Civil War recipes

Civil War Recipes: Gingerbread, Switchel, Beef Tea

Last week, I shared three Civil War recipes for your Wedded to War book club--or just for your own enjoyment at home. Today I'd like to share three more. 4. Alice Carlisle’s Gingerbread Gingerbread was popular among soldiers in both the North and South. Wives like Alice Carlisle often baked and sent loaves of this spicy bread to their husbands in camp, and when hospitals had the ingredients, they baked this for the patients who could eat it. Ingredients: 1 TB butter 2 1/2 cups flour 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda 1/2 cup butter 1 1/4 cups molasses 1 egg 1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon 1 1/2 tsp. allspice 1 cup very hot water Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease a 9″ square baking pan with the butter. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, soda and spices, and cut in softened butter to the flour mixture with a fork. Combine molasses, egg and water in a small mixing bowl. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir well. Pour the batter into a baking pan and bake 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Makes 9 servings. *Recipe courtesy of Total Gettysburg 5. Fanny Hatch’s Switchel “Make some switchel, I says, and she uses too much vinegar, not enough ginger. Dust it, I says, and she leaves rims of the fuzzy grey filth on the edge of the mantelpiece.” Fanny threw up her hands in a state of helplessness, and Phineas murmured his sympathies. ~Wedded to War Switchel was a refreshing drink to quench summertime thirst, also known as Haymaker’s Punch. There are countless variations on the recipe, as it depends on the person’s taste. Here is one version you can make at home. Ingredients: 9 cups water, divided 1/4 cup minced fresh ginger 1/4 cup honey or pure maple syrup 1/4 cup molasses 3/4 cup lemon juice 1/4 cup cider vinegar Fresh berries, mint sprigs or lemon slices for garnish 1. Combine 3 cups water with ginger in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Boil for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat, cover and let infuse for 15 minutes. 2. Strain the ginger-infused water into a pitcher, pressing on the ginger solids to extract all the liquid. Add honey (or maple syrup) and molasses; stir until dissolved. Stir in lemon juice, vinegar and the remaining 6 cups water. Chill until very cold, at least 2 hours or overnight. 3. Stir the punch and serve in tall glasses over ice cubes. Garnish with berries, mint sprigs or lemon slices, if desired. 6. Charlotte Waverly’s Beef Tea Soon the Daniel Webster would be full of living, pulsing cargo, men needing beef tea and brandy, milk toast and gruel. Charlotte wouldn’t get a moment’s sleep until they were all washed, bedded, fed, and cared for. She would snatch back to life men teetering on the brink of death. Fever patients would rage in their madness, and she would not rest until they were consoled. Charlotte couldn’t wait. ~Wedded to War Beef tea is mentioned several times in Wedded to War, as one of the staples of the “special diet” intended to revive and restore health to patients with typho-malarial fever. Here are two variations on the recipe, from Outlines of the Chief Camp Diseases, by Joseph Janvier Woodward, published in 1863. Recipe 1 for Beef Tea A pound of lean beef should be cut into small dice, a little salt and a quart of water added; simmer very gently for two hours, then bring to a boil, and remove from the fire; skim off the fat, and give a wineglassful every two hours. Pepper in moderate quantities is not objectionable, if it makes the tea more agreeable to the patient. Recipe 2 for Beef Tea Cut 3 lbs. of beef into pieces the size of walnuts, and chop up the bones, if any; put it into a convenient sized kettle, with ½ lb. of mixed vegetables, such as onions, leeks, celery, turnips, carrots (or one or two of these if all are not to be obtained), 1 oz. of salt, a little pepper, 1 teaspoonful of sugar, 2 oz. of butter, and a half pint of water. Set it on a sharp fire for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, stirring now and then with a spoon, till it forms a rather thick gravy at the bottom, but not brown; then add 7 pints of hot or cold water, but hot is preferable; when boiling let it simmer gently for an hour; skim off all the fat, strain it through a sieve, and serve.

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Wedded to War

Civil War Recipes: Tea Cakes, Hardtack, Camp Potatoes

Of course no book club is complete without food, and what better way to add flavor to your experience than to sample some of the foods eaten by characters in the novel? Below you’ll find recipes for Civil War foods enjoyed by characters in Wedded to War. Some of these have been modernized so you can try them at home, and some are taken straight from cookbooks published during the Civil War. 1. Charlotte Waverly’s Tea Time Sighing, Charlotte reached for the Blue Willow teacup on the walnut table next to her, and breathed in the fragrance of orange and cloves. She picked up the New York Times and froze. Without taking her eyes off the paper, she rattled the cup back on its saucer. ~Wedded to War Afternoon tea was a regular routine in the Waverly household. Try these Tea Cakes with Charlotte’s favorite tea—orange spice—or her sister Alice’s favorite—raspberry. Ingredients: 5 cups flour 1 tsp. baking soda 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg 1 cup butter 1 cup buttermilk 2 large eggs 2 cups sugar Heat the oven to 375 F. Grease the cookie sheets with butter. Combine flour, soda, and nutmeg together in a large mixing bowl. Cut in the butter with a fork or pastry blender until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs. In a medium bowl, stir together 1 Cup milk, 2 eggs, and sugar. Pour into dry ingredients. Stir well. Wash hands and lightly coat your fingertips with butter. Shape the dough into 1 inch round bowls. Place the balls on baking sheets. Dip a fork in flour and use it to flatten the balls in a criss/cross pattern like you might do for peanut butter cookies. Bake 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Makes 5 dozen. *Recipe courtesy of Total Gettysburg 2. Dr. Caleb Lansing’s Hardtack Wiping his glistening forehead with the back of his hand, Caleb looked through the haze of smoke at the rest of the camp. The men sat on the ground or overturned barrels, unwrapping small bundles of hardtack from their haversacks. He pulled out his own, placed it on a flat rock, and rammed a Sharp rifle butt onto it, breaking it into pieces. ~Wedded to War Hardtack was a staple food in the Union soldier’s diet, but notorious for being either rock hard or full of weevils. Imagine drilling and marching for miles with very little but hardtack to eat! Ingredients: butter for greasing the baking pan 5 cups all-purpose flour 1 TB baking powder 1 TB salt 1 2/3 cups water Preheat the oven to 450 F. Grease the baking sheet. In a medium sized bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and water. Stir the mixture with a wooden spoon. With freshly washed hands, squeeze the flour mixture with your fingers, this will be a very stiff dough. Flatten the dough to about 1/2 inch into a large rectangle. Using a knife, lightly trace lines into the dough to divide the pieces into 3 X 3″ square pieces. Use a toothpick to prick holes across the entire surface in neat rows 3/4 of an inch apart. Be sure the holes go all the way through the dough to the baking sheet. Bake the dough about 25 minutes or until lightly browned. Allow to cool 10 minutes. Remove the hardtack from the baking sheet with a metal spatula. Makes about 9 hard crackers. *Recipe courtesy of Total Gettysburg 3. Matthew O’Flannery’s Camp Potatoes We don’t get to see Matthew eating his camp potatoes with his fellow soldiers in New York’s 69th regiment in the novel, but as an Irishman, you can bet he was eating these as a welcome break from hardtack whenever potatoes were available. This recipe is a simple one, from Camp Fires and Camp Cooking, or Culinary Hints for the Soldier, by Capt. James M. Sanderson (1862): “Cut the vegetable into thin slices and throw them into cold water for half an hour; then put them into fat hissing hot and fry them until they acquire a golden hue. Some persons cut them only into quarters, but they are not near so crisp and nice.” Which Civil War recipe would you like to try? What food would you not want to live without during wartime? Find three more Civil War recipes to try here.

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