Titanic Curried Chicken and Rice
Like many people with an interest in history, I’ve been fascinated with the story of RMS Titanic, ever since I was a young kid, and since one of the main ideas of this page is to form a connection to the people of the past through the exploration of food, I thought it would be interesting to taste something that passengers on the Titanic might’ve had for dinner on the night of the sinking, April 14, 1912.
When I was reading through Titanic’s dinner menus, it was Curried Chicken & Rice that struck my eye; most of the other dishes seem to be thoroughly European/North American in origin (which makes sense) but I was curious about what Curried Chicken might have been like on a British ocean liner in 1912.
The fact that Curried Chicken & Rice appeared on the 2nd Class menu also factored into my decision, to be honest. In media depictions of the Titanic disaster, most attention tends to be paid to the 1st and 3rd Class passengers, while 2nd Class remains largely overlooked.
It’s understandable why this is the case; 1st Class held some of the wealthiest and most famous people of 1912 and the glitz and glamor of the Gilded Age still captures our imagination.
As for 3rd Class, As for 3rd class, we sympathize with poor and immigrant passengers; the difficulties 3rd Class passengers had making it to lifeboats that night are well-known (although there is no evidence they were intentionally kept below decks), it makes for damning examples of the classism and xenophobia of Edwardian society.
The 2nd Class passengers are often overlooked because they’re the “nobodies” between the extremes of the ultra-wealthy, and the exploited poor. But frankly, the 2nd Class was as varied and as interesting, to me, as those as any other category of person onboard. 2nd Class passengers came from all walks of life, and from all over the globe.
There were well-to-do businessmen who made frequent trips across the Atlantic, architects, the servants of 1st Class passengers whose services wouldn’t be needed during the voyage, clergymen, the families of missionaries heading home after years spent abroad; the Titanic’s band travelled in 2nd Class, as well as multiple groups of Cornish miners headed mostly for Michigan and Montana.
And while 2nd Class was more British than any of the other classes, passengers also came from countries such as the US, Spain, Argentina, Italy, Finland, and Lebanon, just to name a few.
The Titanic’s only Japanese passenger, civil servant Masabumi Hosono travelled in 2nd Class, as did the Titanic’s only Black passengers, Joseph Philippe Lemercier Laroche, who was travelling with his pregnant French wife, Juliette, and their two daughters, Louise and Simonne.
While Juliette Laroche and their daughters, Simmone and Louise, survived the sinking, Joseph, sadly, perished, along with 92% of 2nd Class men; a higher proportion than any other group, including the crew.
However, while they were onboard, the Laroche family and other 2nd Class passengers would have found accommodations, including the food, to be the equivalent of 1st Class on many other ships of the day.
Though not as luxurious, or as varied as Titanic’s 1st Class spaces, 2nd Class passengers would’ve had access to a comfortable and well-stocked Library, a souvenir and barber shop, an oak paneled and leather upholstered Smoking Room, spacious promenade areas, and of course, the mahogany appointed Dining Saloon where the passengers would’ve dined on, among other things, Curried Chicken and Rice!
While there are no recipes from the Titanic herself, there are plenty of recipes for Curried Chicken & Rice from late 19th and early 20th Century cookbooks from which I drew inspiration.
This shouldn’t really be a surprise, as after India was colonized by the British, Indian cuisine (or at least approximations of it) were quickly incorporated into English cuisine and soon spread to North America as well. It should also be noted that the British appeared to have lumped a wide variety of Indian dishes into the single category of “curries.”
As a result, recipes for Curried Chicken are found frequently from the period around the Titanic’s sinking, which range from simple dishes consisting of little more than chicken, onion, water & curry powder, to more elaborate dishes intended for professional chefs.
Now, no one should be under any illusions that this dish would be considered “authentic” by the standards of Indian cuisine. It’s my understanding that the curry powders and pastes sold in the UK & North America during the 18 & 1900s were largely approximations of actual Indian spice blends, or scaled-back versions to accommodate British palates. One common addition seems to be the addition of sour apples, which was apparently an attempt by British cooks to replicate the mangos or tamarind powder found in Indian cooking.
Newspaper advert for Halford’s
Frankly, the history of curries and their relationship to colonization and imperialism could be (and probably is) an entire book, written by someone far more qualified to speak on the topic than me. I just want to make it clear that this recipe is an attempt to replicate a Victorian/Edwardian-era British recipe, not an authentic, Indian dish.
Instead, I chose a recipe from the 1911 edition of The Modern Cook, by Charles Elmé Francatelli. It seems to be a bit more complex of a recipe, and since even in 2nd Class on the Titanic, the food would have rivaled (or at least been on par with) nice hotels and restaurants of the day, it seems like a fitting choice.
I will preface this by saying that the recipe below is not exactly the same as in the YouTube video. The original version was actually a bit bland, so I upped some of the ingredients.
