To the Editor of the N. Y. Tribune:
Sir: I send you here a few hints as to camping out, from a lady who has an experimental knowledge of such matters. She thinks they may be useful to scouting parties, whose usual camp comforts and conveniences are not with them; of these you can judge better than she or I.
And to begin, here is a simple way to make
One pint of pure ground coffee mixed with two or three egg-shells, or the shell and white of one egg, diluted with cold water, to the thickness of soft mud, and stirred into five quarts of boiling water. Let it boil fifteen minutes, set it off the fire, and pour into the pot, without stirring, a half pint of cold water, let it stand still, two or three minutes, before pouring out. If eggs are not to be had the half pint of cold water will settle it, though not as clearly.
With coffee one wants
To a quart of flour, add a bit of butter, lard, or skimmings from a pot where salt beef has been boiled, as large as a butternut; if the fat is not salt, add a little; rub these well together, and add as much of Durkee's baking powder as the directions on that article order for the quantity of flour used; wet this to a dough, and make into cakes of the usual size; put on a tin pan and place it before the fire, with a few coals underneath; slant the pan, in order to get the reflection of the fire.
But if you have no wheat flour, then make
Mix Indian meal with hot or cold water (hot is best), and a little salt, into a soft dough; spread it very thin on the surface of a board, slant it before the fire, and bake it to a light brown. With this rule, if you want variety, mix an egg, or a little flour and baking powder, with a bit of fat rubbed into the meal; in these cases it must be baked in a pan.
With coffee and bread one likes sometimes
Put half a pint of water into a frying pan, spider, tin-pan, tin-cup, earthen dish, or iron kettle, whichever you have, warm the water and add to it a bit of butter or salt pork fat, break into this a dozen eggs, set it on the fire, and stir them to the bottom so they shall not burn on to the dish they are cooked in; having put in with the eggs a tea-spoonful of black pepper and one of salt—milk instead of water adds to the richness of this dish—stir it well until the eggs are set. Eggs are also good set on end in hot ashes and roasted.
This is good cooked by sticking the slices on the end of a stick sharpened at both ends, and set aslant into the ground before the fire, so that the slice shall hang off from the stick while it broils. Under every slice of pork lay a biscuit or a slice of bread; the fat will drip on this and brown by the time the pork is cooked. Another way is to hold slices of pork on a fork into the flame of the fire; the blazing of the pork fat prevents the meat itself from being smoked.
Take fresh fish, and without scaling them, roll each in several layers of leaves, or grass, or well-greased paper. Draw the fire from the place where it is burning, and lay the fish there, cover it with a stone, or a heap of ashes, and draw the fire back over it; in half an hour a small fish will be well-done, and the outer skin will peal off. Meat may be roasted in the same way, or any game. An easier way to dress birds than by picking them is to insert the finger in a slit cut in the skin of the throat, and pass it between the flesh and skin till the latter is stripped off.
White beans, or any dry beans, should be soaked over night, if convenient, in a warm place, with a lump of carbonate of soda the size of a nutmeg to every quart, dissolved in the water. Pour off this water in the morning, wash them again and put them on the boil; if they are acid or rank put in a little soda, enough to stop any effervescence. Boil from two to four hours, the longer the better. This is good with only pepper or salt, but is improved by a handful of flour or corn-meal with them, or a bit of salt pork or beef, or an onion sliced and boiled for two hours. A convenient cup for camping out is the ordinary round half-pint tin cup, with a flat handle fastened to the rim by a hinge; the handle should be as long as the depth of the cup, and then turn at a right angle for the length of half the diameter of the bottom. This handle will turn inside of the cup and make it easier to pack, or to carry in nests of different sizes.
Source: Vicki Betts’ Newspaper Research: Savannah [GA] Republican, December 27, 1860–December 18, 1861.