Author: Basil Wilson Duke

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 9781230345192

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1867 edition. Excerpt: ...witnessed before. Soldiers, it is well known, never have any trouble about cooking meat; they can broil it on the coals, or, fixing it on a forked stick, roast it before a camp fire with perfect ease. So, no matter whether the meat issued them be bacon, or beef, or pork freshly slaughtered, they can speedily prepare it. An old campaigner will always contend that meat cooked in this way is the most palatable. Indeed it is hard to conceive of how to impart a more delicious flavor to fresh beef than, after a hard day's ride, by broiling it on a long stick before the right kind of a fire, taking care to pin pieces of fat upon it to make gravy; then with pepper and salt, which can be easily carried, a magnificent meal can be made, if enough is issued to keep a man cooking and eating half the night. Four or five pounds of fresh beef, thus prepared, will be mightily relished by a hungry man, but as it is easily digested he will soon become hungry again. It is the bread about which there is the trouble. Cavalry, doing such service as Morgan's did, can not carry hard tack about with them very well, nor was bread ready cooked generally found in any neighborhood (south of the Ohio) in sufficient quantities to supply a brigade of soldiers. Houses were not always conveniently near to the camps where they could have bread cooked, and as they would have it, or would not do without it many days in succession, they were thrown upon their own resources, and compelled to make it themselves, notwithstanding their lack of proper utensils. I had often seen bread baked upon a flat rock, or a board, or by twisting it around a ramrod or stick, and holding it to the fire, but one method of baking corn bread was practiced successfully upon this march which I had...