Maria Godoy investigates the culinary hardships of Civil War soldiers:
Insects and other critters commonly made it into Union soldiers’ meals in the form of hardtack — a stiff, flavorless cracker that could cost you a tooth if you bit it into it. (The biscuit was meant to be softened by dipping it in stew or coffee.) Along with salt pork or beef, hardtack — which the soldiers called “worm castles” or “teeth dullers” — was a staple of soldiers’ rucksacks. Yum…
The boys in Union blue also got dried navy beans and, occasionally, a “treat” of sorts: dehydrated potatoes, fruit and other items the soldiers jokingly called “desecrated” vegetables (perhaps because their flavor violated the laws of nature?). At least the North had coffee — though it was a brew “you probably wouldn’t recognize in New York,” as 16-year-old Union soldier Charles Nott wrote home. “Boiled in an open kettle, and about the color of a brownstone front, it was nevertheless … the only warm thing we had.”
Confederate soldiers weren’t so lucky: Union blockades kept coffee, flour and other goods from reaching the South. Those jonesing for a cup of joe had to make do with substitutes brewed from peanuts, chicory, rye, peas, dried apples — pretty much anything they could get their hands on.
(Photo: “Camp of 71st New Vols. Cook house Soldiers getting dinner ready,” via the Library of Congress)
The Dish 