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Hardtack (bread ration) from the US Civil War, 1862
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this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
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Historical Artifacts
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Fun Fact! Soldiers during the Civil War often boiled their hard tack in their morning coffee, both to soften it (as it was often hard as wood), and to boil out the worms and weevils that worked their way in! How lovely!
If you let hardtack sit long enough, it naturally takes on more protein. It was a time of great innovation, that way.
Tasting History with Max Miller on YouTube has a video where he recreates a US Civil War soldier's meal, and it was basically a pan fry of some sort with bacon grease and hard tack (he also has a video where he makes hard tack, and he uses some in the CW video).
Hard tack wasn't really meant to be eaten like bread, you were supposed to wet/cook it down to soften it and make it more palatable (and, well, to kill the bugs).
clack clack
At least they had coffee.
They called it "coffee," anyway...
That's a fantastic writeup there!