Cooking in Camp:
Ideas and Recipes
"An army marches on its stomach", said Napoleon, and every re-enactor knows this to be a fact - one of the most important elements of any event is food. Eating authentically in the field can be a real challenge, especially for re-enactors who don't have a lot of cooking experience. Let's look first at your equipment. What should you take into the field in the way of cooking equipment?
First, if it's a real campaign-style footslogging event like Red River, leave the cooking gear at home, because it's just too much to carry. In reality, though, most of us will be going to smaller events like Westfield or Napanee, in a fixed camp for the weekend, so some cook gear is tolerated. Even so, try to keep it to a minimum. Imagine what you as a soldier on campaign would have room for in your pack and haversack. You and the pards in your mess (the squad that you cook and draw rations with) won't be able to store your gear in the wheeled transport while you march - that's for the officers and HQ staff. What you cook with is what you hump on your back between meals. Here's what you might reasonably expect to carry:
Private's basic cook gear
Knife, fork and spoon - look for these in antique stores or in Sutler's row. There were "3in1" cutlery sets available at the time, but chances are only as privately-purchased gear for soldiers of some financial means.
Tin cup - used for cooking as well as drinking. Make sure you wrap the handle in twine or cord, or use an old bandana when picking it up from the fire, as they heat up.
Consider getting a billy as well. A billy is simply a tin cup with a handle, hinged lid and a wire for hanging over the fire. Allows you to cook your stew or soup while keeping your tin cup for making coffee.
Tin plate - one with slightly raised edges is nice if you are planning to eat stew or soup, though your tin cup will do for those sorts of meals in a pinch. Don't buy an enameled plate like the ones you see in the camping sections of hardware stores. I use a mess-tin of the English military pattern, which wouldn't likely have been standard issue but could be justified as the privately purchased gift of well-off parents. It can be used as for soup, stew, or as a plate.
Safety matches or lucifers. You'll need these to light your fire.
Basic cook gear for a squad-sized mess
The following items might reasonably be expected to be distributed amongst a small squad or mess of pards to be carried individually on the march and brought out at meals.
Pot or large billy: I have a large (holds about 2 liters) billy made by CD Jarnagin, which is useful for making coffee, tea, stew, soup, rice, etc. in squad-sized servings. A large pot would also do.
Small or medium sized cast-iron griddle or skillet - useful for frying bacon or for making Johnny cakes, but probably something that would get tossed on a long march. Infantrymen were known to make do by making dough, spearing it on a musket ramrod, and cooking it over the fire.
Smaller axe or hatchet. Useful for chopping kindling as well as for digging out your fire-pit. The regimental history of the 49th includes an anecdote by William Mulkie, A Co, of Sgt. Elijah Shippee, who had been hit in the arm in the Wilderness, and who "carried an ax and coffee kettle, trying to be of some service in making coffee for his comrades". Rather than stay behind at Spotsylvania Court House Shippee charged the rebel lines with his pards, and his body was found, ax in hand, after the battle. One assumes that Shippee carried the ax as part of his squad or platoon's mess.
What Not to Bring
Fire grate. Much as I like having one, I would advise against it. Grates are sold by Sutlers as interlocking cast iron assemblies, but let's face it, who would have carried one on the march to Gettysburg or to Appomatox? Unless it's a winter quarters scenario, put your cookware over the coals or rig a branch over the fire to hang pots, billies, etc.
Likewise my Canadian Tire coffee pot, which I so proudly used last year, doesn't go to reenactments in future. The little percolator assembly is definitely farby. It's more fun to brew coffee loose in your billy or mug, and learn to squirt the grounds out between your teeth.
Coolers. I know that people like them, and it's always nice to have a cold beer out of one. I've put my beer in other peoples' coolers on many an occasion. But this year I'm going to try to live without one - either mine or someone else's.
What to Cook
Now you have your cooking gear assembled, what now? It's the week before a reenactment and you need to go shopping. There are some recipes below, but first here's piece from Mike Murley, a respected progressive re-enactor, originally posted on CW Re-enactors' list.
"First, lets look at the raw material. Take a minute and look at this article. There is a recipe there for real salt pork too, but that's neither here nor there.
What ration type items can you find in the grocery store? Salt pork; "country" (or smoke cured) slab bacon, fresh beef or pork; soft bread (home baked style loaves, not "Wonder bread"), rice, beans ("white" or "Navy"), corn meal, potatoes (small, red potatoes and sweet potatoes), onions, salt, coffee (either ground or bean is fine), tea (loose - not tea bags!), sugar ("Turbinado" or raw sugar is best), plain white candles (rare for CS), vinegar (issued but not listed), molasses (issued in lieu of sugar).
Foraged items (not in the ration)? Corn on the cob (in the shuck) and other period vegetables _in season_ such as carrots, onions, beets, cabbages, turnips); period type apples (in season), 'country ham', eggs (will keep for a day or two w/o refrigeration in cool weather), bake biscuits at home and put in haversack, &c.
Now, how did soldiers fix these items? here's another article. Scroll halfway down and look at the recipes from Scott's. Most of these are foreign to our cook - but they give ideas.
How about something really simple? Like bean soup - one can use a modern recipe and adapt it (actually they are adapted old recipes). Or baked beans 'in the old army style' - simply soak the beans (use white beans - they call them 'navy' beans now), then cook them in a pot with salt pork
or ham, molasses and some onion. Cover the pot and bake it in the coals. As Billings recounts in _Hardtack and Coffee_, this was a favorite breakfast dish, having been baked through the night. Or variation on the fresh beef and rice receipt Scott's has - toss in some onion, salt, potatoes, carrots - even a can of whole tomatoes (which is period, I use the large cans that have been relabeled with one of Bob Sullivan's period labels and open it with a big knife - just stab an 'X' into it and peel the points back - relic cans are often found opened like that).
Breakfast could be foraged eggs, ham or bacon, coffee and bread. Something that can be done in one frying pan is better (though you could hard boil eggs). And from flour, water, eggs one can make griddle cakes and put molasses on them.
I see units that eat spaghetti, complete with tossed salad and garlic bread; fix sandwiches from loaves of Wonder bread, baloney and processed cheese - complete with plastic mustard and Miracle Whip containers; even MREs! Why drag all that stuff around?
And if one is really worried about the meat - keep the cooler in a car in the parking lot and send a detail out to get the meat when its needed.
Mike Murley
A Proudly Rowdy Pard
Visit us on the web here.
Mike's main point here is that it isn't that hard to cook authentically, and may even be cheaper than buying all the Puritan stew and other stuff. Check out the recipes on Mike's site listed above, as well as these recipes listed below.
