Peanuts in the Civil War

[corn-fed-erate]

I know that the soldiers "parched" them and boiled them the way we do today. Has anyone ever seen references to them being boiled already shelled like a dry black eyed pea or lima bean. Besides parched and boiled, how could they be used as food for the soldiers.

 

[12th Missouri Yankee]

Not sure but the peanutbutter thread pointed out it was not invented yet before the war, too bad PB & J would have been a good food for the soldiers.

 

[Allie]

I tried to find a period peanut recipe and couldn't. Several web pages without sources said that they were considered food for black people and white people rarely ate them except in desperate straits.

I imagine, but have no evidence, that some of the black cooks had peanut stew traditions brought from Africa, where peanuts had been a traditional food since the 1600s. African peanut stew takes many forms depending on what part of Africa it's from. It's often called groundnut chop.

 

[Allie]

This is the Goober Pea soup from the Farnsworth House at Gettysburg. It involves peanut butter, plus an interview with the proprietor says she makes no effort to be completely period, so it may not be. At the very least a cook in the 1860s would have had to grind the peanuts first.

http://old.post-gazette.com/food/20020217soupbp9.asp

The only other thing I can think of that they did was to roast peanuts for fake coffee.

 

[7th Mississippi Infantry]

http://civilwartalk.com/threads/goober-peas.84560/#post-647957

 

[James B White]

For antebellum peanut recipes, look in the Carolina Housewife. Another place to look is in Francis Peyre Porcher's books, Resoources of the Southern Fields and Forests? Something like that--there are several editions, little articles and a whole long book. Anyway, as I recall, he mentioned peanuts beaten up and mixed with sugar eaten as a dessert. Sounds like sweetened peanut butter. They were also used as a coffee substitute as Allie mentioned.

When searching in period books, look for "ground nuts" "groundnuts" "goobers" "pindars" and all those synonyms too, especially ground nuts.

Wilmington was ground zero for the commercial peanut growing business, so it's no surprise there are recipes for peanut foods there. Though most peanuts were eaten roasted like we do. Along with some African imports, Wilmington and other peanuts were shipped all up the east coast and inland for eating at fairs, on railroads, from street corner vendors, at theaters, etc. You'll sometime see the story that Yankee soldiers were first introduced to peanuts during the war and wanted to eat them afterwards when they got home, but pre-war primary sources show anyone who went where people gathered was already familiar with peanuts in the north, at least back to the 1830s.

Don't have time to dredge up the full quotes and citations right now, but that gives an idea for online books and keywords.