Historical Dinners

This week in history marks the 99th anniversary of the sinking of RMS Titanic. For a while the kids have wanted to see the movie, so we thought this would be a good time to make that happen.

 

We got to talking about the event, the girls started to google facts, and before long we had discovered interesting things such as the music played, lists of passengers, and the menus for the first, second and third class.

 

Menus...Hmmm.

 

With a rainy afternoon before us, and Anna at a birthday, Grace and I set to work to recreate a Titanic dinner menu. Now 10 courses seemed a bit over the top, so we scaled back a little. And I took a little liberty with the actual food served on the ship. This is what we made:

 

Titanic Menu

• Roasted Garlic Soup (a Chez Piggy recipe) 
• Mixed greens with chevre and almonds

(This is where the fish course would go - we skipped it. Likewise the sorbet which would be course 4)

• Chicken Lyonaisse with cream sauce
• Lyonaisse Potatoes (Lyonaisse basically means with onions, and was served on Titanic)
• Green Beans Almondine
• Broccoli with cheese sauce
• Victoria Sponge cake (not actually a Titanic dish, but only fashioned and sweet. And delicious. Thanks Nigella Lawson)

(Courses 8, 9 and 10 - we skipped them too. I imagine a cheese course, a sweet pastry course, and no clue what the other would be. Seemed like overkill. We were all stuffed.)

 

And then we sat down rather corpulently, to watch the movie. I should note that we did not have wine with every course as they might have in 1914. We had sherry with our soup, wine with our dinner, and a snifter of brandy with dessert. And the kids had juice.

 

So successful was our historically themed dinner, that the kids are keen to do it again. It struck me that with the date also being the anniversary of Culloden, we could have done that too...but maybe we'll save it for another time.

 

Now I am racking my brains for another event to mark with a feast. History is more fun when you can eat it! If you have any ideas, feel free to pass them along...