American Food

Norman Rockwell, "Boy in Dining Car," 1946. (Source)

James D. Porterfield' book Dining by Rail: The History and Recipes of America's Golden Age of Railroad Cuisine brings to life what it must have been like to travel by train during the 100 years or so of the glory days of rail travel. His focus: the evolution of the dining car, and all the ingenuity that went into its technology, particularly the role of the Pullman company in inventing and leasing the cars to the major rail lines. The extraordinary hard work done by the chefs, cooks, porters, and other RR employees also has a major role in this history.

Dining cars were especially notable on the Western routes of the great train companies. Railroad management made a commitment to ensuring high quality of meals, impeccable service by uniformed waiters, and the luxury of elegant tableware and linens in their well-appointed dining cars. Such amenities were a key factor in competition for passengers on the various railway lines with common destinations. I learned -- to my amazement -- that meal service was always provided at a loss to the rail line; for $1 that a passenger paid the railroads would spend as much as $1.85 (though mostly not quite that much). 

The cost of labor was the main factor in the expenses of a dining car. Porterfield provides a very interesting study of the men -- and rarely women -- who prepared, served, cleaned, planned, and ordered the provisions. All cooking, all bread-baking, and all washing-up was done on the moving train, in very close quarters, with the cooks subject to the extreme heat of the tiny dining-car kitchens. Unlike in restaurants, every employee had several duties including all types of cooking, dishwashing, sorting linens, polishing silverware, and other work in the kitchen or dining room.

Because of a variety of circumstances, the majority of these workers were Black. The fact that they had good, long-term jobs had a role in Black American history; however, that's not my subject for today.

As I read both the historic part of Dining by Rail and also the cookbook part of the book, I felt more and more that these foods, these recipes, these experiences embody the answer to the repeatedly asked question: 

What is American Food?

If any cuisine was ever AMERICAN, this is it: American ingredients made for primarily American travelers. The dining cars obtained their major supplies from the endpoints of their routes -- cities like Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, and cities on the West Coast, as well as some purchases along the way. Rail lines on the east coast, the south, and Canada were handled similarly. Fresh fish and game, as well as fresh produce and meat, played a central part in railway cuisine. Each regional railroad company (and there were many) had its own special style and recipes, as did individual chefs on some of the lines, often reflecting the dishes of the region.

"In an age when caloric intake was not a consideration, a typical dinner menu might offer sirloin, tenderloin, porterhouse, or venison steak, prairie chicken, snipe, quail, golden plover, blue-winged teal, woodcock, broiled pigeon, mallard, widgeon, canvasback or domestic duck, wild turkey, veal, mutton, chicken, roast pork, sixteen relishes, eleven clam and oyster dishes, five fish dishes, fifteen kinds of bread, as well as many soups." (p. 148)

Dining car menus were extraordinarily long, with many choices of appetizers, entrees, desserts, wines, and breakfast specials. Porterfield offers a number of recipes for one particular breakfast favorite: French toast. He includes the French toast of the Northern Pacific line, where the cooks first made a special bread for the French toast. Also, the French toast recipe from the Soo Line, from the Pennsylvania Railroad, and from the Union Pacific. Most famous was that of the Santa Fe Railway, as perfected by Fred Harvey chefs in 1918. They all sound delicious, and despite the term "French," they are very definitely American. When you read about the dining car breakfasts, you can clearly see how the now-popular menu of the modern diner descends from railway cuisine.

As I read through the recipes in the book, I recognized the American style of food that is relatively simple, though influenced by techniques from haute cuisine in France and New York. Restaurant dining wasn't as common a pastime in the mid-19th century when restaurant cars were first introduced, so the menus had to please sophisticated customers and also those who had no familiarity with the ordering procedure and service of the dining car. Further, space was often limited, so the luxury of eating slowly and having time between courses was not available -- at times, there many people waiting a turn at the table. In fact, customers would fill out an order form at their seats in the train in advance of their arrival, so that the kitchen could have their meals ready to serve as soon as they were seated at their table. This all worked because of the high number of very skilled personnel who staffed the dining cars.

For the cookbook part of Dining by Rail, Porterfield chose among thousands of recipes that survived in the archives of the railroad lines and in published books or articles. Obviously, he only included foods that were available to modern cooks: for example, he offers no recipes for antelope steaks! No recipes for cooking birds that can now be seen only by birdwatchers -- like prairie chickens, a once-common game bird that's now only found in a very few locations (how I would love to see one)! But I digress; the variety in the choice of recipes in this book is amazing, as are the recipe titles, which reflect both American regional cooking and influence from abroad.

Favorites included dishes that remain just as popular today, like many ways to make apple pie. There are recipes for pumpkin pie, stuffed ducks and other roasts, a variety of gravies, donuts, chicken pie and other meat pies; tourtieres, a Canadian pork pie served on the Canadian railways; baked or fried ham, fried chicken,  deviled crabmeat, classic salads, special versions of the stuffed baked potato, cinnamon buns, potato rolls, and many more. For example, I'm intrigued that Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific fudge was special to the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific railroad. 

Recipes often had regional or ethnic names that would be recognizable to the dining car customers, such as "Creole," "Mexican style," "Irish lamb stew," "Wisconsin," "Illinois," "Curried Chicken Colombo," "Puget Sound Clam Chowder," "Chesapeake Bay Oysters," and "Indian Pudding." These all had a pretty specific meaning in American cuisine in the golden age of railroad dining!

Recipes with an exotic flare often used a foreign place-name to signal a particular ingredient. "Hawaiian" as you would expect, usually means the dish contains pineapple. "Arabian Peach Salad" contained dates. The ethnic confusion of "Terrine of Ragout à la Deutsch" may have had a specific meaning that I don't recognize, all I know is that it was beef, veal kidneys, green peppers, onions, and mushrooms in brown sauce. There were dishes labeled "Bretagne," "Venetian," "Normandie," "Spanish," "Pourtagaise [sic]," "Romanoff," "Athens," "Parisienne," "Hungarian," "Hong-Kong style," "Roman dressing," the "Cuban Sandwich," and more -- but as far as I can see from the lists of ingredients and cooking methods, the influence of all these far-away places was small, and the actual foods would have tasted familiarly American.

The more I read the recipes, the more I became convinced that this is a menu of truly American food, made according to the best recipes and techniques that our country still has to offer. The skill of the chefs and cooks, who often spent many years working for the same railway company, was legendary -- and deserved to be legendary. Indeed, I'm sure that railroad cuisine and the romance of the dining car left its mark on American food ways.

An early dining car kitchen. (Source)

Looking Back and Looking Forward

Railroad memories are profound and inspiring, especially many people's memories of eating in the dining car -- or by now, impressions left by older family members or friends who described such meals. Collectors of dining car menus, flatware, silver, and china are numerous. Actually, people were collecting this stuff during the glory days: in fact, one railroad printed especially attractive menus that the diners could take home, in  hopes of distracting them from stealing the silverware! (p. 189)

Besides the cuisine, the railroad dining car established new concepts of eating in a hurry. Time constraints on a train resulted because too many passengers wanted to eat in the dining car at each meal. Train timetables and scheduling demands meant there was always time pressure. In response to these requirements, the rail dining cars, café cars with less extensive offerings, and station lunch counters were the first "fast food" or "quick lunch" outlets in American history. The techniques of preparing a large number of meals quickly in a crowded space was worked out by rail employees with the technology developed by Pullman.  

As I've mentioned, the still-popular diner with its speedy service and traditional menu is the descendant of railway dining cars: the original diners. There were various other unexpected innovations due to the dining car and its personnel. For one example, a railroad chef in charge of baking developed a method of pre-blending flour, shortening, and other ingredients before mealtime rush in order to serve hot biscuits to order at lunch or dinner. A General Mills employee observed this preparation technique, and he then developed the product Bisquick: the first such commercial mix, introduced in 1931. (p. 142)

When Amtrak took over the passenger lines in the 1970s, fine dining was phased out and replaced by disgusting packaged food, a trend that was getting worse in 1993 when Porterfield published Dining by Rail. By now, Amtrak has a long and tedious history! For several years, there have been no dining cars whatsoever; however, this year, 2022, has seen the reintroduction of dining cars on several long-distance Amtrak trains in the West, and two lines in the East. They plan to offer high-end dining car service, especially for first-class passengers; I have seen no reviews of how it's going. For details see: "Updated Dining Options on Amtrak Long-Distance and Acela Trains."

If you have the least interest in social history, railroad history, or American cuisine, Dining by Rail is a good read! It was first published in 1993, republished in 1998, and is still in print, which shows its staying power as a good history book.

Review © 2022 mae sander

Fred Harvey at the Grand Canyon

We hiked several sections of trail along the rim of the Grand Canyon, including a visit to Hermit’s Rest, a historic building at the far end of the park road. It’s integrated into the surroundings in a very forward-looking way for its time: 1914. At that time, it took quite a while to get there, so the building offered food and a place to rest for the travelers. Today, a shuttle bus allows one to combine hiking and an easy bus ride.

On the way to Hermit's Rest

Gate to Hermit's Rest

Len at Hermit's Rest

The huge fireplace dominates the interior of the building.

The back of the building

Mary Ann Colter, architect for the Fred Harvey company, designed Hermit’s Rest as well as several other park buildings.

“As with the other buildings she designed for Grand Canyon, Mary Colter designed Hermit’s Rest in what is known as 'National Park Rustic' style. In this style, buildings are supposed to look as if they were built with old-fashioned hand tools and made of materials that at least appear to have been taken from the surrounding landscape. Whereas her first building at Grand Canyon, Hopi House, was inspired by ancient Native American traditions in the area, for Hermit’s Rest Colter drew upon the stories and architecture of Euro-American settlers. The resulting building reflected both the National Park rustic style and Colter’s concept of a hermit’s stone cabin.” -- from "Hermit's Rest" by Arizona State University.

The Harvey company developed tourism in the West in cooperation with the railroads. The Xanterra company that runs the accommodations and food service in the park today is a commercial descendant of Harvey. The old Fred Harvey trademarks still appear on a number of buildings, such as the reservation center, cafeteria, and gift shop of the Yavapai Lodge where we stayed, actually a collection of buildings like old-fashioned motels.

During our stay we ate dinner in two restaurants with the Harvey name. The restaurant in Bright Angel Lodge offers some of the same foods as once served by the Harvey Girls who worked in the many establishments of the Harvey company. I had trout with lemon sauce, and Len had pork roast – both possibly similar to the food of 100 years ago or more. We also ate in the cafeteria of Yavapai Lodge, where my chicken pot pie may be quite authentic to the former era, but it was kind of bland.

The Fred Harvey cafeteria in Yavapai Lodge -- not
a particularly inviting atmosphere!

Every gift shop in the park offers a number of books about the Harvey Girls (famous before the movie with Judy Garland), the Harvey company, about the historic and significant buildings designed by Colter, and the development of travel in the west. Another Colter building, the “studio,” was where the Harvey Company sold photos, post cards, and other items in competition with an artist who had a studio nearby -- the same type of items still for sale in the gift shops now.

The Studio, designed by Mary Ann Colter

Way Out West

The La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe New Mexico, the splendid accommodations at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, the Union Station in St. Louis, and the coffee shop in the Petrified Forest National Monument (now a museum -- see photo above) all have impressed me greatly at the various times in my life when I've experienced them. I just read a book that puts them all together: they were originally designed and developed by Fred Harvey. Author Stephen Fried's Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West -- One Meal at a Time is a good read. It successfully combines the biography of the man Fred Harvey (1835-1901), the historic development of the American west, and the history of the once-famous hospitality company, also named Fred Harvey, that he founded and that continued for decades under the management of his family after his death.

I knew two basic things about Fred Harvey before I read the book. First, I was aware that there were many restaurants and hotels by that name at some time in the past, which turns out to have been the era of development of tourism along the route of the Santa Fe railroad. Second, I understood that Fred Harvey Indian stores had traded for some of the highest quality rugs, pottery, and other artifacts, and had encouraged the Indians to develop their craft traditions.

Here are several additional interesting things I learned about the man and his company:

Harvey began by creating a chain of restaurants along the rail lines, where travelers could buy reliable meals without being cheated. He continued by improving the food and service in a number of ways, and by working with Pullman to develop dining cars when train technology made it possible to walk from car to car, and made the interiors of the trains more pleasant. His endeavor included many measures to ensure consistent quality, making Fred Harvey the first restaurant chain and a model for some that followed.

At the end of his life, Harvey and his sons began to expand into tourist hotels, and particularly to create the still-amazing hotels and tourist facilities at the Grand Canyon, the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, and a few other spectacular places. They also took over all concessions at central rail terminals such as the Union Station in St.Louis that I remember. After the Depression, the only profitable part of the company was at the Grand Canyon, and the rest slowly shut down.

The Harvey company was ahead of its time in hiring women. The wait staff of the restaurants from quite early-on was entirely female, in jobs that had previously been mainly for men. These waitresses received intense training and promised to remain in service for a certain time (after which they often married the men on the frontier where they worked). Known as "Harvey Girls," they wore super-clean white aprons, and upheld the high standards set by Fred Harvey.

Women were hired not only as waitresses, but also in other roles unusual for that era. Mary Colter (1869-1958) was the chief architect and designer of the truly innovative buildings and interiors for the restaurants, gift shops, and tourist hotels for the chain. Beginning in 1902 she was the main visionary in developing what now seems to be a classic southwest style of architecture. Ironically, though, the women in the family were shut out of management by one inflexible member of the Harvey male line.

Finally, in 1946, the Fred Harvey heirs cooperated with the making of "The Harvey Girls," a Judy Garland movie about the early days of the chain. The movie was extremely popular (the book notes that it made more money in its initial year than the Santa Fe railroad, which was sliding into oblivion by then). The best-known song, "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe," won an Academy Award. Like many films, this one cemented the collective memory of an era that was just about finished. I admit that I had not heard of the movie, though I do know the song.

I loved the book. Its appendix includes recipes from published Fred Harvey cookbooks and from surviving manuscripts used by the cooks in the restaurants, many of whom were brought over from Europe to innovate combinations of classic recipes with southwest cuisine -- especially at the La Fonda in Santa Fe. (In other words, the Coyote Cafe wasn't the first to put Santa Fe on the culinary map.) I may try some of them!