'The Delta Queen Cookbook'

by Sara Bonisteel
on 01/15/13 at 05:00 PM

The Delta Queen has entertained a president, and served the U.S. Navy and countless pleasure seekers in her almost 86-year-old career, and now the last of America's great wooden steamboats has a cookbook dedicated to her story. Cynthia LeJeune Nobles details the ship's delicious journey in The Delta Queen Cookbook (Louisiana State University Press, $30), a book that covers eight decades of culinary history.

Delta-queen-cover-215Nobles began the book about seven years ago, after a publisher approached the Newcomb College Culinary History Writers Group about the project. At the time, the paddle boat's exemption from the federal Safety at Sea Act--which allowed the large wooden vessel to sail the Mississippi on overnight trips--was due to expire. Congress failed to pass the exemption, and since 2008, the Delta Queen has been a permanently docked floating hotel in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

"[The publisher] said that this boat has been sailing for over 80 years and they've been cooking overnight all the time, so these chefs have some great recipes," Nobles says.

She tracked down the chefs and uncovered some pretty obscure recipes along the way.

"There are several things in here that people in other parts of the world have never heard of, like Stage Planks," she says.

Recipes and ghost stories after the jump.

The ship, and her twin, the Delta King, were some of the last wooden steamboats built in America. Christened in the summer of 1927, they sailed between San Francisco and Sacramento during the height of Prohibition, providing a safe haven for those who wanted to imbibe hooch illegally on the San Joaquin River.

About a year before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the ships were conscripted into the Navy Reserve by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and they spent the war housing reservists in the Bay area. "I actually interviewed one of the chefs who cooked on the Delta Queen during World War II," Nobles says. "His name was Joe Cornyn, and he told me everything they cooked came straight from the Navy Cook Book."

While Prohibition dishes included Club Steak and Roast Leg of Lamb, war grub was less fancy: meatloaf, navy bean soup, and fresh California produce.

Following the war, the Queen traveled east to the Mississippi, where she began decades of service cruising the river, gaining a ghost along the way.

"That's Captain Mary," Nobles says. "She was a mother of Tom Greene who brought the boat to Cincinnati from California. She was a teetotaler, and he was the opposite. She died within two years after they brought the boat to Cincinnati and the first thing Tom did, of course, was put a bar on the boat. She didn't let them do that before, but he did it.

"Immediately people started hearing knocks coming from Room 109--Mary's room--and people starting seeing her and swearing that their drinks were just jumping off the table in the bar. But the funniest thing happened just a few months after that bar opened.

"This was in the 1950s, and a tug boat was taking someone ashore up on the Ohio River and it rammed right into the Delta Queen right where that brand new bar was and totally destroyed it. The name of the tugboat was the Mary B. and Captain Mary's maiden name was Becker, so everybody swore that it was her getting her revenge on her son putting that bar on the boat."

Despite the ghost stories, guests flocked to cruise the river, including President Jimmy Carter. But cooking for a crowd posed challenges for the New Orleans-based crew.

"The kitchen was very, very small. It was only 15 [feet] by 15 [feet], and they had to seat 185 people three times a day. For dinner, they had to serve in two shifts--not because the dining room wasn't large enough but because the galley was not large enough--it wasn't even large enough to hold all the waitstaff," Nobles says.

Although the Queen is currently a hotel, there's still a chance Congress will revive the exception and open the way for the ship to sail the Mississippi once more.

"I took a trip from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh, and it took five nights to get there. The boat goes so slow. It goes between 6 and 10 miles per hour. It was so much fun," Nobles says. "Cell phones didn't work. They didn't have television. You just sit in rocking chairs and watch the world go by."

Recipes to try:
-Southern-Fried Chicken
-Yaka Mein
-Stage Planks

(Photo of the Delta Queen: steamboatsorg/Flickr)

Tagged with: Cookbooks, Recipes

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