"Thanks to a beneficent government we had coffee about all of the time, if we had nothing else. It came to us in the berry, in paper packages, and our chief concern as to coffee was how to grind or pulverize it. Usually this was done by the simple but slow process of putting a few berries in our tin cups and pounding them with a stick or tent pole until they were broken enough to steep. Then the cup was filled with water and placed in the fire until the coffee boiled when the cup was taken out by means of a cleft stick or a bayonet and laid aside cool sufficienty to drink. There was plenty of barbed wire everywhere and by means of the wire cutters rude grates were made on which the tin cup was placed." [Account from the 2nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry as encamped before Santiago before the city surrendered].
The official cookbook of the U.S. Army
for 1896 had a number recipes for coffee. The first indicated that the
coffee beans would be ground, and one pound of coffee should be used in
ten quarts of water. One pound of coffee consists of approximately 64
tablespoons of coffee. In the 21st century most sources recommend two
tablespoons of coffee to 8 ounces of water. By this standard, one pound
of coffee would make 32 eight ounce cups of coffee or eight quarts of
coffee. Therefore, the coffee in the U.S. Army at the time of he Spanish
American War was likely weaker than coffee of today.
"Santiago Sludge Cakes"
"Then we made 'Santiago sludge cakes,' composed of pulverized hardtack and water, the mixture being patted into cakes and fried in bacon grease. Sometimes a bit of sugar was sprinkled over them, and we deluded ourselves into the belief that we were eating something very fine. Another method of preparing this delicacy was to mix in some canned tomato." [Account from the 2nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry as encamped before Santiago before the city surrendered].
The same sore of dish was recorded by one of Roosevelt's Rough Riders in a letter home, though did not name the confection. Rough Rider Kirk McCurdy wrote to his father on June 28, 1898 and provided the following description. McCurdy did actually seem to like the resulting meal:
"We...soak about four hardtack in water
until it is dough, add salt, then mix in coffee, fry in bacon grease,
put a little sugar on top and enjoy it to its full extent."
Manual for Army Cooks. (Washington: Government Printing Office,
1896), 193
McCurdy, F. Allen and Kirk McCurdy, Two
Rough Riders: Letters From F. Allen McCurdy And J. Kirk McCurdy, Who
Fought With The Rough Riders During The Spanish American War Of 1898
(1902) (New York: F Tennyson Neely, 1902). 12
Ward, Walter W., Springfield in the Spanish American War. Reprint by Wentworth Press, 2019 [Coffee, Sludge and Santiago Sludge Cakes, p 40).