I Gotta Cook Where?
Today’s recipe: “a very good kind of family biscuit.”
By: Sherry Monahan 01/01/2009
“Chris lifted the food box down from the front of our wagon, while Carrie built a fire in the Russian iron camp stove.
“Mother peeled potatoes and parsnips. Soon they were steaming in iron pots on the stove, along with some wild crab apples brought from home, and were simmering in the brass kettle. Mother made biscuits, which she baked in the oven of their wonderful new stove, and fried bacon, and prepared gravy,” wrote Catherine, as she traveled with her family through Idaho in 1864 on their way to Oregon.
Heading west was not a journey for the delicate, prissy or lazy. Everyone had responsibilities, and most pulled their weight. The journey could be fraught with dangers and hardships, but some pioneers enjoyed a trouble-free trek along the frontier. While on the trail, many ate on thick china plates, drank from matching cups and used knives, forks and spoons. Those who planned their trips well, and traveled with other wagons, generally made it to their destinations. Their memories of the food they ate were probably much like Catherine’s:
“How good it all smelled. How glad we were before the journey’s end for those china dishes and for the stove. The tin dishes used by many were very hard to keep right. With the stove, mother could stand up to cook instead of having to bend over a campfire with her face in the smoke. When I watched some of the other women, choking in the fumes of the fires, their backs bent until they must have felt ready to break, I often thought, ‘I’m glad my mother doesn’t have to cook that way.’ Our stove, too, burned very little wood, and on the treeless prairies, that was a great advantage.”
Not everyone chose to bring along a heavy cook stove. Some chose their weight to be in the form of additional supplies or food stuffs.
Sometimes cooking on a stove or over an open fire was not an option. When the threat of Indians reared its ugly head, or weather conditions were bad, the emigrants wisely refrained from starting campfires. When cooking fires were forbidden, the cooks made due with what they had. Leftovers—yes they even ate them 100 years ago—from previous meals, like cold boiled ham and an extra pan of biscuits from breakfast, sufficed.
Comments (2)
Hi Vickie,
Thanks for the question. Most of the time the pioneers didn't have time for a "full meal" and ate what was practical. Quite often, the big dinner meal, which was eaten at noon, was started in the morning if they were having beans.
Unless they were stopping in one location for a day or two, which sometimes happened, they didn't have time to wait for roasts.
The pioneers tended to cook what could be made and prepped in the short time they had when they stopped to eat.
How did they cook a full meal (like dried beans or a roast) after setting up camp? A roast takes a minimum of 3 hrs in a modern oven? How could they cook and have it ready in time to eat?
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