I found two more empress menus from the early 1930s in the Chung collection, both used on the trans-Atlantic route. First is a breakfast card from the Empress of Australia in 1932. We’ve previously seen a breakfast card from a Pacific empress that had around 80 numbered items on it. The items on this one aren’t numbered but they are similar in number.

Click image to view and download a 517-KB PDF of this menu from the Chung collection.

Both included such things as strawberries and cream, shredded wheat, and various fish, egg, and meat dishes including lamb’s kidney, Cumberland ham, and cold chicken or capon. The Pacific empress menus had Hawaiian pineapple and Indian griddle cakes, whatever those are, there wasn’t much deference to local cuisines.

Click image to view and download a 1.3-MB PDF of this menu from the Chung collection.

This menu commemorates the first trans-Atlantic cruise of the Royal William, a Canadian-built ship that was the first steamship to cross the Atlantic largely under steam power (except one day when the boilers were shut down for cleaning). This was less impressive than it sounds, as the ship was losing money in local service in Canada and the owners sent it across the Atlantic hoping to find someone who would take it off their hands. Still, it was fittingly named after King William IV who, as Lord High Admiral before becoming king, commissioned the British navy’s first steam warship. One of the Royal William’s owners was Samuel Cunard, a Nova Scotian who later founded a steamship company of his own.

This dinner menu is surprisingly limited, probably because it was for tourist class. If offered just 17 items, compared with more than 30 in a dinner menu shown here yesterday. Today’s included three hors d’oeuvres, two soups, two fish, six entrées or joints, a salad, and three desserts. No potatoes or vegetables are listed, nor are there any sorbets to cleanse the palette between courses.