John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life

Boiled potatoes were furnished us occasionally in settled camp. On the march we varied the programme by frying them. Onions, in my own company at least, were a great rarity, but highly appreciated when they did appear, even in homceopathic quantities. They were pretty sure to appear on the army table, fried.

Split peas were also drawn by the quartermaster now and then, and stewed with pork by the cooks for supper, making pea-soup, or “Peas on a Trencher” ; but if my memory serves me right, they were a dish in no great favor, even when they were not burned in cooking, which was usually their fate.

The dried-apple ration was supplied by the government, “to swell the ranks of the army,” as some one wittily said. There seemed but one practicable way in which this could be prepared, and that was to stew it; thus cooked it made a sauce for hardtack. Sometimes dried peaches were furnished instead, but of such a poor quality that the apples, with the fifty per cent of skins and hulls which they contained, were considered far preferable.

At remote intervals the cooks gave for supper a dish of boiled rice (burned, of course), a sergeant spooning out a scanty allowance of molasses to bear it company.

Occasionally, a ration of what was known as desiccated vegetables was dealt out. This consisted of a small piece per man, an ounce in weight and two or three inches cube of a sheet or block of vegetables, which had been prepared, and apparently kiln-dried, as sanitary fodder for the soldiers. In composition it looked not unlike the large cheeses of beefscraps that are seen in the markets. When put in soak for a time, so perfectly had it been dried and so firmly pressed that it swelled to an amazing extent, attaining to several