Food Recipes from the U.S. Army
By
Patrick McSherry
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Page to learn more about the Spanish American War
General:
Below are some recipes derived from U.S. Army first-hand accounts. The
goal is to include accounts that provide enough detail to allow for the
recipe to be recreated. More recipes will be added as they are found.
Coffee:
"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].
"Sludge"
"Sometimes when we had canned tomatoes we made 'sludge,' a simple
confection of tomatoes and broken hardtack, with, at times, a few
'strings' of corned beef thrown in to give it, not taste, but more body."
The context indicates that it was cooked in a manner similar to the
coffee, above. [Account from the
2nd
Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry
as encamped before Santiago before the city surrendered].
"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."
Bibliography:
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).
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