Sailor Rations in the 18th Century - Burgoo

Welcome to 18th century cooking I'm Jon Townsend  today we're going to be digging into experimenting   with an 18th century dish called burgoo. What  is burgoo? Thanks for coming along with us as   we savor the flavors in the aromas of the 18th  century. So Burgoo is one of those terms that   shows up if you study the life of sailors  in the 18th century it shows up in memoirs,   in different sort of references and sometimes  even in dictionaries or plays right and I always   read that stuff and I say burgoo that sounds very  exciting it sounds very strange what is it? They   don't explain it. But I've got this a wonderful  "Memoirs of a Seafaring Life" by Spavens wrote   this in 1796 and the great part about this book is  later on he goes through and explains everything   about a sailor's life in the 18th century he was  a sailor from I think 1755 all the way up through   1765 so it's a great section and let me read to  you about the food that sailors eat or British   sailors ate in the 18th century. In page 106 he  talks about provisions here he says "Every man   and boy born on the books of any of his Majesty's  ships are allowed as following a pound of biscuit   bread, and a gallon of beer per day" so a gallon  of beer a day maybe that's not so bad right. "On   Tuesdays and Saturdays two pounds of beef or  else a pound of beef and a pound of flour with   plums for pudding let's see on Thursdays and  Sundays every two men has three pounds of pork   and a pint of peas to boil them into a soup" the  other three days are Banyon days those are days   without meat each one of those days he gets two  ounces of butter a quarter pound of cheese on   Wednesdays you get burgoo boiled for breakfast and  a pint apiece to make soup for dinner on Mondays   no peas but you get burgoo for dinner that's what  you get when you're a sailor on board ship each   and every week two of those days we get burgoo.  What is burgoo? Well burgoo is ground oatmeal   boiled up now you wouldn't necessarily eat that  all by itself early on you were given to go with   that salt beef fat so the slush that came to the  top of when you're boiling all your salt beef or   salt pork you get all that fat that goes up on top  they would scrape that off they keep that and give   it to you to go with your burgoo but later on they  said maybe that cause scurvy so they let you have   some molasses instead. Let's make up some burgoo.  So this is gonna be so very very simple I've got   some water boiling up here I'm not even sure quite  exactly how much but probably about four or five   cups I'm gonna add just a touch of salt and it's  likely on board ship they have all the salt they   need so they would add salt to this now you can  imagine they're gonna be cooking this in a giant   copper vat because they have to cook food for...  even a small ship might have 50 or 60 men, a   military ship a frigate 200 men, ship of the line  400 500 600 men you're gonna have to cook for. So   we've got some oatmeal here that's already kind of  ground up and we're gonna slowly add that and stir   it and the ratio on this is probably about 3 to  1 oatmeal to water they might cook this up for a   long time let it get very very thick but you can  imagine at other times they had to make this in   a hurry and it would be a thin gruel depending on  what their provisions were like whether they were   running low or not so there's another term that  shows up if you're reading about sailors food   and that's loblolly and that's actually an earlier  term for the same thing as burgoo it really kind   of means a frothing bubbling cooking mess and  so they would they would use that same term and   slowly over time they dropped that loblolly term  and burgoo became the name for the same thing.   Okay here's our burgoo it's all done I just  added our molasses in there and I mean I can   imagine that they might have used a blackstrap  molasses something with a lot of flavor that   was very very cheap for these sailors I tried  to use I like baking molasses a little better   than blackstrap but that's it it's really just  oatmeal water we didn't use any milk we didn't   use any cream and molasses boiled up let's  find out how this burgoo turned out. Yeah I   can imagine I can see all these sailors they're  all you know at their tables and then they're   eating up there they're heating up their burgoo  it's good it would it would keep you going it   would keep you energized for the day and a  very very cheap ration I'm not sure I can   imagine it with a whole bunch of slush on it  you know the that grease and oil from the top   of a cooking thing but if you're an officer  maybe maybe you've got a special version of   burgoo you're gonna add a little nutmeg to  it just to give it some a wonderful flavor   right so let's add a little nutmeg I'm  gonna make our officers version a burgoo. Find out how what that's gonna do to it I'll bet  you now it's gonna be something special even the   smell of nutmeg adds something to it now there  you go that that is a wonderful burgoo. So this   may have seemed like a super simple recipe and  it is but it's so so steeped in history this   wasn't just sailors food it was food for  everyday folk all over soldiers are gonna   be eating something like this just regular folk  everywhere especially poor people this is gonna   be a very very common dish so every time we dig  into something like a nice simple oatmeal we can   we can connect back with those people in the 18th  century we can live just like them and next time   you're having oatmeal for breakfast you can tell  everybody no no we're not having oatmeal we're not   gonna have burgoo if you're interested in more  videos on military rations check this one out.

Channel: Townsends

Views: 2,586,791

Keywords: townsends, jas townsend and son, reenacting, history, 18th century, 19th century, jon townsend, 18th century cooking, colonial cooking, historical cooking, soldier food, cooking (interest), salt pork, hard tack, simple food, soldier cooking, campfire cooking, mushroom ketchup, james townsend and son

Id: i1NcWU0xTog

Length: 7min 19sec (439 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2019