Page:Popular Mechanics 1928 01.pdf/20

 

your way across the Atlantic is a far different matter now from the days of clipper ships. There is no mention of salt beef or hardtack in the neat menus found in the modern steamship dining rooms.

Modern refrigeration changed the entire plan of catering on ocean liners. The passengers of these days can be served anything they desire in the way of fresh salads, eggs, milk, fruit and vegetables.

The refrigerating plants of the large ships are as big as good-sized city apartments. Each room is set aside for a particular kind of food, so that the chefs never have the unfortunate experience of the housewife who finds that her butter tastes a bit like salmon. On a ship there is at least one room for vegetables, one for butter, one for fish. one for beer and several for wine on European liners.

Catering on shipboard smacks of a science in its exactness, and like the sciences, it is careful with figures. The stewards have estimated the number of ounces of food required for each passenger on a voyage, and they know the cost of serving meals within a quarter of a cent a meal.

The food served on the liners is bought by the purchasing departments of the companies which own them, in most cases under the supervision of former chief stewards. The ships of American registry buy a large proportion of their supplies on this side, but foreign ships buy their staples abroad and try to confine their buying in this country to fresh supplies. Despite this rule, one line, in which most of the ships are of foreign registry. bought $2,000,000 worth of food in New York last year.

America excels so much in some foods, the stewards say, that even foreign lines buy these foods in New York for both east and west-bound passages. These foods are beef, coffee and several fruits, including grapefruit and oranges.

