Authentic Food packages from home.

[major bill]

Soldiers love getting packages from loved ones. It helpsrhem realize they are missed and gives then a sense of their homes. Soldiers enjoy most any package including food. Often the food package would have been canned. Any one know the most common food item sent?

This is in a Museum and shows one of the types of ceramic jars that were used to can food.

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

This is a very interesting thread that you started! I've often wondered about that. In many diaries I've read, you read about the men being sent turkeys and pies. I'm assuming it was by Adams Express but here's my thing. Why didn't they all die from botulism or salmonella? I can't imagine the meat was any good yet they all say how much they enjoyed getting the turkey from home. Occasionally they say the pie got smashed up but they still eat the bits. So how was all this food managed? I have literally NEVER read, "we ate the food from the box and then spent the night throwing up."

 

[Jack7171]

This is a very interesting thread that you started! I've often wondered about that. In many diaries I've read, you read about the men being sent turkeys and pies. I'm assuming it was by Adams Express but here's my thing. Why didn't they all die from botulism or salmonella? I can't imagine the meat was any good yet they all say how much they enjoyed getting the turkey from home. Occasionally they say the pie got smashed up but they still eat the bits. So how was all this food managed? I have literally NEVER read, "we ate the food from the box and then spent the night throwing up."

Might be the same way the Amish here drink raw milk, and when i lived in Europe raw ground beef and raw ground pork spread on a hard roll was a daily staple for natives, but we were told never to eat it, as we didn't grow up eating it, and we'd get deathly sick if we did. Over in Thailand, they don't refrigerate fresh meat in the open markets. It just lays on the concrete sidewalk or hangs from a rope, covered in flies. In the mornings, chickens are butchered directly on the sidewalk, then stacked like firewood on the ground, MAYBE on a piece of cardboard, sun beating on them all day,, and if you're lucky, they have a fan with tinsel taped to the blades shooing the blowflies away. I won't describe the fish. I was shocked that they could eat any of that stuff without having to go #3 all nite and day. And the smell would gag a maggot. But they happily loaded their baskets every day

 

[Reconstructed Rebel]

Fruit pies won't spoil for quite a while as I recall. At least my grandmother left hers sitting in the pie cupboard, whose main purpose was to keep flies off the food until it could be eaten. Leftover fried chicken was kept there until the next meal too sometimes.

 

[Tennessee Union Gal]

I would think cookies, like molasses or oatmeal would travel well. Jerky perhaps? Gingerbread or other somewhat sturdy cakes would do well and retain their tastiness even if crushed.

 

[Reconstructed Rebel]

The shelf life on sugar is forever. It never rots or spoils, and I would imagine most soldiers would clamor for sweet treats.

 

[Mr King]

The shelf life on sugar is forever. It never rots or spoils, and I would imagine most soldiers would clamor for sweet treats.

Correct me if I'm wrong, do you know that honey never spoils neither? There have been honey found in Egypt where people and leaders have been buried thousands of years ago and they had big jars of honey around their burial sites and their honey tastes just as good and fresh as today's honey.

 

[donna]

Soldiers loved care packages. They not only got favorite foods, such as cakes, pies and cookies and candy but needed clothing and reading materials.

As the war progressed it was very hard for Confederate soldiers to receive packages. There were so many shortages at home couldn't send things to their beloved soldiers.

 

[DaveBrt]

As the war progressed it was very hard for Confederate soldiers to receive packages. There were so many shortages at home couldn't send things to their beloved soldiers.

Confederate soldiers got packages from home one of three ways. Through most of the war, men from a community would advertise in the nearby papers when they were leaving to visit certain soldiers (frequently one or two regiments) and where friends could deposit packages which they would take.

Any time, a relative could send a package by the Express Company, but the cost was usually too high for most families.

Late in the war, Lt. Col. Sims oversaw free shipping of packages addressed to soldiers. The free shipments were greatly appreciated by both soldiers and families. Big advertising campaigns were run from the fall of 1864 to the end of the war.

 

[captaindrew]

No one had refrigeration, meats unless eaten soon after butchering the animal had to be cured/salted and/or smoked for preservation. Meats properly cured have a long shelf life unrefrigerated. I'm quite sure any meats sent in care packages were prepared and would arrive just fine if they were packaged well and arrived in a somewhat timely fashion.