Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1883-08-30
Hard Tack.

AS write there lies before me on nv
table an innocent-looking cracker, which
l have faithfully preserved for years. 1t
is about the size and has the appearance
of an ordinary soda biscuit. If you take
it In your hand, you will find it somewhat
heavier than an ordinary biscuit, and if
you bite it-but, no; l will not let you bite
1t, for wish to see how long l can keep
It But II you were to reduce it to a fine
powder, you would find that it would alb
sorb a greater quantity of water than an
equal weight of ordinary flour. You
would also observe that it is very hard.
This you may, perhaps, think is to be at
tributed to its great age. But if you i'm
agine that its age is to be measured only
by the years which have elapsed since the
war. you are greatly mistaken; for there
was common belief among the boys that
our hard-tack had been baked long before
the commencement of the Christian eral
This opinion was based upon the fact that
the letters B. C. were stamped on many, if
not, indeed, all of the cracker boxes. To
be sure, there were some skeptics who
shook their heads. and maintained that
those mysterious letters were the initials
OF the name of some army contractor or
inspector of supplies, but the belief was
widespread and deep-seated that they
were certainly intended to set forth the
era in which our bread had been baked.
For our. hard-tack were very hard. 1t
was difficult to break them with the teeth.
Some of them you could not fracture
with your fist. Still, there was an i'm
mense amount of nOurishment in them
when once you had learned how to get at
it. 1t required experience and no little
hunger to enable one to appreciate hard
tack Alright, and it demanded no small
amount of inventive power to understand
how to cook hard-tack as they ought to be
cooked. If l remember correctly, in our
section of the army we had no less than
fifteen ways of preparing them. In other
parts, / understand, they had discovered
one or two more ways; but with us, fif-
teen WAS the limit of the culinary art
when hard tack was in the board.
On the march they were usually not
cooked at all, but eaten in the raw state.
In order, however, to make them some
what more palatable, you simply cut down
slice of nice fat pork, laid the pork on
your cracker, put spoonful of brown
sugar on top of the pork, and you had a
dish fit for a-soldier. OF course, the
pork ndu just come out OF tne pickle, and
was consequently quite raw. When we
halted for coffe, we sometimes had fricas-
seed hard-tack- prepared by toasting them
before the hot Goals. When, as was gen.
orally the case on a march, our hard-tack
had been broken into small pieces in our
haversacks, we soaked these in water and
fried them in pork fat, string well, and
seasoning with salt and suffers pepper.
thus making what was commonly known
as ''hishy-hashy," or 'hot fired stew"
Thus you see what vast and unsuspect- |
ed possibilities reside in this innocent |
looking three-and-a-half inch square hard |
tack lying here on my table before me.
Three like this specimen made a meal, |
and nine were ration; and this is what
fought the battles of the Union.-From
"Recollections of DrummeI-by," by Har-
~ N. Keffer, In st. Nicholas for Sept.