Oysters, pudding and ice cream: Titanic dinner menu sold out

The list of dishes from the doomed ship raised several questions

The dinner menu on the infamous Titanic ocean liner sold for 83 thousand pounds sterling. A water-stained menu three days before the disaster states that passengers ate shellfish, salmon, squid and Victoria pudding.

Photo: AP

It was not exactly the last dinner for first-class passengers on board the Titanic, but it was very similar, notes The Observer. A unique surviving ship's menu from April 11, 1912, auctioned this weekend reveals the treats served on the doomed liner just three days before the ship struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic.

< p>For dinner that evening, April 11, passengers were served oysters, beef tenderloin with horseradish cream and pureed parsnips, as well as desserts, including apricot bordalou — a type of pie — and Victoria pudding.

The menu was expected to sell for up to £70,000 and raises some interesting questions, including who took the menu to board the lifeboat and what is Victoria pudding?

The second question is easier to answer, writes The Observer. The boiled dessert, which was served that evening with apricots and French ice cream, is made by mixing flour, eggs, jam, brandy, apples, cherries, zest, sugar and spices. On 11 April it was preceded by oysters, salmon, beef, courgettes, duck and chicken, served with potatoes, rice and parsnip puree; all dishes are listed on a blotched card under the White Star logo.

The menu details the meal served the day after the ship left Queenstown, Ireland, bound for New York. This document is sold by Henry Aldridge & Son from Wiltshire along with other rare Titanic lots including a tartan deck blanket.

The blanket was previously owned by Frederick Toppin, who, as assistant general manager in New York of the company that owned the Titanic, purchased it on a New York pier when he encountered rescued passengers disembarking, the auction house said.

The menu was found in a 1960s photo album that once belonged to Len Stevenson, a local historian from Dominion, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Andrew Aldridge, manager of the auction house, believes that while several other first-class menus survived the shipwreck, which resulted in the death of 1,500 people, none are known for this evening. «I've talked to several museums around the world, and I've talked to several of our Titanic collectors,» he said. “I can’t find another like it anywhere.”

Souvenirs from the Titanic are at auction. are divided into broad categories, each of which has a different status. Some were recovered from the wreck, some belonged to survivors, and some, like the sumptuous dinner menu for April 11, were likely taken from the ship as souvenirs.

For Harry Bennett, Adjunct Professor of Maritime History at the University of Plymouth, the objects believed to have been recovered from the bodies of the victims were particularly disturbing and raised «questions of personal morality». “These things are probably actually better kept in museums than in private hands, because it at least gives them a kind of context in which profit issues tend to take a backseat,” he told New York Times.