Feeding Tommy: Battlefield Recipes from the First World War
192
Feeding Tommy: Battlefield Recipes from the First World War
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Overview
"I found to my delight that I had stumbled across a kind of soup kitchen. The Tommy in charge was stirring a copperful of 'Shackles' (soup made from the very dregs of army cooking and stirred with a stick). I must have looked in need of extra nourishment for he said 'D'yer want a drop, son?' 'Yes please' I replied if you can spare it.' The warmth and zest from that beefy liquid, unexpected as it was, compelled me to accept a second bowlful which I drank with the same enthusiasm as the first." - George Coppard, from With A Machine Gun to Cambrai.
From bully beef to Tickler's jam, explore what kept Tommy Atkins fed in the trenches by reading recipes and learning how meals were made just yards from the enemy. In this book Andrew Robertshaw combines history, recipes and historical experiments to reveal how Army Cooks in the First World War fed millions of men everyday against the odds.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780752492841 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 05/15/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
| Age Range: | 12 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Feeding Tommy
Battlefield Recipes From the First World War
By Andrew Robertshaw
The History Press
Copyright © 2013 Andrew RobertshawAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-9284-1
CHAPTER 1
Profile of an Army Cook
MAXIMS A SERGEANT COOK SHOULD REMEMBER
Do not boil cabbage with the lid on
Do not let your Company Cook be master
Do not make tea hours before it is wanted
Do not boil a stew, it is only required to simmer
Do not get nervous, it upsets everything
Do not cut bacon too thick for frying
Do not leave vegetables to soak overnight
Do not leave stews to clean themselves
IT IS VERY difficult to say what type of soldier was likely to become a cook in the army. There was no official Army Catering Corps until 1941, although from 1870 it was dictated that 'one sergeant cook is to be appointed to every regiment of cavalry, battalion of infantry ... brigade of artillery or command of engineers or military train ...'.
Training was often haphazard and the cooks selected were all too often soldiers that NCOs wanted to remove from the ranks because they were unskilled or difficult. This situation was made worse if the soldier lacked interest or aptitude in his new trade, as many of them did. From 1889, the Queen's Regulations and Orders stated that non-commissioned officers could not hold the appointment of cook without undergoing a course of training at the 'Instructional Kitchen at Aldershot'. The Adjutant-General stated that the candidate should fulfil certain conditions, which included being 'steady and trustworthy' to 'write with accuracy and quickness', and that they should have 'five years to serve'. His duties, as laid out in the Queen's Regulations, include 'personally superintending all cooking done in Regimental Cookhouses', 'to instruct those under him in all operations connected with cookery' and 'he will enforce order, punctuality and cleanliness'. The result was great improvement in the standard of rations and by 1896, the first Army Cookery Competition was held at Aldershot. At the time, Britain's volunteer army was tiny by comparison with her European allies and potential enemies with their vast conscript armies. What could be achieved by the peacetime British Imperial Police Force would be challenged by any rapid expansion of the army.
A CULINARY TEST AS TAKEN BY PTE A.E. PURSSELL,
NO. 39246, 13TH BEDFORDS BATT., NO 1 SECTION, EASTERN COMMAND, SCHOOL OF COOKERY, PRITSLADE, SUSSEX, 1917
Ques: What does the modified field ration consist of?
Ans:
14oz of bread
12oz of meat
2oz of sugar
2oz of bacon
½oz tea
¼oz salt
5½ in cash per man per day
10½oz of flour can be drawn down in lieu of bread
Ques: How does a cook obtain his pay?
Ans:
By the sale of by products (not including swill)
11)- realised for 100 men in mess entitles a cook to obtain 6d per day
9)- realised entitles him to 3d per day Less than 9/- he gets nothing
Ques: When do you get bacon?
Ans: Every other morning
Ques: How much dripping should each ration produce?
Ans: A least ½oz
Ques: What are by products used for?
Ans: 1st Class dripping Pastry
Issues in lieu of margarine
All other dripping is sold for the extraction of glycerines, which is turned into nitroglycerine for high explosive shells
Bones
Sweated Stuff For agricultural purposes
Ques: How much meat is saved daily in each ration?
Ans: About 2oz which provide rissoles, sausages, etc for breakfast
Ques: What are the chief duties of a cook?
Ans: Cleanliness, Economy, Punctuality, Simmer, Skim, Scour, System
Ques: What number are the following regulated to cook for?
Ans:
Travelling Cooker 252 men
Aldershot Oven220 men
Soyer Stove 50 men (make tea for about 90)
Camp Kettle 15 without vegetables 8 with vegetables
Ques: Give the ingredients for scones for 30 men?
Ans:
1½lb flour
¾lb breadcrumbs
6oz dripping
6oz sugar
¾oz of farta (?)
¾oz carbonated soda
Ques: How much water & tea is required to make tea for 100 men?
Ans: 13 gallons of water, 1lb of tea
Ques: What is dripping?
Ans: Dripping is the oil extracted from the ration during the process of cooking it can be classed under 2 heads namely first & second class it is used for
1) Pastes [pastry]
2) Puddings
3) Issued in lieu of margarine (breakfast, tea)
4) Frying purposes
Ques: What amount is required for 100 men of the following:
Ans:
Roast meat 70lb 10oz per man
Baked meat 70lb 10oz per man
All other dinners 60lb 9oz per man
Sausages & Rissoles 21lb 4oz per man
Steaks 25lb 4oz per man
Mutton Chops 31¼lb 5oz per man
[Sadly, we do not know how Pte Purssell scored in this test!]
Only three years later, the war against the Boers in South Africa plunged Britain and the Empire into a three-year conflict, during which an army of half a million men was deployed. These vast expansions in the size of the forces proved a mammoth task in terms of catering, especially as so many of the new cooks detailed from the ranks were untrained. However, no major reform took place between the end of the Anglo-Boer War in 1902 and the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. Cooks remained regimental soldiers who were trained in peacetime by the Army Service Corps at the Army Cookery School at Aldershot. In wartime this became somewhat more ad hoc, and although numerous cookery schools were established during the war, and an Inspector of Catering appointed in 1914, not all cooks had the opportunity to attend a course. The Army Catering Corps was not established until 1941 and, until then, there was no centralised system of army cooks. In 1916, on the Somme, Private Dolden of the London Scottish reported that:
One of the Company cooks was sent to a neighbouring village to cook for a party of Scottish who were there on a bombing course. Lance Corporal Arnot, who was in charge of 'D' Company cooker, asked me therefore, if I would temporarily fill the vacancy ... I had not the faintest idea about cooking, but ignorance seemed to be the only qualification for a job in the army.
His training was 'on the job', although he clearly benefitted, as did the soldiers he fed, from enthusiasm and professional pride combined with hard work.
MANUAL OF MILITARY COOKING AND DIETARY, 1918
DUTIES OF SERJEANT-COOK AND COOKS
The serjeant-cook will have complete control over the cooks of his regiment or battalion, who should receive their orders from him.
He will detail each cook to the apparatus suitable for preparing the various dishes required for the following day, dividing the work so that each man may know what he has to do, in addition to the cooking.
He will afford every facility for varying the diet of the several messes, so that each may have a complete change daily throughout the week; and will arrange that the messes using the oven one day shall have use of the boilers the next day, and so on.
He will be personally responsible that no misappropriation of any kind whatever takes place, and should be present when the milk is issued with a list of quantities ordered, to ensure that each mess receives the correct amount.
Groceries should be received by the serjeant-cook, who will weigh each day the quantities of the various articles received for each mess, and satisfy himself that they agree with the diet sheet and are the correct quantities for the number of men in mess. He will lock them up and retain the key. He will issue the various articles to each cook, and will see that the full quantity as issued is actually used, and that it is prepared by the cooks according to the instructions given.
When imparting instructions, the serjeant cook should illustrate his meaning by taking any particular dish and preparing it himself, giving full details during its preparation. When at some future time the same dish is being prepared, he will see that his previous instructions are carried out, checking errors on the part of the cook. Patience and tact are required, especially with young soldiers, in training them in their duties as cooks.
Assistant cooks should be trained by the serjeant-cook with a view to replacing the cooks when required.
The meat when issued to the cook will be placed in the dish belonging to the particular mess for which it is intended, care being taken to mark the dish with the number of the mess.
When nets are used for vegetables, &c., a tablet or piece of wood, with the number of each mess plainly marked thereon, should be attached to each.
Cooks should not be allowed to have their meals in the cookhouse.
Smoking is not permitted in the kitchens.
From 'Manual of Military Cooking and Dietary, 1918'.
Another cook had a more conventional form of training: Christopher Leveratt registered for the Derby scheme as a potential recruit on 10 December 1915 and he was called up in June of the following year. At the time he was 29 years old, a married man with three children living in South Hampstead, London and a trained butcher. Despite his place of residence, he was posted to the Worcestershire Regiment. This was a common occurrence by 1916, by which time casualties and variation in the numbers of men coming forward as volunteers meant that the War Office simply assigned recruits to units, regardless of their location. Between 3 August and 12 September 1916, he attended a cooking course for army cooks at Weymouth. We can presume his selection for the course was due to his trade as butcher. This thirty-nine-day course appears to have been very thorough. Private Leveratt's Log Book gives a breakdown of a Company cook's day. This begins at 5.30 a.m. with reveille (well before the other men were woken), followed by lighting fires at 6 a.m. and breakfast at 7 a.m. What follows is a programme of daily activity that details what should be happening in the kitchen every hour of the day. Such a regimen would have applied in theory to all army cooks.
THE COOK'S DAY
5.30 Light fires for Breakfast and open windows.
6.00 Prepare meat for any
Puddings, Pies or Stews.
7.00 Cook Breakfast, prepare coffee or tea.
7.30 Light fires required for dinner, make coffee or tea.
7.45 Send up breakfast and close cookhouse during breakfast.
8.30 Prepare dinner and give practical instruction for assistant cooks.
9.30 Inspect stock pot and see that bones are small.
10.00 Make dripping and label 1st and 2nd class.
10.30 Inspect cookhouse and see that everything is clean.
11.00 Inspect dinners and point out any mistakes.
11.30 Place on potatoes etc for dinner.
12.00 Carving to be commenced if
Roast or Baked meat.
12.30 Dinners to be laid out in the respective messes for inspection.
12.40 Send up dinners, fill up boilers and draw fires not required.
2.00 Sergt Cooks take over groceries etc, check them, hands over required ingredients to cooks and locks up remainder.
2.15 Prepare next days food as far as possible, sausages, etc
3.30 Make soup for evening and prepare for tea.
4.30 Make tea.
4.45 Serve tea, lay fires for next morning. First thoroughly cleaning the apparatus and lock up the cookhouse for the day.
Note Fat to be skimmed from all stews, stock pot etc, during the process of cooking.
The above is a rough idea of the duties for the cooks that must be verified [varied] according to conditions prevailing in the battalion.
From Log Book of Cpl P.R. Froud, Feb. 1917
Even with a large team of cooks, the Camp Kitchen was not a place to take it easy and although the cooks would have avoided at least some duties, such as guards, they would be expected to be fighting soldiers. There are frequent accounts of units in extreme circumstances calling upon the cooks and drivers to put up a defence; this would require weapons training and one wonders how they managed to fit this in. It may, however, have been a welcome change from the endless round of preparation, cooking and cleaning called for in the cookhouse.
MANUAL OF MILITARY COOKING AND DIETARY, 1918
KITCHENS
Everything connected with the kitchen should be scrupulously clean.
The walls of the kitchen will be swept in the early morning before they become damp from steam.
The windows will be cleaned at least once a week; during the day they will be kept open at the top, to ventilate the kitchen and to allow steam to escape.
A few pages later in Leveratt's Log Book, the kitchen rules would be familiar to any modern budding chef. Smoking is strictly forbidden, taps should not be 'unattended when turned on' and there should be 'no sitting down or lounging on tables'. No 'taking any food except for tasting purposes' and it was not permitted to leave the 'kitchen without permission'. The last item on the list sounds very familiar: a cook must not leave the 'Sink Dirty'.
Cooks were expected to be familiar with the various types of ingredients they would be presented with, and as part of their training they learned the various portions of animals, so they could detect substandard meat and, potentially, act as butchers. The 'Notes With Regard To Meat Inspection' is a background for cooks and makes it clear that live, dead and frozen meat may be provided and the cook must be ready to inspect and approve each category.
The manual covers the preparation and cooking of vegetables in a few pages, but encourages cooks to add nettles, sweet docks, wild mushrooms and even marigold flowers to dishes. This might come as a surprise, but when one considers the various situations an army cook might find himself preparing food in, looking to the natural environment makes sense.
All the military manuals of cookery stress the importance of a good 'Stock Pot', as stock is the base ingredient of soups and gravies. Although Oxo and other prepared cubes were available in the Great War, it was clearly preferable for the cooks to prepare their own stock from the leftover food in the kitchen.
THE STOCK POT
A stock pot should be established in every barracks and field kitchen to provide good stock which forms the basis of all soups, gravies, sauces, etc. it consists of a large boiler or a large cooking utensil, into which should be placed all available bones etc. To start the stock pot it should be 3 parts full of water then collect all bones that are cut from the ration meat, chop them up small and place in the boiler and allow to simmer gently from 6 to 8 hours. They should be allowed to simmer longer if possible, so as to obtain all the nutriment possible from them. Skim off any fat as it appears on the surface. The bones should be taken out every night and placed into bags and sold. The stock should be poured into a clean vessel, and the stock pot thoroughly cleaned out and turned upside down to air.
The next day fresh bones should be used and the stock remaining from the previous day poured back into the stock pot, with fresh water added as required and carried on in this manner from day to day.
In small units where the bones are small in quantity they may be kept for 3 days, but should be distinctly marked so that at the end of the third day they may be placed in sacks and sold. They should be removed from the stock each night, and hung in a dry, cool place. Every effort should be made in cookhouses to reserve a special vessel for keeping stock, in order that the surplus portion of the unused stock may be put away from day to day. This process adds considerably to the stock made.
From Log Book of Cpl P.R. Froud, Feb. 1917
In the days before the modern problems with animal food being contaminated with human food waste, cooks were responsible for the recovery of 'swill'. The 'Swill Tub' contained all waste food and all vegetable cuttings and scrapings. The contents of the tub were sold to farmers and the money credited to the mess account. One wartime source indicates that a monthly contract with a farmer, based on a mess of 100 men, should produce 10s (50p). To put this in context, a private soldier earned 1s (5p) per day. Another source of income was 'dripping' (oil and fat) recovered from cooking. Some was used for future food preparation but the bulk could be clarified and sold. There were two classes of dripping, the best being from meat suet and the other from roasting and the preparation of stock.
SWILL TUB
The swill tub is a receptacle for all waste food stuffs collected after meals and all cuttings of vegetables in preparation. It should be placed as far from the kitchen as circumstance will admit and will thereby assure freedom from smells and in the presence of flies kept down, it should be at least 60 yards from cookhouse.
Indications
A study of the swill tub will be found to show the following 1st If an excess of food has been prepared the swill tubs will be full.
2nd Whether the men are tired of any one dish.
3rd If food is badly cooked.
BY PRODUCTS
DRIPPING BONES, CRACKLING, ETC
These things are used for making high explosives or soap or many other things useful for the progress of War:
Dripping Bones are worth 48 per ton
Bones 6 per ton
Dry bones and marrow 7 per ton
Crackling if pressed 3 10s per ton
Crackling if not pressed 9 10s per ton
One man's ration of meat, cook should save 1oz dripping per day and not less than ½oz a cook.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Feeding Tommy by Andrew Robertshaw. Copyright © 2013 Andrew Robertshaw. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
Preface,
Introduction,
Part One,
Profile of an Army Cook,
The Army Ration,
From the Mess Tin to the Mess Hall,
Conclusion,
Part Two,
A Collection of Tommy's Battlefield Recipes,
Select Bibliography,
Glossary of culinary terms,
Notes,
Plate Section (Colour),
Plate Section (Mono),
Copyright,