- Joined
- Aug 2, 2019
Okay, I'm not 100% on the word Funker, (the penmanship was kind of sketchy) but it's my best guess as to what Fredric A. James called the dish that he and his mess mates on board the Housatonic in his November 22, 1863 letter home to his wife. As unaccustomed as he was to domestic skills such as cooking, it's kind of cute to see how excited he was over the successful concoction of what looks to be a kind of bread (hardtack?) pudding. Here's what he wrote:
Our mess had a rousing dandy funker (?) three pans, like your big roasting pans full or about as much as we wanted & I made it. Now I’ll tell you how it is done & you can make some & see how you like it. First I pounded to a powder about a peck of hard bread & let it soak in water. Then I put it into the mess kettle & put in 3 or 4 lbs or butter which we had laid up on purpose, then put in as much first rate molasses (sugar would have been better but we couldn’t spare it) as it would take without being too soft & spiced to suit the taste. A good baking did the rest & the mess pronounced it first rate.
I suspect that that much butter would probably make almost anything taste good.
Fred really seemed to enjoy his forays into the culinary arts, and later, while in Salisbury prison, when it was still a relatively nice place to be held and where he occasionally got packages from home, he wrote in his diary in February, 1864, " by the exercise of sundry dexterous feats in the culinary art, have concocted a variety of dishes not mentioned in the book of French cooks or Confederate Commissaries, but which were nevertheless somewhat savory and contributed much to our health".
Eventually, he ended up at Andersonville, writing obsessively in his diary about the food that he had. He died there on September 15, 1865, just five days before the order came that would have sent him home.
Our mess had a rousing dandy funker (?) three pans, like your big roasting pans full or about as much as we wanted & I made it. Now I’ll tell you how it is done & you can make some & see how you like it. First I pounded to a powder about a peck of hard bread & let it soak in water. Then I put it into the mess kettle & put in 3 or 4 lbs or butter which we had laid up on purpose, then put in as much first rate molasses (sugar would have been better but we couldn’t spare it) as it would take without being too soft & spiced to suit the taste. A good baking did the rest & the mess pronounced it first rate.
I suspect that that much butter would probably make almost anything taste good.
Fred really seemed to enjoy his forays into the culinary arts, and later, while in Salisbury prison, when it was still a relatively nice place to be held and where he occasionally got packages from home, he wrote in his diary in February, 1864, " by the exercise of sundry dexterous feats in the culinary art, have concocted a variety of dishes not mentioned in the book of French cooks or Confederate Commissaries, but which were nevertheless somewhat savory and contributed much to our health".
Eventually, he ended up at Andersonville, writing obsessively in his diary about the food that he had. He died there on September 15, 1865, just five days before the order came that would have sent him home.