Union, Confederate, & on the Frontier

The first thing to remember when thinking about our ancestors’ foods is that the diet was significantly different from one area of the country to another—north, south, east, west, city, farm, frontier. During this Civil War period, cooking was done in a stone or brick fireplace with an oven compartment or even over an open fire on the frontier, although very wealthy city families might have a wood-burning cast iron stove.
Meats ranged from all sorts of seafood to beef, sheep, pigs, and poultry. In less settled areas, meats were more likely to be whatever fish and/or wild game was available—venison, rabbit, squirrel, quail, pheasant, passenger pigeon, etc. Fresh produce was most frequently raised by the family or harvested from nature (ex. berries in season). In cities, especially among wealthy families, cane sugar was available. In more remote areas and among poorer homes, bee-sweetnin’ (honey), tree-sweetnin’ (maple syrup and sugar), and molasses were much more common.
"Recipes" for these foods were common during the 1860’s. At that time, there were few printed cookbooks, and "receipts" for cooking consisted most often of things learned about cooking as a youngster. There were also "receipts" collected personally in a scrapbook or journal-type book. Recipes were either handwritten on a paper by oneself, a neighbor, a friend, or a relative and pasted into the book (with home-made paste unless one was very wealthy), or occasionally retrieved already printed from a newspaper and pasted into the book.

In cases of personally collected "receipts," they were usually arranged in the book in the order received. These were usually only a list of ingredients with no directions for preparation unless there was an unusual procedure involved. The cook was expected to remember what to do with the ingredients in whatever type of recipe it was.
In the few printed cookbooks of the time, receipts were almost always simply written as a paragraph with no list of ingredients as we are used to seeing today. Even in printed cookbooks, directions tended to be scant and often there was no comment as to whether the oven or fire should be warm, moderate, or hot; recipes simply said "bake" or "roast" or "cook."
There were frequently different versions of the same dish for family and for company. The company foods were richer in butter, cream, eggs, and sugar—and more expensive that way. The important thing, especially in less settled areas, was that nothing be wasted!
These "receipts" represent many areas of the country, both at home and in the army. Many cooking terms, measurements, implements, and ingredients were different. Herbs were used for both foods and medical purposes (in the home, in the barn and on the trail). Methods of preserving foods usually did not include cooling (except in the "spring house" method of cooling foods by keeping them in cold active spring water). Instead foods were corned or pickled, dried, canned, or preserved in some form of alcohol.
These recipes have been rewritten to list ingredients first as we are now accustomed to this format. Some of the original measures have been used (some with equivalents in parentheses).