Cocktails on the S.S. Argentina
Ice Shaved drinks such as Punch Romaine was very popular during the early 20th Century. Its an interesting choice to serve this drink because it was the cocktail of choice on the first class passenger's last dinner of the Titanic on April 14, 1912. The original recipe was believed to be a Granita and this is an updated version from Saveur.
Punch Romaine Cocktail:
1 egg white
1 oz white rum
1 oz white wine
1/2 oz of simple syrup
1/2 oz of lemon juice
1 oz of fresh orange juice
2 oz of Champagne
Garnish with twist of orange peel
Instructions
in an ice filled cocktail shaker, combine egg whites, rum, wine, simple syrup, lemon & orange juice. Then pour mixture into ice filled coup glass pouring the drink all around, top with Champagne and garnish with orange peel
Entree on the S. S. Argentina
Filet Mignon Strassborgaise, Sauce Madiera:
Mignon Strassborgaise represent ingredients typical of Strasbourg, including Sauerkraut, foie gras and salt pork. This is the only image I could find that it relates to the dish. It reminds me of a Beef Wellington with pork instead of the traditional beef, but I would love to hear the opinion of chefs and reader of the blog!
Dessert on the S.S. Argentina
Ice Cup a la Ritz
I believe this recipe represents a dish created by Cesar Ritz, the famous founder and owner of the first Ritz-Carlton luxury hotel in London. Ritz opened the hotel and restaurant with Escoffier and changed the recipe from Peach Melba to strawberries.
Choose 3 to 4 pounds of strawberries and remove stems.
Ice Cup a la Ritz:
Choose 3-4 pounds of fresh greenhouse strawberries and
remove their stems. Put two-thirds of the nicest ones in an enameled tureen,
sprinkle them with powdered sugar, add 5-6 glasses of Vielle Cure [Fronsac
(Bordeaux) dessert wine - , and place the tureen on ice.
Pass the rest of the strawberries through a fine sieve, mix 250 grams of sugar
into the resulting puree, and add it to the rest of the strawberries.
Separately, use preserves of pineapple to prepare a fruit pulp as follows: with
one fork hold the pineapple in place, and with another fork tear the fruit into
a pulp. Sprinkle with 250 grams of sugar and keep on ice. In advance, prepare 1
1/2 liters of vanilla ice cream and 3/4 liters of whipped cream Chantilly."
"To serve: Take a crystal bowl of the necessary size, fill the bottom with vanilla ice cream, and place the whole strawberries on top. Mix the strawberry puree into the whipped cream Chantilly. Cover the strawberries with the pineapple pulp and then add the whipped cream a la fraise. The mixture of the last 2 ingredients should be such as to give the illusion of a beautiful sunset. Throw a lace of spun sugar over this delicious dessert to complete the presentation."
From "Memories of My Life" by Auguste Escoffier (1997) Page 161.
The iconic tagline "The Good Neighbor Fleet"comes from Franklin Roosevelt's presidency when he enacted "The Good Neighbor Policy" who principle was to create reciprocal trade agreement and reassert the influence of the United States being good neighbors to Latin America.
The History of The S. S. Argentina
This ship was first named the S. S. Pennsylvania. It was built and operated by Moore-McCormack in 1929 and it could take 285 passenger in first class and 366 in tourist. It was built as a three twin funnelled ship and known as the Panama-Pacific Liner. Then in 1937 the ship was rebuilt and was refitted with a single funnel to make it look more modern. The ship's name was changed to SS Argentina and it ran exclusively in South America. It could take 500 passengers and was popular till 1958 when the company built a newer ship named the S.S. Brasil and the S.S. Argentina was scraped in 1964
