Before Atkins, before low-fat, before America's battle with the belly came this deliciously sinful tradition: The Great Big Baked Potato, a 2-pound-wonder baked for two hours and served hot, white, flaky and smothered in butter, one to a person.
Farmers in the Yakima Valley in Washington state grew those mammoth spuds, some weighing in at 5 pounds. A railroader named Hazen J. Titus heard about the crop just as growers readied to throw it out for lack of sales. Titus tried the "Netted Gem Bakers," loved them, sold the first one in 1909 for 10 cents - and for the next 60 years, the Great Big Baked Potato was a signature item on the menu of the Northern Pacific Railway trains.
Train lovers, historians, travelers and cooks alike will enjoy the book, which includes a history of westbound train travel, a word portrait of some of the men who built and ran the trains during the heydays of the late 1800s and 1900s, lots of photos of the workers, dining cars and kitchens of the train line, and recipes of those "Famously Good" items once offered on the dining cars' ever-changing menus.
Author William McKenzie, who died in 2003, worked for nearly 30 years as an editorial public relations manager and corporate historian for the railway and spent two years as a consultant to its corporate successor, Burlington Northern. His wife, Violet, reworked and tested the recipes for family kitchens.
"Food and travel are as inseparable as Moses and the bulrushes, Antony and Cleopatra, Holmes and Watson, Hope and Crosby," writes the author in his personal observations at the start of the book.
He laments the passing of the "aromatic ambience of 'dinner in the diner' " and the train travel that included "surpassing enjoyment of a trip in the company of western scenery; an amiable steward; friendly, efficient and immaculately clad waiters; and food right out of a dream."
In addition to the huge tubers (each sporting a stick-sign reading "Here's Your 'Great Big' Baked Potato!"), the Northern Pacific was known for its individual lemon pies, its prize-winning fruit cake and its Big Baked Apple. All dishes were prepared fresh.
Hospitality, taste and style were the driving themes on those early trains. White table cloths, expensive silverware, immaculate waiters and stewards, and excellent, dedicated chefs helped secure passengers and a superior reputation for the railway.
The Northern Pacific, which ran through Missoula (and sometimes restocked its kitchen here), prided itself in serving local specialties from along its tracks, "to support area economies and to endow dining car patrons with a special feeling for the land they traversed," McKenzie writes. The menu included such specialties as beef, buffalo and Rocky Mountain trout from Montana, breads made from North Dakota wheats, beer made from Washington and Dakota hops, crab and reindeer from Alaska, Washington clams and salmon.
The railroad had its own dairy and poultry farm in Washington State, and butter was churned daily, before dawn, on every dining car. Crew members adhered to strict codes of service that included how often to make fresh coffee, how to seat patrons properly and how to serve mustard in small pots with demitasse spoons.
McKenzie traces the NP's dining service through the 1950s; into the 1960s, when buffet cars and fast food started replacing "dining" for travelers; and into the 1970s and 1980s, when paper plates and pre-packaged food arrived with railway mergers and Amtrak.
Some of those paper-and-plastic trends have reversed themselves, according to the author. Real flatware is back, and grills and steam tables are found on some trains.
But "they'll never match the food and service we had on the old NP," says the author, quoting a retired food-service director from the old days.
Reach reporter Mea Andrews at foods@missoulian.com or 523-5246.
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