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)

Tea, Cold.

Tea, in England (and Australia), is hot. Generally speaking. Cold tea means a careless hostess or an absent-minded consumer. Iced tea is available of course, although it generally comes very sweet, commercially made, in bottles, in the drinks cabinet of the store. I remember the first time I asked for tea in the United States. The waitress (noting my accent perhaps) looked at me and asked ‘Hot?’ Remembering my visitor manners I forbore giving her a puzzled-withering look and said ‘Yes, Please.’ I was vastly amused. I knew about the ‘two countries divided by a common language’, but experiencing it in practice was so much more fun than reading about it.

I thought that those of you from all three sides of the two big waters would like this, from the very English Cassell’s New Dictionary of Cookery (1910).

Tea, Cold.
The value of cold tea as a beverage is not sufficiently known. Literary men and others accustomed to a sedentary occupation would find one or two cups of cold tea taken without either milk or sugar to be as stimulating as the same quantity of sherry, whilst there would be no fear of the drowsiness or diminution of the working power which might arise from imbibing either wine or spirit. The taste for cold tea is an easily acquired one, and worth cultivating by those who require an occasional and harmless stimulant.

Two cups of tea as stimulating as two cups of sherry?

To have with your tea, hot or cold, these, from the same source, would be nice.

Tea-Cakes, Royal.
Take the weight of a large egg in fresh butter. Beat it to a cream, and mix with it four ounces of pounded and sifted loaf sugar, four ounces of best flour, a small pinch of salt, and the grated peel of half a lemon. Beat the egg with a little orange-flower or rose-water, and with this knead the mixture to a smooth paste. Roll it out, cut it into small rounds, an bake these upon floured tins in a well-heated oven.Time to bake, fifteen to thirty minutes, according to the size of the cakes. Sufficient for one or two persons.

Sufficient for one or two persons? Not a big batch I know, but still …..

Quotation for the Day …

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me," said C.S. Lewis. whilst at that moment I was pouring his tea into a very large cornish Ware cup and he was reading Bleak House.” Walter Hooper

[He could have been writing about The Old Foodie …. ]

Tea-time memories.

Today, November 16 …

The first volume of Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past” was published on this day in 1913. In his novel, the sudden fragrance of a small French cake called a madeleine dipped in lime-blossom tea, evokes the flood of memories on which the story is based. Proust knew instinctively what scientists have now proven: that the sense of smell is an enormously powerful trigger of memory.

It is probably the best known piece of gastronomic literary prose in the world, and so beautiful that it is almost impossible to read it without wanting to rush out and find some madeleines and linden (lime-blossom) tea to try to capture the experience for oneself. Alas, the association between memory and its triggers are far too personal, but in case you want to try anyway, the recipes follow.

A madeleine is simply an ordinary small cake, its only differentiation from any other being that it is baked in a shell-shaped mould, making it not ordinary at all, for this small difference makes this small cake special and elegant and romantic. The most famous are from Commercy in France, and Larousse gives a recipe:

Madeleine de Commercy.

Work together in a bowl 625 gm of fine sugar, 625 gm sieved cake flour; 12 eggs; 1 ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda; the grated rind of a lemon; a pinch of salt.
When this mixture is very smooth, add to it 300 gm melted butter. Mix well.
Put this mixture in special buttered madeleine moulds. Bake in a very slow oven.

It probably does not seem necessary to give a recipe for tea, but Charles Elmé Francatelli (an Englishman in spite of his name), saw fit to include one in his “Cook’s Guide” (1867), and who am I to argue with the chef to Queen Victoria? Anyway, the medical advice at the end might come in handy if the memories you trigger in your experiment are scary ones.

Lime-Flower Tea.

To half an ounce of lime-flowers pour one pint of boiling water; allow the tea to stand for about ten minutes, pour it into a cup, sweeten with honey, and drink it perfectly hot.
This tea, from its antispasmodic quantities, is a safe remedy in cases of indigestion, and is also beneficial when administered for hysteria.

Tomorrow …The Clerical Gourmet.