Rations

[Darrell Cochran]

Re: Essence of coffee

If you have never had this stuff, know that one table spoon will make a good stout gallon of coffee. Even if you like your coffee strong, this will do it. One can of essence will easily satisfy 100 men.

But how common was this stuff? References to coffee beans being issued are common in soldier accounts, but I don't recall seeing a lot of talk about using essence of coffee ... And if it came in one-pound tins and one can makes enough for 100 men, how many individuals would have bothered with the weight/volume?

Just food (and drink) for thought

[AZReenactor]

Re: period frying pan

I was looking through old threads and this particular pan caught my eye. I can't tell from the photo but is there any information on how the handle was attached on this frying pan? It looks very similiar to one I recently say at an antique store that had what looked like a welded handle.

FWIW, here's a photo of a frying pan that was carried by a Federal soldier. Once part of a GAR exhibit in Trumansburg, NY, the tag says: "Frying Pan Knife Fork & Spoon that went from Atlanta to the Sea." It was the property of Henry Rudie of the 137th NY. It is 7-1/2 inches in diameter, and weighs only 13 ounces.

John Tobey

[ephraim_zook]

Re: Essence of coffee

Geez. I must REALLY like strong coffee. One hefty tablespoon of essence made from the recipe posted elsewhere on this thread yields one really good tin cup of coffee for me. I can't possibly see how a tablespoon would make anything but the most insipid, tea-like flavour in a gallon of water. Nevertheless, among the information posted on the Jarnigan site there is a statement that 1 gallon of essence (the concentrate, of course) will serve 100 men.

If you have never had this stuff, know that one table spoon will make a good stout gallon of coffee. Even if you like your coffee strong, this will do it. One can of essence will easily satisfy 100 men.

Art Milbert

[Stateline]

Re: period frying pan

My brother, Harvey Eason, who lives near Macon Ga. makes some good accurate frying pans with the correctly riveted handles with the little pigtails up on the end of the handle. I will see him tommorow & check to see if he has any already made. I own 4 of them in various sizes & I believe everyone in our unit probably has one.

George Eason/1st Ga. State Line

[hardtack61]

Taking Slab Bacon to events

Hi

I just was wondering how to keep slab bacon safe to eat when you go and get to reenactment. ive been trying to figure out this one for a while. how do you guys do this?

[JimKindred]

Re: Taking Slab Bacon to events

If you buy smoke and sugar cured bacon done the traditional way you do not have to worry about keeping it cool at an event, just make sure you wrap it to keep the flies away.

What makes you sick is the store bought slab bacon from the cooler of the meat department.

Contact me privately and I will give you a source for this type bacon that can be mail ordered.

[Justin Runyon]

Re: Taking Slab Bacon to events

Jim is right, If the bacon is properly cured there is no need to worry about it, its hould keep well past the three days your at an event. There is a great source for correct bacon, hams and sausages in Indianapolis if anyone would like contact info.

[Amtmann]

Re: Taking Slab Bacon to events

http://www.scotthams.com/price.html

BACON - #55 Slab 9 -13 lb. (per lb.) 2.60

If you don't need 9-13 lbs, tell them you're a reenactor and sometimes they'll sell you less.

Hi

I just was wondering how to keep slab bacon safe to eat when you go and get to reenactment. ive been trying to figure out this one for a while. how do you guys do this?

[BrianHicks]

Re: Taking Slab Bacon to events

If you but a large slab. Hang it in a dry cool space (preferrably out of direct sunlight) and it will keep for a year or two. Cut of what ever portion you want to take to an event, wrap it in some paper or cloth, (just to reduce getting the grease from it on other things in your haversack or knapsack) tie it up, stuff it in your haversack, and it'll keep until you use it.

Usually, on the first morning, I'll cut all of my slab bacon (or big piece of salt pork... depending on what I've got for that event) into thinner slices and cook all of the meat at once. I'll then re-wrap what I don't eat at that sitting. Later in the day if I get hungery, I already have some cooked meat to chew on. When I want to eat a hot meal, I jsut re-heat what I had already cooked (besides.... sometimes you find you don't have time to cook... and eating raw pork, as we all know, is a big negative.)

[Kevin O'Beirne]

Re: Taking Slab Bacon to events

This question has been asked so many times over the years. If you have a phobia about uncooked bacon and want to be "more authentic like the real soldiers", then cook your slab bacon either as soon as you arrive at the event, or before you arrive. Remember, soldiers usually went on campaign with "three days' cooked rations".

From "The Columbia Rifles Research Compendium" article on rations:

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Wilbur Hinman wrote, “If bread was the ‘staff of life’, then meat was life itself.” The most common meat ration issued to Federal soldiers on campaign was either salt pork or fresh beef. Many firsthand accounts report that issuance of ham was rare in the extreme.

Similar to the ills that plagued hardtack, the meat ration issued to Union soldiers was often of less-than-desirable quality, and meat infested with maggots and weevils was not uncommon. Also, fate played a big part in the quality and type of cut issued to the men, as explained by a soldier from Massachusetts:

“In drawing his ration of meat from the commissary the quartermaster had to be governed by his last selection. If it was a [meaty] hindquarter then he must take a [boney] forequarter the next time… The kind of piece drawn naturally determined its disposition in the soldier’s cuisine. If it was a stringy, flabby piece, straightaway it was doomed to a dish of lobscouse… If the meat was pretty solid…it was quite likely to be served as beefsteak.”

How was meat carried? The answer is easy and simple: it was simply thrown into the haversack, without cover, wrapper, or bag. Soldier accounts often refer to the haversack as a very nasty, smelly, greasy environ, made all the moreso by raw meat constantly rubbing up against the haversack’s other contents.

Fresh beef was often issued on the march, and the Union Army drove with its wagon trains herds of beeves that numbered into the thousands. On the march to Fredericksburg in November, 1862, a private recalled that his brigade was, “detailed as a guard for a drove of 700 head of cattle accompanying the army… The beasts had recently arrived from the mountains of Texas.”

A soldier in the Army of the Potomac recalled how fresh beef was usually issued and prepared:

“Our beef, when we got any, marched with us and was in the best of condition, no fat, all bone and muscle. It was usually killed about 4:00 a.m. and we got it in time for breakfast. We were supposed to get 3/4 of a lb. No choice cuts, take it as we got it, bone and muscle counted, we stuck it on a sharp pointed stick, held it to the fire, and roasted it with our coffee and hard tack.”

Because of its tendency to spoil quickly, one sees little in the way of fresh beef rations in the ranks of reenactors. Living history units that opt to provide the occasional fresh beef ration to their members should issue it very early in the morning. To minimize health risks, reenactors should consider providing only one day’s ration of fresh beef per man, which should be cooked immediately upon its issuance. “Good” cuts of beef should be avoided—the average Federal soldier did not feast on sirloin and filet mignon on the march. Instead, go for the cheapest cut of beef available at the butcher shop; issuing a skinny rib or soup-shank is ideal and historically accurate.

Commonly known as “sow belly” by both Federals and Confederates, salt pork was perhaps the most common form of meat issued to the men in blue. Salt pork was shipped to the army in barrels, which were full of meat packed in salty lard. One soldier likened the noise made by salt pork being pulled from its lard packing as akin to the sound of a boot being pulled from Virginia mud. As seen in many period photographs, sometimes the salt would leach out of the barrels and create white streaks on the outside of the barrel.

Reenactors should avoid modern “salt pork” sold in supermarkets because it is very fatty and quite different from the salt pork issued during the Civil War. Accurate salt pork does not seem to be available today, and therefore “the closest substitute” is often resorted to by reenactors.

Reenactors in the Southern states have a leg up on folks who live in the North, because of the greater appreciation for the meat of the swine in Dixie, even today. Southerners have available to them a great variety of pork products, such as corned hams, smoked pork, and other types of meat that are unavailable or very rare in the North.

Perhaps the closest that modern “Yankees” can get to period salt pork is slab bacon. Slab bacon is both smoked and lightly salted—it is not as salty as original salt pork—and will “keep” in a haversack for a three-day event, as long as common sense is employed (i.e., do not leave your black haversack loaded with slab bacon lying in the July sun all day). Slab bacon can be obtained in many supermarkets or butcher shops, usually with a one- or two-day advance order. Slab bacon can be purchased at a fairly reasonable price, although some comparison shopping is a good idea, because prices can range from less than two dollars to as much as four dollars a pound. Most butcher shops can provide the bacon as a “slab”, with or without the rind (skin), or cut up in to individual rations of three-quarters of a pound each. Most slab bacon is fairly lean and makes truly first-rate eating at a living history event.

Like the original soldiers, reenactors can cook their slab bacon in a variety of ways. When in garrison and rations were prepared by the company cook it was, according to a man in the Army of the Potomac, “fated to be boiled twenty-four times out of twenty five”.

When prepared on the march by the private soldier, sow belly was typically roasted over the fire at the end of a stick, ramrod, or bayonet, or fried, usually on a tin plate or canteen half held at the end of a split stick. Billings maintained, “broiling was, I think, the favorite style with the oldest campaigners.” Salt pork was also used as an ingredient in lobscouse and was often boiled as soup. Often the soldiers simply ate their sow belly raw, sometimes sandwiched between hardtack. Eating it raw took less effort than cooking; a teenaged private serving under Grant in 1864 recalled, “Our pork we did not cook, it would be wasting the fat.” Regardless of how authentic it may be, reenactors should not eat their pork raw due to well-known health considerations, such as trichinosis.

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I hope this helps. It's a shame the AC Forum v.2.0 database is still unavailable, because this question has been asked and answered dozens of times.

[Tyler Underwood]

Re: Taking Slab Bacon to events

As long as you can keep it wraped in something to keep flies off and it is in a large piece it will keep for a few days. I have had it still be good for 3 days in 90-95 degree weather.

[24thGAIrishman]

Re: Essence of coffee

I was at the same living history event as Skeet, and i will agree that the essence of coffee was strong. I was also wondering if it was correct for alot of soldiers to have it because it is alot easier then taking beans and smashing 'em with the butt of my musket.

Thanks,
Cprl. Rich Johnson
24th GA
McMillian Guards

[billwatson]

it's usually not the meat

I think folks get sick more often from contaminating their food during preparation in the field than they do from the food "going bad." In addition to normal hygiene often getting set aside in field conditions, we are also in an environment contaminated by fecal coliform. Even if you do not use the sinks yourself, if you have walked through a field used by cattle or cavalry you have contaminated your shoes with fecal coliform. Stop once to tie your shoe and it's on your hands. Proceed to handle food and you've set the stage for a stomach upset.

Food not cooked long enough would be my best second bet for sources of stomach upset. If you cook it until it's done, the heat should kill any bacteria. It's why I nag people to cook during daylight if at all possible -- just about impossible to tell if meat or bacon is properly cooked when it's dark, firelight doesn't give us a very good read. But, again, I think the contamination comes from food handling, not from spoilage of the food due to lack of refrigeration.

I'd also suggest that you eat a little bit of what you're taking into the field in the week leading up to the event. If you simply don't eat bacon in the real world, this heavily salted, cured stuff can be quite a shock to your digestive system. Add that atop all the other stresses we subject ourselves to at some events -- outdoors in brisk or adverse weather, a hard ground for sleep, a new schedule for sleep, odd noises, strangers to meet and adjust to, and add a little anxiety about trying to fit in to the activity to help make the thing come off -- and it's not hard to see why a body might say "enough, already, bacon begone."

[Amtmann]

Re: it's usually not the meat

I have to agree with Bill. People not cooking meat long enough is probably main reason for sickness. Simply put, most reenactors do not know the basics of cooking and telling when something is done. I don't trust the cooking of others in the field, so I do all my cooking myself. ;)

[MontReb]

Re: period frying pan

Believe it or not, "Upper Mississippi Valley Mercantile" offers a fair pan with a hand forged handle- it was listed favorably in the "Watchdog" a couple of years ago.