Rations

[Hank Trent]

Is this a serious post? Sugar doesn't go stale. It needs nothing to preserve it. It is the preservative in things like jams and jellies.

The cone-shape was due to the refining process, not something one can easily duplicate outside a factory. If you need to reproduce a whole loaf of sugar, there are ways to "fake it" by adding modern binders to glue white sugar together, and I'm sure someone will come along with a recipe, but that's a heck of a lot of white sugar for one soldier to be carrying around at one time. Typical loaves were in the 8-12" range.

A quicker and easier solution if you want to duplicate a smaller amount that might have been broken off a loaf is to purchase white sugar cubes and bust them with a hammer into unrecognizable chunks. Only white sugar typically came in loaves (cones) in the period.

Even easier, pre-crushed white sugar was available in the period too. Just use... sugar.

For brown sugar, it typically came from a barrel and could be varying degrees of darkness and lumpiness/dampness. One can either go the route of busting up a Mexican cone into lumps, or dampening very granular brown sugar to make it clump if wanted.

I'm really curious what happened to your sugar, make you think that sugar needs additives to keep it fresh!

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Charles Heath]

Grant,

What do you do with the sugar issued to you at events?

[Becky Morgan]

May I add that white granulated sugar will lump just fine in any damp climate. If yu want loaf sugar and don't feel like leaving your mold sitting around a damp kitchen or bathroom all summer, it is possible to make sugar stick to itself by spreading the desired quantity out on waxed paper and misting it lightly with a clean atomizer and fresh tap water. Don't dissolve it--just dampen it enough that you still see the individual grains, but a few around the edges are starting to melt. Pour or pack (or a little of both) it onto the mold. Alternative method, for those with metal molds: dampen and pack it as above, then next time your oven has been on, wait until the heat has slackened until you aren't uncomfortable holding your hand inside the door. Set the mold on a cookie sheet and let it sit until the oven is cold. The warmth will help stick the sugar together. Too much heat will make it begin to caramelize, so have patience when you're waiting for the initial cool-down.

[Csayankee]

First and foremost, Grant, Please sign your complete name to each and every post. If you go to the user CP you can create a signature that will appear each time you post automatically.

Now to the post at hand.

You can purchased loaf (coned) sugar from various vendors. I can think of one in Ohio although the name is not coming to me. They are a vendor to Rev War era reenactors and sale the sugar you are looking for. So unless you really want to get messy in the house look around you will find it.

[Parault]

http://www.vltava2000.cz/shops/7530/images-goods/OT240709s.jpg
Thank you Brain that was what I was going to suggest.

[Charles Heath]

Some other good words to Google are:

muscovado

melado

muscavo

rapadura

[grant]

Thank you all for tearing apart my question and making me feel stupid because all i was asking was how you make the cone type sugar that is clumped together thats all, i didnt know if theres mollases in it to make it that way or something else just a curious question for better understanding. Im sorry to have bothered you all with my stupid question. i will not post again.

[paulcalloway]

Thank you all for tearing apart my question and making me feel stupid because all i was asking was how you make the cone type sugar that is clumped together thats all, i didnt know if theres mollases in it to make it that way or something else just a curious question for better understanding. Im sorry to have bothered you all with my stupid question. i will not post again.

I'm looking for where your question was torn apart. And still looking. Seems you're being a little overly-sensitive.

Please sign your name to your posts.

[ryanbmm]

Grant,
I really don't see where anyone did anything that you should be upset, all i found was that they were tryin to help you with your question and even awnsered some questions that i have ponderd. I ask you reread the post of the people that were kind enough give there info and see if you see it in a different light.

[VIrginia Mescher]

Thank you all for tearing apart my question and making me feel stupid because all i was asking was how you make the cone type sugar that is clumped together thats all.

Grant,

I did not originally answer your question about sugar because I really didn't understand exactly what you wanted. Below are instructions for making a sugar cone but please understand that a soldier would probably not have carried a sugar cone with him since they are heavy and were mostly used for at home. The sugar the soldiers was issued was probably brown sugar and you could just bring brown regular or dark brown sugar from home wrapped in a square of cloth or paper. To be most authentic, let it harden into lumps. Coarse granulated sugar could also be used but that was not used as often.

I would not recommend using the small brown sugar cone that you find in the ethnic sections of grocery stores. In my extensive research on sugar, I have not found any evidence of brown sugar cones that size, except in Mexico and they were made from maize sugar.

Below are the instructions for making your own sugar cone. You could then break it up into pieces and use them in your impression.


Homemade sugar loaf
5 pounds granulated white sugar
2 egg whites
1/4 cup brown sugar

Stir the egg whites lightly with a fork. Combine the egg whites
with the sugars, using your hands. The consistency should be like modern
brown sugar or damp sand when building sand castles. If more moisture is
needed, add a bit of corn syrup or drops of water. Don't add too much or
the cone will not hold together and take a great deal longer to dry.
Tightly pack the sugar mixture into a large cone-shaped icing bag. The tip
of the pastry bag will need to be covered with a plastic bag and the plastic
bag secured. The large opening will be too wide so you may want to adjust
the width by making a fold in the side of the bag. Fill the pastry bag to
the top and stand the filled bag in a tall cylinder while it dries (you may
have more of the sugar mixture than you need to fill the bag). In about a
week the cone can be removed from the bag; let it stand in the open air to
completely dry. This may take several weeks, depending on the humidity.

You may use blue construction paper or blue Canson art paper to
cover the cone. The original sugar loaves were covered with blue paper and
tied with string. Do not use blue tissue paper as it is not strong enough,
and the original ones were not covered with tissue paper.

I have made these for living histories and they look just like what
Sturbridge Village has on display in the historic store. Make sure you
round the top to obtain the traditional shape.

I hope this helps.

[Hank Trent]

Thank you all for tearing apart my question and making me feel stupid because all i was asking was how you make the cone type sugar that is clumped together thats all,

If you're upset at my reply asking if it was a serious question, this is what I didn't understand:

i cant find any info on what they put in the sugar to keep it fresh

People ask lots of similar questions: how do I keep meat fresh, eggs fresh, milk fresh, and so forth. They mean "fresh" as in "not spoiled." It could have been a parody of those questions, because sugar is one thing that doesn't spoil.

If you'd worded it just as you did now, asking how to keep cone-type sugar clumped together, it would have been immediately clear what you meant.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[DaveGink]

This has been posted before, but for any who haven't seen it:

HARDTACK

Ingredients:
• 4 cups of flour in a large bowl*
• Optional: 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar. (This adds some “air” to the finished crackers and makes them a bit “less dense”. It does not create big air pockets and the crackers will still turn out quite hard. This ingredient can be omitted.)** Mix with the flour in the bowl.
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda**
• 1½ teaspoons of salt
• 1 cup of water

Dissolve the salt and soda (if used) in the cup of water.

Mix all ingredients well. Roll out dough ½-inch to 3/8-inch thick with a rolling pin. Because original, issued hardtack was uniform, by far the best results are obtained with a hardtack cutter. If a hardtack cutter is unavailable, cut the dough into squares approximately 3 inches by 3 inches. Use a 1/8-inch diameter dowel to create sixteen holes in each cracker in a 4 by 4 pattern. A hardtack cutter is optimal.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes at 450 degrees. When done, let air-dry for minimum of twenty-four hours, preferably more, before the crackers are placed into a bag or sealed container. Yield: 9 to 11 crackers.

* Period hardtack contractors used a flour known as “cracker flour”, which can be simulated by mixing one part pastry flour with three parts ordinary, unbleached flour.

** This ingredient is a popular “reenactor addition” to the recipe that was not present in Civil War hardtack. This ingredient will help make your crackers slightly more palatable but, for increased authenticity, omit this ingredient.

I am planning on trying this recipe but had a couple of questions that are not explained ... First, I am assuming you place the raw, cut-out punched dough onto a baking sheet that has not been pre-heated. Is this baking sheet greased or ungreased? Second, do you preheat the oven before baking?

Thanks!!
Dave

[C.R. Henderson]

Ungreased and non- preheated sheet and yes, preheat the oven. Think of how the mechanical bakeries did it. They baked all day long with no interruption.

[Silas]

I am planning on trying this recipe but had a couple of questions that are not explained ... First, I am assuming you place the raw, cut-out punched dough onto a baking sheet that has not been pre-heated.

That's correct.

Is this baking sheet greased or ungreased?
Don't grease it. Use a fine, but even layer of corn meal or grits. Some of the meal will impregnate the cracker. It's no big deal.

Second, do you preheat the oven before baking?

I turn on the oven before I commence rolling and cutting the dough. After the oven has reached the desired temperature, start cooking.

You could also cook the dough at 300 degrees for an hour instead of 425 degrees for twenty minutes. Think of the process as trying to dry the water out of the dough rather than baking bread. If moisture remains in the cooked dough, your cracker has a greater chance of going moldy. If you make on a Thursday night before an event, you'll be fine. If you make it the weekend before an event, expect some mold.

I cook mine at the lesser temperature for a longer time. Just before the hour has passed, I check the crackers to see if they are sufficiently done. When I'm satisfied, I leave the crackers in the oven and merely turn off the oven.

Regarding the baking powder, I use no more than an eighth of a teaspoon for a batch of five or six cups of flour. It causes the cracker to rise only a tad. This gives my teeth a little better chance to break through the cracker.

[DaveGink]

Excellent information!

Thank you both very much!! I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

[C.R. Henderson]

I've actually tried baking the crackers at a lower (275 degrees) for several hours and have gotten some super hard "tiles" out afterwards. The trick is that you should try to turn the pan "about face" about halfway through the bake time so that the water is expelled evenly through the batch (different ovens have different hotspots inside) and you should be fine whatever temp you go. Also, instead of table salt, I like to use Kosher salt that you can find at any grocery store. It has a coarser grain and works well to add a little more flavor.

[Stonewall_Greyfox]

Many years ago, there was a link posted a place in the deep South that had a website, from which you could buy period appropriate; hominy, grits, beans...etc.

I used to have the place bookmarked on the Old-Computer, but that's long gone now.

Any help in producing this link would be most appreciated.

Thanks,

Paul B.

[Brian Baird]

I'm not sure if this is the place or not, they are in NC.
I believe Charles Heath posted this link.
http://www.harmonyhousefoods.com/
Brian Baird

[Bob 125th NYSVI]

Excellent information!

Thank you both very much!! I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Dave:

I don't use anything on my pans. A couple of years ago I acquired some old square tin baking pans (3x3) at an antique store. For some reason I never have any sticking problems but I do use a very "dry" hardtack recipe so the dough isn't sticking to my fingers when I knead it.

Maybe that has something to do with it?

[Charles Heath]

Paul,

You may be thinking of these folks:

http://www.ansonmills.com/

This is a nice place for small stuff:

http://www.deborahspantry.com/

Neill Rose put these folks on the map:

http://www.carolinagoldricefoundation.org/

Some interesting wares show up here:

http://www.blueheronmercantile.com/

If you educate yourself just smidge, these folks carry a number of good products:

http://www.traderjoes.com/

Most of all the local grocery store typically has a wealth of 19th century products, but one must dig around a bit on the shelves less frequented to find them. Most of all, don't neglect the opportunity to grow some CW era foodstuffs.