Here’s a beautiful, if somewhat aged, menu advertising Canadian Pacific’s Alaska steamship service. This 1931 breakfast menu wasn’t used on the ship, however; it was for a special train carrying the “second annual coast to coast tour” sponsored by the Rural New Yorker, a magazine for farmers in the northeastern United States. In the 1930s it had well over 250,000 subscribers.
Click image to download a 2.0-MB PDF of this menu.
In 1964, the magazine, which began publication in 1850, was merged into an even older magazine called the American Agriculturist. That magazine is still being published by the same company that also publishes the Prairie Farmer, another magazine that sponsored many rail tours.
The unpriced menu offered a choice of Pacific Coast fish, a petit steak, or eggs “as desired,” each of which came with juice, fruit, or cereal; potatoes; bread; griddle cakes; and beverage. These table d’hôte menus were sometimes hard to interpret, but I think it meant diners had a choice between muffins, toast, rolls or griddle cakes.