My post about hospital food garnered a comment comparing it to airline food which brings up a question. What is the state of airline food today? I am asking because I haven't been on a plane since about 2 months after September 11th.
In the comment my friend attributed the awfulness of airline food to the fact that the audience is captive. I am going to posit another idea. Airline food is awful for three reasons:
a) the airline is trying to appeal to a very wide range of clients with widely ranging tastes
b) the food must be stable for long periods of time and easy to transport
c) generally speaking higher quality food is more expensive while highly processed food is less expensive
At one pastry shop I worked in we made some desserts for airlines and they were the most terrible, horrible, tasteless desserts you could imagine. Imagine making dessert out of raw meat, garlic, unsweetened chocolate, and fish sauce. Got that image in your head? Well what we made for the airlines was even worse.
The main problem was that the airlines provided the recipes and who knows what type of trained ape formulated them. Most of the desserts were mousse based and the flavorings were all artificial and there was enough gelatin in there to gel the great lakes. All of them! You could seriously bounce these mousses off the wall. Truly scary stuff.
The reason the airline wanted them made that way was stability. The more gelatin in the mousse the more stable it is and the easier it is to transport and hold for service.
If anyone out there does travel frequently I would be very interested to hear about the state of airline food because I have to go on a trip this year and would love to know which airline is going to give me the best meal. Thanks!
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