Video
Historic Cooking Demonstration
Transcript
[audio description] Against a black backdrop the National Park Service Arrowhead logo stands above the words Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park. Against a dark gray backdrop are the words the 157th Commemoration of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain Historic Cooking Demonstration presented by Volunteer Andy Cole.
Hello and welcome to Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park. My name is Andy Cole and I’m one of the volunteers here. And what I am talking to you today is about FOOD. And you know here I stand in front of you in my Union uniform. I’ve got a dark blue jacket, sky blue trousers with my campfire and comrades here in the background. And the old adage, “an army marches on its stomach,” has always been true. And especially in this campaign it is very important. Because if you look at the Battle for Kennesaw Mountain, it's right here by the railroad and the railroad is going to be the key to this entire campaign. Because with Sherman’s army and as I said, we are Union soldiers today, it took around 100 box cars a day to supply Sherman’s army. And that's going to be everything from clothing to ammunition and very importantly... ...food. One of the things I’m holding right here this is a hard tack cracker. Now hard tack [clank, clank, clank] by its name ... is hard and this is going to be the basic bread ration for the Union soldier. The Union soldier was given six to eight of these a day. For the Confederate, he would have been have been given cornmeal many times, as his bread ration and hard tack. While this seems almost counterintuitive that this is useful. This is actually a very useful way to carry your bread. Number one: if you keep it good and dry it's going to last, well, there are still museums that have hard tack from the Civil War. They've got them in their museums to this day and it's probably just as bland as it was on day one. But with the hard tack, it's not necessarily the eating of the hard tack. See the trick here is if you see behind me...I’m going to shift over here. I’ve got some of the cooking equipment that you would see a, not necessarily, a Civil War soldier would have but especially a soldier who's in the artillery. We can carry a little bit more than say an infantryman would, who he has to carry everything on his back. So as an artilleryman, in the far, on your screen, the right, I have my haversack, that's my food bag. That's where I’m going to carry around two to three days’ worth of food or whatever was issued to me at the time. Now when I’m issued my food, I have a choice. I can either go ahead and just eat it all then and hope to find some food later on. Or I can try and parcel it out day by day. Now with the soldiers there weren't, especially on campaign, there weren't cooks who were assigned duty. So, soldiers would form what's called a mess. A mess of soldiers would get together to divide up the tasks. One of you go chop wood, one of you go get water, and everybody work together in order to prepare dinner. Now in this case, what I have is, I’ve got in right in front on the fire pit, I’ve got my salt pork. Now this is not the typical fatback that we would think of today. Salt pork was literally just cuts of pork that were soaked in a salty brine and that's going to preserve it. And so, you've got your salt pork and hard tack. These are two of the staples that we're going to eat. And what you do is you fry up your salt pork and you take that grease, you crumble up your crackers, you moisten them, crumble them up, and then you fry them in the grease making something called “skilly gilly.” Now I know this sounds wonderful to you and it's actually quite filling when it finally hits your stomach. And it gives, the salt does give this a bit of flavor. Additionally, you see right here at my foot, I’ve got some onions which would have been something the soldiers would have been issued. And apples. Now an interesting thing people talk about eating seasonally. Well, if you look at what the Civil War soldier did, he ate seasonally. So, when stuff comes in, when crops come into, into season you begin to see Civil War soldiers write about, hey we were eating this food. And so, as the soldiers are moving through Georgia and more and more things are becoming ripe, you're seeing the soldiers eating a lot of food, a lot of different food a variety you wouldn't think of. Now in my mess kettles here, I have beans. Beans are going to be the main vegetable that the Union soldier would have. For the Confederates, it would be peas. And then back here in the back, one of my comrades, he has been grinding coffee. The Union soldier was issued coffee. You'd argue it's the most important drink that they would have had. And they issued it whole bean. And what you do is you grind up the coffee, then you pour it into some boiling water, just pour all the grounds in there, boil the grounds. And then you're thinking, “okay well how do you filter that out?” Well there's actually a method developed by French chef where you take the boiled coffee and then you pour cold water on top of it and it settles the grounds to the bottom. Now and so these are going to be kind of things were issued. Now one of the things I haven't talked about what's called foraging. Foraging is a very simple concept. You have a chicken; I have a gun. I now have your chicken. And so, both sides North and South are going to forage liberally off the countryside. Additionally the armies would herd cows to the army, slaughter them, and one soldier said, (man in chair) “Tonight we were issued fresh beef still quivering from the butcher's knife.” So, there's a lot more variety in the soldier's diet than just, I mean granted, if soldiers aren't complaining about food something is wrong. There are songs about hard tack. There are songs about army beans. I’ve got my army beans, they're going in the mess kettle, they've been going since last night. There's songs about goober peas. That you know this food is always on their mind and they're always writing home saying send us something spicy, something sweet, something different, something that could vary our diet. Because this does get, all the frying and all the boiling, does get boring after a while. So, with that being said, folks we hope you've learned a little bit about the Civil War soldiers' fare, especially here at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield. Want to thank you for watching this program. If you get a chance like us on multiple social media platforms because there's going to be tons of videos that are going to be commemorating the 157th Battle Anniversary. Have a great day!
[audio description] Against a dark gray backdrop are the words Thank You for joining us for the 157th Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. For more programs please like and subscribe to our social media sites.
Description
[Sat 3:00 pm ET] Napoleon said that “An Army marches on its stomach.” It was no different during the American Civil War. Please join volunteer Andy Cole as he discusses cooking during the Civil War and how food was influenced by the area, season, and availability and how food played a major role during the war.
Duration
7 minutes, 28 seconds
Credit
NPS/ A.Cole
Date Created
06/26/2021
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