Recipes, Foods, and Remedies: N to S

Recipes, Foods, and Remedies:
N to S

Nutmeg Cookies
This cookie recipe has been slightly updated for today's tastes.

Ingredients:
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup milk
5 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Nutmeg (to taste)

Mix the butter and sugar together thoroughly and add the milk. Mix together the flour, baking powder, and nutmeg, and gradually add this to the butter mixture; mix well. Shape into balls, flatten each one and bake for about 20 minutes at 375°. This recipe makes about two and one-half dozen cookies.

Panda
A dish often served to troops during the War Between the States was "Panda", also known as "bully soup". A recipe from roughly 1800 calls for bread crumbs in a bowl with a glass of wine, rum or vinegar (to taste) stirred in with grated nutmeg, butter, sugar and spiced as one would wish. Boiling water was then to be added, taking care to maintain a soupy consistency. The military version substituted crushed and crumbled hardtack for the bread crumbs, with wine, ginger, and boiling water added.

Pennyroyal
(See Insect Repellant)

Peppermint
Peppermint is a mild bactericide, and has been used over the centuries as a cure for upset stomachs. It is effective when used even with mild cases of food poisoning (many "stomach flu" incidents that folks suffer are, in fact, mild cases of food poisoning; peppermint is helpful with such mild cases of food poisoning as well).

Peppermint can be readily grown at home. The plant grows and expands by sending out underground offshoots, much the same as with spearmint. Once a small stand of peppermint is established, it’s much like Johnson grass - almost impossible to get rid of. Plant the peppermint in a separate tub, window box, or set a tin shield into the ground totally surrounding it to keep it from taking over your herb garden or yard. When it matures, you may pick some of its leaves as it’s needed. Although it tends not to be quite so effective when picked and dried for storage when the weather is too inhospitable for it to grow, it is better to have dried leaves to use rather than none at all. Before the first frost, pick the leaves and string them on button thread or quilting thread and hang it in a dry area so the leaves are able to dry. One they have dried, bottle them for winter use.

Fresh peppermint should be used to treat a current problem with stomach upset. Crush the peppermint leaves into a wire basket strainer placed over the top of a pre-warmed mug, and then pour boiling water over the crushed leaves in the strainer. Let the brew steep until it cools to a point just slightly more than warm, which will render a strong peppermint taste and smell. Drink the brew without using any form of sweetener.

Poison Ivy or Poison Oak
Poison ivy leaves or poison oak leaves were once recommended to treat a variety of skin complaints, as well as muscle and joint ailments such as rheumatism, arthritis, bursitis, and pulled muscles. The leaves would be picked from the plant and rubbed vigorously at the point of the pain, and the condition would be considered gone when the rash finally left.

We don’t recommend this folk "cure" at all. So far as we know, there is no reason to believe this ever did work or even that it could work.

Pumpkin Bread
A great favorite in the South, pumpkin bread utilized the large pumpkin crop available in the early years of the War.

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 cup of cooked pumpkin, mashed
2 cups of flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg

Mix the eggs and pumpkin together. Then mix in the flour, sugar and nutmeg. Fold together well and put into a well-buttered 9" X 5" loaf pan. Bake at 350° for about an hour until the bread is ready to be removed from the oven.

Raspberry Jam
Jam was a rare sweet treat that kept well on long journeys.

Ingredients:
2 pounds firm, ripe raspberries
2 pounds sugar
Juice of 1/2 a lemon

Rinse the fruit and place in a large saucepan. Add the lemon juice and simmer until the fruit is soft and pulpy. Add the sugar and boil for about three minutes Test the jam after this time by lifting a little out of the pot with a wooden spoon; if a blob of jelly forms, the jam has reached setting point. This recipe should make about three one-pint jars.

Raspberry Tea
(See Tea)

Rations
In the back of "Hardee's Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics for the instruction, exercises and maneuvres of RIFLEMEN AND LIGHT INFANTRY Including school of the soldier and school of the company" by Brevet Lieut. W.J. Hardee are listed these rations:

Ration                       One Ration             or              100 Rations
Pork                               12 oz.                                       75 lbs.
Beef (salt) or                    20 oz.                                      125 lbs.
Beef (fresh)                      20 oz.                                      125 lbs.
Flour, or                          18 oz.                                       112 1/2 lbs.
Hard bread                     12 oz.                                       75 lbs.
Hard bread                      1 lb.                                          100 lbs.
Beans                               8 qts                                      15 lbs
Rice                                                                                10 lbs.
Coffee                                                                             10 lbs.
Sugar                                                                               15 lbs.
Vinegar                                                                            1 gal.
Candies                                                                            1-1/4 lbs.
Soap                                                                                4 lbs.
Salt                                                                                  2 qts.
Desiccated mixed
vegetables                      1 oz.                                          6 1/4 lbs.
Desiccated potatoes        1 1/2 oz.                                    9 2/3 lbs.

Rosemary
Wild rosemary, picked fresh, is used to reduce the inflammation of insect stings, as well as to help heal cuts and skin abrasions. Rosemary oil used to and still is recommended to be added to shampoo your hair, but there are some serious drawbacks to that. It may be causative in your developing high blood pressure, and can significantly elevate blood pressure in those with blood pressure problems. Rosemary oil should not be used at all by anyone with high blood pressure. Even folks taking medication against high blood pressure see their blood pressure go up when they use rosemary oil, even in shampoo.

Sallie Lunn Bread
This light sweet bread was named for the Englishwoman who first made it.

Ingredients:
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons shortening
1/2 ounce active dry yeast
3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 tablespoon sugar

Heat the milk and shortening together to the scalding point and then allow it to cool. Pour the milk into a bowl and add the remaining ingredients. Mix until smooth. Cover the bowl and leave in a warm place to rise for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Knock down the dough and put it in a greased pan, allowing it to rise for one more hour. Bake at 375° for about 45 minutes.

Shoe Blacking
"Liquid Shoe Blacking
"Take one pound of ivory black in powdered form, 12 ounces of molasses, two ounces sweet oil, 2 pints each of beer and vinegar. Mix thoroughly. Paste blacking can be made in the same way with the addition of sperm oil and oil of vitriol (concentrated sulfuric acid). The actual details on the mixing are not included as this is not really a ‘kitchen’ experiment (unless you wish to descend to the basement quickly after a spill)."
- Scientific American, March 1847

Short Bread
Short bread is of approximately the same antiquity as gingerbread. Shortbread is remarkably simple to make.

Ingredients:
1 cup of butter
1 1/2 cups of flour
1/2 cup of confectioner’s sugar

Mix then together and beat them for about ten minutes, and then bake at between 325° and 350° for 15 minutes or until lightly browned.

Spices
Some Federal soldiers were given culinary and medical / health advice in the same breath. Northern soldiers headed to participate in the Southern invasion were advised that "If you will learn to use cayenne pepper in place of black, you will find it a preventative of dysentery, and a cure for colds. An extra pinch of it in your breakfast will often break up a cold caught through the night; and a smart sprinkle of it in your liquid will relieve sickness caused by bad drinking water. Black pepper produces inflammation, red pepper heals it."

References to the periodical "The Southern Confederacy" are included exclusively thanks to the efforts of Vicki Betts of the Texas Rifles who has kindly published many of their articles on the CW-Reenactors List.

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