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Book Reviews These are some reviews from a recent issue of
The Civil War News:
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A Taste For War—The Culinary History of the Blue and the Gray
by William C. Davis.
Illustrated, notes, bibliography, recipes, index, 225 pp., 2003. Stackpole Books, 5067 Ritter Rd., Mechanicsburg, PA 17055, $26.95 plus shipping.
It is best to read this book on a full stomach. Also, you might not want to eat after reading descriptions of how a Civil War cook is boiling some mass of meat and wondering if and when it will fall apart so the inside can cook properly. Nor will reenactors looking for some authentic fare in the field feel good about the diary entry of a man hoping the cooks had washed their hands, but that he had not seen any of them ever personally perform the sanitary chore. Nor will reenactors likely want to recreate salt beef after it is described by someone who ate it as “the vilest ration distributed to the soldiers.” As Davis points out, it seems unusual that two armies which went to such great lengths to figure out ways to kill each other did so little to figure out ways to keep their own men properly fed. While Napoleon had pointed out nearly 50 years earlier that “an army marches on its stomach,” both Union and Confederate officials did little during the war to assure that their men were properly fed. The Union did make a larger effort to centralize the cooking chores and train cooks. But even their best efforts were inadequate as noted by diary entries of the men who complained about what they were being fed. The Confederate soldier fared even worse. There seems to have been little organization to their cooking. Most men ate in small, thrown-together messes that required many more campfires. More importantly, men had no training in cooking so trial and error resulted in many ruined rations — if the rations were decent to eat in the first place. The Confederates’ largest obstacle was the lack of an efficient method to gather and then distribute food — the same problem that plagued their ability to distribute other items of supply. Davis looks at the food system for both soldiers and prisoners and debunks the long-stated myth that Union prisoners in Confederate prison camps were purposely starved. He found only two days where rations were not issued and those days were because weather had kept the supplies from arriving. He points out that the guards had the same rations as the prisoners. Davis did find intentional mistreatment by Union prison camp officials who cut Confederate rations on the pretense that they needed no extra calories since they were leading a sedentary lifestyle. Squeamish readers are hereby warned. Rats, cats, and dogs were occasionally on the menu. One famous diarist, Barry Benson, likened the taste of roasted rat to squirrel. Others said it tasted like, of course, chicken. Davis ends the book with 53 pages of recipes for biscuits, breads, soups, meats and sauces — all supposedly based on some Civil War reference he found. Perhaps mindful that many a soldier ended up with stomach aches and much worse, Davis also warns that anyone trying to actually eat his recipes do so at his own risk. This is a handy book for reenactors and an informative book for armchair historians looking for something other than battlefield narratives.
Clint Johnson
Clint Johnson's latest book is: Bull’s-Eyes And Misfires: 50 People Whose Obscure Efforts Shaped The American Civil War.
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