A Taste for War: A Culinary History of the Blue and the Gray.(Book Review)

A Taste for War: A Culinary History of the Blue and the Gray. William C. Davis. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2003.

The Civil War is perhaps the most studied event in American history. For more than a century, historians have combed through the letters and diaries of Billy Yank and Johnny Reb, exploring nearly every aspect of their lives. Oddly enough, these scholars have neglected one topic of intense interest to the soldiers themselves: food. In A Taste for War: The Culinary History of the Blue and the Gray, the eminent Civil War historian William C. Davis, who teaches at Virginia Tech, undertakes the first major study of what the soldiers ate and what they thought about it.

Davis notes that neither the Union nor the Confederacy was prepared to feed a mass conscript army. A modern understanding of nutrition was in its infancy, as were food preservation techniques. Inadequate supply systems, mismanagement, and corruption severely hindered efforts to nourish the troops. Foodstuffs often arrived in camp spoiled, damaged, or infested with vermin. Once the provisions reached the soldiers, they scarcely knew how to prepare meals. In Victorian America, cooking was "degrading work to be done by slaves or women" (69), according to Davis. He describes Civil War soldiers as "culinary virgins" (3). "When they put food over fire," he writes, "these neophytes all too often ruined it" (15).

Despite America's vast agricultural abundance, Davis notes that soldiers on both sides often went hungry. "Tens of thousands of soldiers were quite literally dying for a meal," claims the author (126). On the march, the standard fare was hardtack, a tasteless wheat cracker Davis describes as "imperishable, indestructible, and practically inedible" (41). Despite official disapproval, soldiers often scoured the local countryside in search of sustenance. Union soldiers considered any edible ...