Food in the Air and Space

October 1, 2014
Since 1783, when the first passenger balloon was launched, the history of food has included the challenge of preparing and serving food while airborne. Foss offers a historical look at how meals have been prepared and consumed, in wartime and peacetime, during air travel in vehicles ranging from balloons to zeppelins, from airplanes to spacecraft. Drawing on archives and interviews, Foss includes photographs, diagrams, and menus depicting the fabulous and the rudimentary, everything from gourmet meals to snacks. As air travel evolved from a luxury for adventurers, with meals to match, to fairly mundane, crowded journeys offering peanuts, inventors and airlines have struggled with the dangers of maintaining safety and hygiene thousands of miles in the air. Foss offers details behind the technology and culinary arts in flights from the 1928 Lufthansa flight that first offered hot meals to the Hindenburg in 1936 to the food technology, including Tang, that grew out of the space-exploration programs. This fascinating book includes recipes the airlines collected and adapted for home use.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)