in the world, some of the finest Bordeauxs, actually don’t taste good at altitude.”9 The result is that the powerful and highly alcoholic Italian, Australian, Chilean, and Californian wines are more popular than their more subtle German and French counterparts.

  The change in perceptions also explains why another beverage is one of the most enjoyed in the air. Tomato juice is salty, sweet, slightly acidic, and relatively thick, and one of the most popular and refreshing beverages inflight. (This also explains why Bloody Marys are one of the most often ordered tipples.)10 Hot tea, with steam that helps rehydrate the mucous membranes in the nose, is more popular than iced tea, but since the conditions aboard aircraft enhance bitter flavors, only mild teas should be served. British Airways food and beverage manager Christopher Cole commissioned the Twinings tea company to come up with a special blend that would taste better at high altitude and started serving it in late 2013.11 Unfortunately they were unable to find a blend of coffee that didn’t taste significantly worse at high altitude, so the first hot beverage ever served inflight will probably continue to
taste awful for the foreseeable future.

  Recent studies have shown that another factor may influence our perception of food inflight—a study commissioned by the Dutch company Unilever showed that people who dine in an environment with loud white noise and vibration taste things less acutely.12 The 2013 study by Chef Blumenthal and the Leatherhead Institute revealed another possible environmental factor—that the cool temperatures and grayish lighting typical of airline cabins also dull the sense of taste.

  The people who prepared airline meals in the early days of passenger flight couldn’t have known that they were combating so many different factors, which makes the fact that they managed even slightly palatable food more remarkable.

  chapter 10

  Competition, Regulation, and the Dawn of the Jet Age

  (1950–1958)

  The great American philosopher Frank Zappa once observed that “You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline.” In the postcolonial era of the 1950s national pride demanded that new countries have their own carriers, regardless of the passenger travel their home markets might support. The book Government Birds details how competition by government-subsidized airlines affected the once-dominant carriers, noting that between 1949 and 1957, the number of carriers flying international routes to the United States rose from twenty-two to thirty-nine. American carriers had captured 75 percent of all traffic between the United States and other nations at the beginning of this period, but this dropped to 63 percent by the end.1