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

A dinner menu from the infamous Titanic ocean liner has sold for £83,000. A water-stained menu from three days before the disaster states that passengers ate shellfish, salmon, squid and Victoria pudding.

It was not exactly the last dinner for first class passengers aboard 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.

For dinner that evening, April 11, passengers were served oysters, beef tenderloin with horseradish cream and pureed parsnips, and 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: among them, who took the menu when about to board a 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 wet card under the White Star logo.

The menu details the meal served the day after the ship left Queenstown, Ireland, bound for New York. The document is being sold by Henry Aldridge & Son of 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.”

At auction, Titanic memorabilia is divided into broad categories, each with 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, associate professor of maritime history at the University of Plymouth, the items believed to have been recovered from the bodies of the victims were particularly disturbing and raised “a question of personal morality”. “These things are probably actually better off in museums than in private hands, because it at least gives them a sort of context in which questions of profit are more likely to be put on the back burner,” he told New York. Times.