Soyer's Culinary Campaign: Being Historical Reminiscences of the Late War.: With The Plain Art of Cookery for Military and Civil Institutions

field of battle, and to my great surprise found--what? Why, all my battery firing for the support of the Highland Brigade. The stoves had arrived early enough for the men to use them in cooking their dinners. Though I had given special orders that no one should meddle with them until I arrived, it gave me great pleasure to find that the men were using them to the best advantage and without instruction. In the first place, they could not possibly burn more than twenty pounds of wood in cooking for a hundred men, instead of several hundredweight, which was the daily consumption. Although I had not given them my receipts, they found they could cook their rations with more ease, and hoped they should soon have them for every-day use, instead of the small tin camp-kettles, and their open-air system of cooking. The process was very unsatisfactory, being dependent upon good, bad, or indifferent weather, and the fuel was often wet and difficult to ignite. Colonel Seymour, whom I invited to see the men using the stoves without tuition from me or anybody else, can testify to the accuracy of this fact, having witnessed the process and interrogated them upon the subject. My reason, reader, for relating this circumstance, is because it afforded me an assurance that I could render service to the army, and that my exertions were of some use. I saw even further than that; for I inferred that if a soldier, who is not a cooking animal, being paid for other purposes--and that talent a peculiar gift conferred in a greater or less degree upon humanity--could without trouble or instruction cook well in the open air and in all weathers, the stoves would certainly be useful in all establishments, from a cottage to a college. I do not say anything of their use in hospitals, because they had been tried in those establishments with full success, as far as military cooking was concerned. The idea of connecting baking, roasting, boiling and steaming crossed my mind; and this, I felt with confidence, would render them beneficial