Thanksgiving, Again.

It is a little difficult to avoid giving you a Thanksgiving story today – and why would I want to anyway? Before I give you today’s historical Thanksgiving menu, here are the links to previous Thanksgiving posts, in case you should want to thoroughly revise the topic before we proceed.

Over a dozen historical Thanksgiving menus are included in the following four posts: here, here, here, and  here.

Five posts have covered Thanksgiving pies:
Pumpkin, Pecan, Cranberry, Apple, Mincemeat.

Other Thanksgiving foods featured in the past have been:
Succotash, Sweet Potato,Vegetarian ‘Mock Turkey’,Turkey, Cranberry Sauce, Turkey Dressing,

We have also had fun with:
Thanksgiving breakfast.
Thanksgiving Ideas for the Bride Housewife.

Now, as the military seem to be under-represented in the posts for this special day, here is the
Thanksgiving Day menu for 1945 from U.S.S. PC-1138, in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii.

Celery and Ripe Olives

Cream of Tomato Soup

ROAST TOM TURKEY

Vegetable Dressing Giblet Gravy Mashed Potato

Fruit Cocktail

Pie Plum Pudding

Nuts Candy

Cigars and Cigarettes.

For the today’s recipe, I give you a military quantity of Cream of Tomato Soup from the U.S. Navy cook-book (1920). I doubt that the military were doing it much differently a couple of decades later when the men aboard U.S.S. PC-1138 enjoyed their turkey and cigarettes in 1945.

CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP
10 gals. stock
20 lbs.tomatoes
3 lbs. onions
5 lbs. flour
3 lbs. milk
1/8 oz baking soda
5 lbs. bread for croutons.
Boil together the tomatoes and onions until they become a pulp, then mash and strain through a fine colander; add to the stock and thicken well with a white roux. Simmer for 30 minutes; then add the soda and then the milk. Season and serve with the croutons. The consistency of this soup should be that of a good thick cream.

Quotation for the Day.

What's a soup kitchen?
Paris Hilton.

Mode of Cooking Rations.

It is a while since we had any military food history, so today I want to give you some wisdom and recipes from an American Civil War era manual. It is the Hand-book for Active Service: Containing Practical Instructions in Campaign Duties, for the Use of Volunteers (1861), and it has an entire section on that most important duty – the feeding of the troops.

RATIONS AND MODE OF COOKING THEM.

The history of military campaigns develops no fact more striking than that a very large percentage of the casualties are those of diseases incident to an improper diet. .…

The regular daily ration of food issued to the troops in the United States service, is three fourths of a pound of pork or bacon, or one and a fourth pounds of fresh or salt beef, eighteen ounces of bread or flour, or twelve ounces of hard bread, or one and a fourth pounds of corn meal, and at the rate, to one hundred rations, of eight quarts of peas or beans, or in lieu thereof ten pounds of rice; six pounds of coffee; twelve pounds of sugar; four quarts of vinegar; one and a half pounds of tallow, or one and a fourth pounds of adamantine, or one pound sperm candles; four pounds of soap, and two quarts of salt.

On a campaign or on marches or on board transports the ration of hard bread is one pound.

Fresh beef, when it can be procured, should be furnished at least twice a week; the beef to be procured, if possible, by contract.

The recipes for the use of these rations, each for a mess of 25 men, are, as would be expected, for very minor variations on a theme of soup and stew. I found the recipes for tea and coffee quite interesting however, so here they are.

Tea for 25 men.
Allow 12 quarts of water; put the rations of tea, a large teaspoonful to each, in a cloth tied up very loosely; throw it into the boiler while it is boiling hard for a moment. Then take off the boiler, cover it, and let it stand full ten minutes when it will be ready to use; first add sugar and milk, if to be had at the rate of 3 pints or 2 quarts of milk, and a pound or a pound and a half of sugar.


Coffee for 25 men.
Take 12 quarts of water, when it boils add 20 ounces of coffee, mix it well and leave it on the fire till it commences to boil, then take it off and pour into it a little more than a quart of cold water; let it stand in a warm place full ten minutes; the dregs will settle at the bottom and the coffee be perfectly clear. Pour it then into another vessel, leaving the dregs in the first; add sugar, 4 teaspoonsful to the quart. If you can get milk leave out five quarts of water in the above receipt, and put milk in its place.

Quotation for the Day.

When General Lee took possession of Chambersburg on his way to Gettysburg, we happened to be a member of the Committee representing the town. Among the first things he demanded for his army was twenty-five barrels of Saur-Kraut.
The Guardian (1869)

Bon Voyage.

April 8 ...

When Britain took on the Boer republics in 1902, her colonial citizens heeded the call to come to the aid of their mother country. In August 1902 a contingent of New Zealanders, their stints over, travelled home in the ship Britannic. In a pattern that is probably as old as the colonial navies of the world, the officers dined well, the troopers not so well aboard ship. The nicely printed menu for one, and the description of the other, demonstrate the difference quite clearly.

OFFICERS’ MENU.
Anchovies, Olives.
Oyster a la Plessy, Consomme Faubonne.
Baked Bass, Piquante Sauce.
Braised Sheep’s Head, Calves Feet au Pascaline.
Sirloin of Beef, Baked Potatoes, Boiled Chicken, Bacon,
Parsley Sauce, Leg of Mutton a la Bretonne.
Yellow Squash, Cabbage, Boiled Potatoes.
Curried Prawns and Rice, Cold Ox Tongue
Fig Pudding, Apricot Tart, Queen’s Cakes, Ice Cream.
Devilled Sardines on Toast
Dessert.

TROOPERS’ MENU.
Bread issue 6.30; bread good, but only enough for one meal.
Breakfast – Stew: half cooked meat and potatoes, hot water for gravy, plenty of grease; potatoes scarce, about half a dozen among fourteen men, always thrown overboard, not being fit to eat. Coffee: a mixture of tea, coffee, and chocolate, more like the latter; probably sugar in it, but could not say.
Dinner – Soup: Very good. Boiled mutton and sauce; mutton always absolutely raw, sauce flour and pot-water, with plenty of lumps, not bad paste for wall-papering, rather lumpy. Boiled rice and prunes. Rice ground, but a slatey colour, with no sugar; pruned good, generally averaged two per man (tantalising).
Tea – Bully beef and pickles; bully beef good, pickles fair, generally averaging two per man. If at all late one found one’s share gone, as they were generally eaten before the beef arrived. More could be got at the canteen on board at 1s per bottle. Tea, horrible. Butter and jam twice a week: jam, carrots and beetroot.

I bet those troopers would have loved a good suet pudding. A good pudding would have made them much more inclined to overlook the shortcomings in the rest of the bill of fare.

Here is a nice one from the same era, from the Middle Class Cookery Book, by the Manchester School of Domestic Economy and Cookery.

Suet Crust for Roly-Poly Puddings.
½ lb flour
¼ lb Beef Suet
Cold water,
Pinch of salt.
Shred the suet into very thin flakes; mix the salt into the flour; rub the shredded suet will into the flour; mix all to a stiff paste with cold water. Flour the paste-board lightly; turn the paste on to it, an work it with the right hand on the board for three or four minutes. Flour the rolling pin; press it onto the dough to flatten it out; then roll the dough out, rolling always one way. Fold the dough in three, and roll it out again. Repeat this once more, and roll the crust to the size required.

A Lancashire Roly-Poly.
2 apples
2 oz currants
2 Tablespoonfuls Golden Syrup
Spice, if liked, and Grated Lemon Rind.
Mince the apples very fine, spread them with currants on to the crust, and add the golden syrup, or treacle if preferred. Roll up the crust pressing the edges of the sides together as you roll. Slighty wet the top edge, and press the crust lightly so as to close it. Prepare a pudding cloth; put the pudding onto it, roll it tightly up and tie the edges with string or tape.When one edge is tied, pass the string along the pudding and tie the other edge. Put a plate (or drainer) at the bottom of the saucepan; put in the pudding and boil for one hour and a half. The water in the saucepan must be boiling before the pudding is put in, and must continue to boil the whole time, until the pudding is taken out.

Tomorrow’s Story …

“Comeback” meals.

Quotation for the Day …

If you could make a pudding wi' thinking o' the batter, it 'ud be easy getting dinner. George Eliot. Adam Bede, 1859

Coffee, if you can get it.

Today, August 10th …

General Orders No. 54, dated this day in 1861, specified the ration for a Civil War Confederate soldier to be:

22 ounces of soft bread or flour, or 1 pound of hardbread (hardtack) per day.
1 pound 4 ounces salt or fresh beef or 12 ounces of pork or bacon.
1 pound of potatoes three times per week if available.
To every 100 rations 15 pounds beans or peas AND 10 pounds rice or hominy; 10 pounds green coffee or 8 pounds roasted coffee; 1 pound 8 ounces tea; 15 pounds sugar; 4 quarts vinegar; 3 pounds 12 ounces salt; 4 ounces pepper; and 1 quart molasses.

Sounds deficient in some vitamins, and very boring, but filling enough. Of course, this was the ration in theory. In practice things were not so luxurious. Apparently the biggest and most bemoaned issue for both civilian and soldier of the South alike, was not the vitamins or the variety – but the lack of coffee. Something had to be done, and much imagination was applied to the problem.

The range of coffee substitutes invented by desperate humans is quite astounding. Not all have been the result of wartime shortages. There are those anxious souls who fear what might happen to them under its stimulating effects - but don’t want to relinquish a hot beverage at breakfast. Such souls as Ella Kellogg, whose recipe for Caramel Coffee made from parched cornmeal we featured in a previous story – staunchly pure souls who consider prunes on toast an delicious alternative to marmalade. Most coffee substitutes are not the result of misguided opinion and choice however, they are the response to necessity in hard times. We have previously featured a Civil War recipe for ‘coffee’ made from sweet potato, but there were many, many, more ideas – and a significant amount of newspaper space was taken up with letters and recipes for coffee substitutes during the war. It seems to me that the range of ideas is testament to human ingenuity in deprivation – and to the amazing ability for hype in desperation. Most of the suggestions and recipes are accompanied by enthusiastic assurances that the substitute is as good, if not better than the real thing (so why was there an enthusiastic return to drinking expensive coffee instead of the infinitely cheaper substitutes after the war?).

Such creativity should be acknowledged: I will give a few more recipes for coffee substitutes in the future. For today, I give you an alternative idea – a method of ‘bulking up’ a limited amount of coffee, to make it go further. It is from a Georgia newspaper in 1865.

Substitutes for Coffee.
Nobody has had more occasion to mourn over the blockade than that numerous and highly respectable class, the coffee topers. Many an one would cheerfully munch his dry crusts at breakfast, if he could wash them down with the cheering beverage which used, in former times, to atone for the short-comings of cooks and fortify him against a day of vexations. For the stimulating property to which both tea and coffee owe their chief value, there is unfortunately no substitute; the best we can do is to dilute the little stocks which still remain, and cheat the palate, if we cannot deceive the nerves. The best substitute which we have yet found for either tea or coffee, is plenty of good, rich milk, which is at least nutritive, if not stimulating. But alas! the price of butter plainly tells that milk is almost as scarce as coffee, and many persons want something hot to drive off the fogs of the morning. After many unsatisfactory trials of rye, wheat, corn, potatoes, okra, acorns, and almost everything else that can be purchased, we have found in molasses, we will not say a substitute for, but an adulteration of coffee, which leaves but little to be desired, but the stimulus. Don't be alarmed, Mr. Editor, we are not about to propose "long sweetening." Molasses when boiled down until it scorches, is converted into an intensely bitter substance, called by chemists caramel. Our method is to put a quart or more of sorghum syrup into any convenient vessel, and stew it down over a slow fire, as if making candy, stirring constantly until the syrup is burnt black; then pour it out into a greased plate to cool. The blackish porous mass thus obtained is pounded, when quite cold, in an iron mortar. We mix it with twice its bulk of ground coffee, and use a teaspoonful of this mixture for each person; thus one teaspoonful of caramel and two of coffee will make six cups of a beverage which, as far as taste is concerned, is far preferable to pure Rio coffee. The burnt molasses or caramel, attracts moisture when exposed to the air, and must, therefore, be kept in a close vessel. It would be well, for the same reason, to prepare it in small quantities. If the molasses is burnt too much, it is reduced to charcoal and loses all taste. By the way, though a very simple matter, many housekeepers do not know that it is perfectly easy to clear coffee by adding a small quantity of cold water, just as it "comes to a boil."

Next Week …..

Next week, just for a change of routine, we will dine in mid-nineteenth century France with the writer and gastronome, Baron Léon Brisse.

Quotation for the Day ….

Give a frontiersman coffee and tobacco, and he will endure any privation, suffer any hardship, but let him be without these two necessaries of the woods, and he becomes irresolute and murmuring. U.S. Army Lt. William Whiting (1849)

Recipes from Scutari.

Today, June 26^th …

Alexis Soyer was a famous French-born chef in Victorian England who cooked for aristocrats and gentlemens clubs, and achieved celebrity status in his own time. He was also famous for his philanthropic works in Ireland during the potato famine, and in the Crimea during the war of 1854-6.

Soyer volunteered to go to the Crimea at his own expense, to assist in the task of provisioning the troops at the front line. He worked alongside Florence Nightingale, with whom he had corresponded, in the hospital at Scutari, helping her to improve the feeding and hence the health, of the injured soldiers there. While he was in the Crimea, Soyer kept up a steady stream of letters to the editors of The Times, and these were published regularly, along with many of his recipes.

Here is an extract for his letter published on this day in 1855.

To the Editor of the Times,

Sir,- I herewith beg to forward you some of the most important receipts which I have concocted out of the soldiers’ rations, and which are now adopted in various parts of the camp, and will no doubt shortly be extended to every regiment in the Crimea, having had them printed for circulation throughout the army. Some of the receipts were printed at head-quarters and issued for distribution. The reason for my return to Scutari for a short time is to place a civilian cook who understands his business in each hospital, which cannot fail to be beneficial to the patients, and by a due organisation in those departments economy will in the end be effected.

I brought with me from head-quarters 12 complete rations as given daily to the troops, and with these provisions I am now teaching ten of those very willing fellows who were originally engaged as cooks in the hospitals the plain way of camp cookery, and, instead of being almost useless, as they were, in so important a branch, they will now turn out, if not the bravest in the army, at least the most wonderful, being able to face both fire and battery when requisite.

With the highest consideration, I have the honour to be, Sir, your most obedient servant,

A. SOYER

Barrack Hospital, Scutari,

(Receipt No. 1) Stewed Salt Beef And Pork A La Omar Pasha
Put into a canteen saucepan about 2lb of well soaked beef, cut in eight pieces; ½lb of salt pork, divided in two, and also soaked; ½lb of rice, or six tablespoonsful; ½lb of onions, or four middle-sized ones, peeled and sliced; 2oz of brown sugar, or one large tablespoonful; ¼oz of pepper, and five pints of water; simmer gently for three hours, remove the fat from the top and serve. The first time I made the above was in Sir John Campbell’s soup kitchen, situated on the top of his rocky cavern, facing Sebastopol, near Cathcart’s-hill, and among the distinguished pupils I had upon the occasion were Colonel Wyndham, Sir John Campbell, and Dr Hall, Inspector-General of the Army in the Crimea, and other officers. This dish was much approved at dinner, and is enough for six people, and if the receipt be closely followed you cannot fail to have an excellent food. The London salt meat will only require a four hours soaking, having been only lightly pickled.

(Receipt No. 7) Cossacks’ Plum Pudding
Put into a basin 1lb of flour, ¾lb of raisins (stoned, if time be allowed), ¾lb of the fat of salt pork (well washed, cut into small dies, or chopped), two tablespoonsful of sugar or treacle; add a half pint of water; mix all together; put into a cloth tied tightly; boil for four hours, and serve. If time will not admit, boil only two hours, though four are preferable. How to spoil the above:- Add anything to it.

Tomorrow’s Story …

A pot of the best tea.

Quotation for the Day …

An old-fashioned vegetable soup, without any enhancement, is a more powerful anti carcinogen than any known medicine. James Duke M.D.(U.S.D.A.)