A Civil War Reenactor's Rations Quiz

Answer: a haversack

The haversack was usually a white or whitish linen or cotton pouch with a buttoned flap, or a black painted or rubber one with a buckled flap. It hung by one's side, and soon became greasy and dirty enough that it wasn't fit for much else. Reenactors can help keep food clean by putting it in regularly-washed calico bags or in clean cotton cloth or brown paper.

Answer: slab bacon

It was just called bacon then, but if one looks for slab bacon at specialty meat stores and finds it hanging at room temperature, you know you've found what you're looking for. Ask the butcher as well.

At a reenactment, slice it thin and fry it in a lightweight reproduction sheet-iron frying pan, or sharpen a stick, pierce each slice and cook it over the flames

Properly cured bacon should be able to withstand a weekend, or a week, or a summer, at normal summer temperatures, due to the salt and smoking. A half slab is 5-6 lbs., and a whole slab is twice that. Buy it unsliced and cut off as much as you think you'll eat over the weekend, then save the rest in a bug-free environment until the next reenactment. A refrigerator may be the best place, not for the temperature, but to keep the critters at bay. Wrap the rest in brown paper (cut up grocery bag) or in cloth, put it in your haversack, and slice it thin when mealtime comes at the reenactment.

Another option is true salt pork, salted to be kept at room temperature, not the chunks of fat sold in the refrigerator at the store, but it's even harder to find than slab bacon.

Answer: hardtack, also called hard crackers

There are two choices for a reenactor--find a place that sells real hardtack already made, or look for one of the many recipes online. Salt, flour and water were the basic ingredients, but getting that hard-to-crumble texture without having a brick is what requires skill, and modern recipes will discuss it. Hardtack wasn't really meant to be eaten by biting off a piece, so a big part of carrying rations is learning what to do to make it edible.

Answer: cornmeal

Also called "Indian meal" or just "Indian" in the period, it's another option for southern rations.

Answer: bake into cakes or boil into pudding

Carried in a small bag, with a bit of lard tossed in, cornmeal can be mixed with lard and water, kneaded together and formed into little cakes. They'd be called hoe cakes, johnny cakes or Indian cakes in the period, or probably other regional names too. They can be fried or baked over the fire. Lard or butter will make them hold together so much better, though it's possible--not easy but possible--to use just water and cornmeal. Another option is it boil cornmeal and water together in a cup, stirring constantly, to make what would be called hominy or pudding in the period.

Among the wrong answers, a batter of cornmeal, eggs, sugar and soda would be possible, but difficult under the circumstances to gather the ingredients, the pan and the oven, so not "easily edible." The other two show a misunderstanding of "corn" -- succotash requires fresh corn from the cob and corned beef uses salt rather than corn.

Answer: hard-packed brown sugar, molasses, rarely white sugar

Molasses would be hard to carry and would be more practical to issue to a cook, who could then use it up right way, or at least have a chance to store it in a crock. Brown sugar was another option and makes sense for soldiers on the march, both in the period and for reenactors. Period brown sugar was generally packed in a keg and dug out as needed, so it would be hard and clumpy, not the easy-to-pour kind found today. Muscovado that's dried into hard clumps would be an example. White sugar was more expensive in the 1860s because it needed refined.

It would be produced in "loaves," hard, cone-shaped pieces, that would need to be broken up. By the time it got to the individual soldier, the cone would be so smashed that smashed-up sugar cubes would be a passable modern substitute.

But you'd be living high on the hog to get white sugar; dark brown sugar in a hard lump would be more common.

Answer: stew or fry it alone or, better, with other ingredients

The simplest thing was to first break up the hardtack, by pounding with a rifle butt if necessary, then putting it in a lightweight sheet-iron frying pan that's easy to carry, with some water, sugar, meat, fruit, or any combination of whatever you had on hand. Even with nothing else, a little nicely browned warm cake was more appetizing. With other flavors, the hardtack would soak up the water, softening it almost into the consistency of dumplings or biscuits, and the various other flavors or ingredients would make a kind of stew. One could use anything from bacon with its grease for frying and flavor, to any dried fruit, to onions and other vegetables chopped fine, to just plain brown sugar and water. This solved the main problem with hardtack: its hardness. And it helped its bland flavor as well.

The other wrong answers would work in a desperate situation, or as the first step to frying or baking hardtack into something tastier, but cold, wet crackers are just as disgusting to eat as they sound, and a little bit of time and a fire can make hardtack not only easy to eat but actually taste good.

Answer: coffee or its substitutes

Soldiers loved coffee. There were even many substitutes when the real thing wasn't available -- roasted wheat, rye, peanuts, sweet potatoes, peas, chicory, or many other roasted substances that would pass for coffee's flavor, although they didn't contain coffee's caffeine. On the march, soldiers learned to drink their coffee black, perhaps sweetened. One boon to soldiers was canned extract or essence of coffee, which contained cream as well as sugar, in addition to quick coffee.

It just needed stirring into hot water to make coffee instantly. Though it was not issued, it was available for sale from sutlers or as a gift from home.

Instructions for reenactors who want to recreate it are available online.

Answer: foraging from civilian homes or gardens

Depending on the specific historic situation, a soldier on the march might have access to additional food from civilians, whether on the same side offering them willingly, or on the other side whose larders were raided without permission. The items would need to be in season -- no fresh cucumbers in February -- or they might also be properly preserved -- cucumber pickles year round.

Such foraged food can be included in the modern presentation of a historic soldier's rations, and might actually be important to teaching about a historic time and place, such as Confederate soldiers who marched into Maryland in the fall of 1862 and had to subsist on what they could find, primarily just green corn (corn on the cob) and apples.

Answer: pepper, purchased pepper sauce, mustard, potentially any period condiment -- if he could find or buy it in his historic situation

There's usually enough salt in the meat ration, but depending on his situation, a soldier might buy, find, borrow or share other condiments, including pepper and (red) pepper sauce, and potentially any common sauce of the era: lemon pickle, powdered cayenne pepper, dry or prepared mustard, granulated white sugar, dried fruit from raisins to apples (which could also be foraged), nutmeg, cinnamon, or potentially any condiment found in a period cookbook for civilian use. Such things would be a bit of luxury and only available to one who could afford to buy something a extra and who had opportunity to do so, but it was potentially possible in many historic situations.