Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-12-28

a LOT of new enterprises looking
"a to the quicker and better feeding
"A of our soldiers during travel. in
Il ~ the field and in barracks, are
being inaugurated by Gen.
Henry G. Sharpe, commissary general of
the army with whom 1 spent an enter
tanning afternoon this week.
There is an old saying that an army
travels on its belly; and 1t is Gen.
Sharpes function to furnish the belly
timber of our terrestrial fighting body
He is the caterer for 10000 hungry men,
and it is big item to lis credit that
when the adjutant general-seeking the
cause Of desertions-took his recent CEN
sus of soldiers grievances he found no
grumbling about the quality of the prov
ender supplied.
Cooking Without Fire.
Apparatus that will keep a moving
company's food steaming hot fifteen hours
after leaving the fire is one of the inter
esting novelties which Gen. Sharpe and
his assistants have recently perfected.
| One hundred of these "fireless cookers"
as they are called. are now being manu-
| featured and will be issued to the army
soon after the first of the new year. In
kitchen ice box. being designed to keep
heat in instead of out, Each is a box
about as large as a medium-siz trunk
| and thickly lined with magnesium ashes
| tos Inside there is room for two cubicaL
| nine-gallon kettles. thirteen inches in each
dimension. Their lids are Theoretically
| sealed down by aid of eccentric levers on
| the top. This mechanism prevents heat
escaping through openings around the
Lii L~- Il ;.%1 49,,
sides of the kettles is retained for a re-
| markable length of time by the mag
| nesium asbestos insulation of the inclosing
| chest. One kettle is filled with meat and
| the other with vegetables. Both are
placed upon the fire until their internal
heat is 2l2 degrees Fahrenheit This
thorough permeation of heat occurs to
the vegetables within five to ten minutes :;
| to the meat within fifteen to twenty. AL
though the cooking has by this time only
commenced. both lids are clamped down
and the kettles are shut up securely in
| their chest. The latter. loaded upon an
army wagon. starts at once upon the
| march. The food within continues to
cook by its own conserved heat, but does
not get overdone-simpy keeps warm. If
| the kettles. Immediately after leaving the
| fire, as above, are clamped and packed,
and If the containing chest is placed at
| once in a cold storage warehouse, the
| cooking will continue lust the same. At
| the end of fifteen hours the food will be
steaming at 115 degrees Fahrenheit Ex-
| periments have proved this beyond doubt.
| One of the experimental forms of this
| device tested in cold storage has retained
| its heat above this temperature for thir-
| ty-eight hours. but the insulation had to
| be so thick that 1t made the chests too
| cumbersome. A fifteen-hour limit was
| found to be sufficient. as an army almost
| ALWAYS pauses at least once in this period.
| Then the cooks will have time to build a
| fire and merely start the cooking. which
will be finished automatically, so to speak.
while the march is being resumed. In a
| very short while hot meals for the whole
| of the following day can be prepared.
| Two of these outfits are to be supplied to