In 1861, hundreds of thousands of young American men left home
to fight in the Civil War. And to their surprise, when it came
to cooking, they were expected to fend for themselves. The
result was some of the worst food Americans have ever eaten. The
millions of soldiers who fought in the Civil War were almost all
what Virginia Tech historian William Davis calls "culinary
virgins," men used to eating what their mothers or wives put on
the table but largely unfamiliar with how it got there. "Cooking
was simply not a manly pastime," says Davis. Trial by fire.
Without cookbooks or supervision, the men slowly learned to boil
and fry for themselves. "It was a case of learning by doing.
They had a mortal fear of eating something undercooked. They
were terrified of eating raw meat," says Davis. Given the state
of preserved meat, they were right to be afraid. Salted pork and
beef often had to be scraped free of "rust"--mold--and maggots,
then soaked overnight or boiled to unrecognizability. The
typical Union soldier's