Tea Rations?

[Virginia Mescher]

Re: Tea Rations?

Ron,

My parents have a patch of mint in the side yard and I pick some every year and dry it. I crumble the dry mint leaves into my loose leaf black tea before heading out to an event. I makes the best tea, regardless of the weather.

Mint tea is very refreshing and a well known beverage in Morocco but there is a catch. I started looking in primary sources for mentions of mint tea for our time period. The only ones I could find were in reference to medicinal purposes. The flavor of the mint disguised the taste of less desirable flavors in other medicines. Mint also has medicinal qualities of its own.

If you want to use mint tea as a medicine as part of your impression but if you are just drinking a cup of mint tea or black tea with mint leaves in it, that would be considered incorrect. It is very easy to place our 21st century tastes and logic into the 19th century but oftentimes it doesn't work. What makes sense to us doesn't always work and we must dig a little deeper to find out the actual 19th century use of an item or food.

A great many teas were made for medicinal purposes - blackberry roots boiled in water for diarrhea, flaxseed tea was an emetic, Valerian tea for hysteria, spicebush tea for pneumonia, and the list goes on. There were some substitutes listed for tea when it became scarce - holly leaves, yaupon leaves, New Jersey tea, blackberry leaves, sassafras root tea, but I did not see that mint was used a tea substitute. I may have missed something so if anyone has some a primary source for mint tea that was not used as a medicine, please let me know. I don't want to lead anyone astray with incorrect information.

[DocReynolds]

Re: Tea Rations?

I have not seen a specific mention of brick tea, but like references earlier, the idea that tea clould be substituted for coffee...Also, in the medical supplies, black eta is listed,and it is loose tea, as described.

Pete Bedrossian
150th NY

[lojafan]

Re: Tea Rations?

Tim,

I've seen it on survivorman a few times and he says its good, so I guess it cant be all that bad.

Ron also makes a good point about mint tea. I've had it before as well and it is refreshing.

[PogueMahone]

Re: Tea Rations?

Ron,

My parents have a patch of mint in the side yard and I pick some every year and dry it. I crumble the dry mint leaves into my loose leaf black tea before heading out to an event. I makes the best tea, regardless of the weather.

[ephraim_zook]

Re: Tea Rations?

We do an annual living history at a location where mint grows abundantly, and we make mint tea. It's refreshing on a hot day.

Ron Myzie

[TMAN]

Re: Tea Rations?

Andrew

The pine needle tea is intriguing, i think I will try this recipe out before i venture into the field.

My Compliments

Tim Fretwell

[PogueMahone]

Re: Tea Rations?

Tim,

If you really need tea instead of just water the whole event, try finding some green pine needles where your at, if there are any. I dont have any concrete documentation relating to the Civil War, but the author of this article claims its been around since the 19th century. So, it might not be a bad alternative with many healthful benefits and with more research, something you might be able to use.

See this link:

http://www.ehow.com/how_2102192_pine-needle-tea.html

Note the warnings.

[lojafan]

Re: Tea Rations?

Tim,

If you really need tea instead of just water the whole event, try finding some green pine needles where your at, if there are any. I dont have any concrete documentation relating to the Civil War, but the author of this article claims its been around since the 19th century. So, it might not be a bad alternative with many healthful benefits and with more research, something you might be able to use.

[AZReenactor]

Re: Tea Rations?

Actually Hunter, the issue isn't so much which tea a person should carry in their poke sack, but in researching what they actually had back then. The goal ought to be to find out as much information as we can then make an informed decision on whether to compromise despite that knowledge or not.

Saying it is a small matter that makes no visible difference when folks are playing history doesn't diminish the value of further research and investigation in the least. For many here the focus is to find out what they did back then, the fact that that research can impact how people choose to depict history is only bonus.

I don't think anyone was attacking your personal choices about what you put in your poke sack. After all, it is a seemingly small matter and the only one who'd likely know if you were "farbing out" or not, would be you.

Re: Tea Rations?

Agree, the evidence is lacking for those little black tea bricks with chinesey symbols stamped in them...if that is what is meant by "tea bricks." I always thought it could mean something else. Who knows? As far as Earl Grey tea. The issue being the use of bergamot in the Earl Grey tea blend, right? Which if carried loose leaf in my poke bag to infuse in my tin can boiler, as I like to do...what possible difference would it make? It looks like every other black tea to me. Is there an analysis booth at event check-in where the civilians test the tea for bergamot? Or isn't that as bad as using tap water to brew it? Where will I find natural spring water pumped out of the ground ala 19th century that isn't bottled? OK, that's a nice detail to note, but who in their right mind could tell the difference?

As far as the right tea--if you care and I don't-- the green gunpowder teas are pretty cool, and there are tons of period references to those.

[Virginia Mescher]

Re: Tea Rations?

I'm posting for my wife, Virginia, on the availability of brick tea since she isn't home this evening.

She has a file on tea that is 8 inches thick. In her years of research on tea, she has not found any documentation for brick tea being sold in the United States or Great Britain during the civil war period (it was used in Mongolia and parts of eastern Russia). Despite secondary references, including some modern recommendations, she has found the primary documentation to be completely lacking. There is no mention of brick tea in newspaper ads or descriptions of how to prepare it in any cook books. So, if you purchased a tea brick, use it to pound tent stakes or some other similar use but please keep it out of view of spectators. Brick tea has become like underground railroad quilts, i.e., something quaint or unusual that we want to believe is period.

And while you're throwing the brick tea in the trash, toss the Earl Grey in there with it unless you can find other documentation than just the story printed on the back of the box.

Michael Mescher

[lojafan]

Re: Tea Rations?

Yes, I looked at a few diffrent sites and it didnt say anything about what kind of tea or how the tea was formed (brick, pouch, ect.), I just forgot to add it. The availability of tea was also something I could not find, and if tea even reached soldiers.

[TMAN]

Re: Tea Rations?

I stand corrected, thank you for the information gents.

With My Thanks

Tim Fretwell

[AZReenactor]

Re: Tea Rations?

Tim, you may want to reexamine what you know about tea. I believe the whole tea brick idea was under some controversy.

[lojafan]

Re: Tea Rations?

I found this with a simple google search on this site.

http://www.8thtnus.com/rations.html

I went ahead and put everything above the source citation, since you might get something out of it.

By definition, a ration is the amount of food authorized for one soldier (or animal) for one day. The Confederate government adopted the official US Army ration at the start of the war, although by the spring of 1862 they had the reduce it. According to army regulations for camp rations, a Union soldier was entitled to receive daily 12 oz of pork or bacon or 1 lb. 4 oz of fresh or salt beef; 1 lb. 6 oz of soft bread or flour, 1 lb. of hard bread, or 1 lb. 4 oz of cornmeal. Per every 100 rations there was issued 1 peck of beans or peas; 10 lb. of rice or hominy; 10 lb. of green coffee, 8 lb. of roasted and ground coffee, or 1 lb. 8 oz of tea; 15 lb. of sugar; 1 lb. 4 oz of candles, 4 lb. of soap; 1 qt of molasses. In addition to or as substitutes for other items, desiccated vegetables, dried fruit, pickles, or pickled cabbage might be issued.
The marching ration consisted of 1 lb. of hard bread, 3/4 lb. of salt pork or 1 1/4 lb. of fresh meat, plus the sugar, coffee, and salt. The ration lacked variety but in general the complaints about starvation by the older soldiers was largely exaggerated.
Generally the Confederate ration, though smaller in quantity after the spring of 1862 and tending to substitute cornmeal for wheat flour, was little different. But the Confederate commissary system had problems keeping rations flowing to the troops at a steady rate, thus alternating between abundance and scarcity in its issuances. Soldiers of both armies relied to a great extent on food sent from home and on the ubiquitous Sutler.

Source: "The Civil War Dictionary" by Mark M. Boatner III

Hope this helps!