Most people around my age know one thing about
the Oregon Trail, and that's that you're likely to die of dysentery but it turns out there was so much more to this 2,000 plus mile trek west, including the fact that it took 4 to 6 months
and that you'd be having about 500 campfire meals. Many of which would have been Johnny cakes and bacon. So thank you to Hellofresh for sponsoring this video as we try not to die of dysentery this time on Tasting History. So for those who don't know the Oregon Trail was actually a collection of wagon trails that went from Independence Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon. And from 1846 to 1869 about 400,000 settlers farmers, miners, ranchers, and their families used it to cross 2,200 miles of prairie desert and mountain terrain. Now it wasn't exactly a single trail and there were people who would split off to go settle in California, or Utah, but in general for about half of the year there were wagon trains heading west along a general trail, and the people in those wagons were known as immigrants and every morning around 4 AM they would wake up, start making fires so they could prepare their breakfast, and one of the most common breakfasts was bacon, hoe cakes or Johnny cakes, which are a corn cake, and coffee. Now these Johnny cakes were very popular at the time,they had been popular since the 18th century, and they went under a host of names including hoe cakes but also Indian meal cakes, or Indian corn cakes, which is what 'The Farmers and Immigrants Complete Guide' from 1856 calls it written by Josiah T. Marshall, it says "Take one quart of sifted Indian meal, two tablespoonfuls of molasses, two teaspoonfuls of salt, a bit of shortening (lard or butter), half as big as a hen's egg; stir these together make it pretty moist with scalding water, put it into a well- greased pan, smooth the surface, and bake it brown on both sides before a quick fire." Now he does have instructions to make a fancier version that has milk and cinnamon and ginger, but I'm going to make this basic version because I feel like this is what most people would have been eating on most mornings on the Oregon Trail. And frankly if you need the fancy version then the Oregon Trail is probably not for you, I would go with something like a meal from today's sponsor Hellofresh. See unlike the immigrants on the Oregon Trail who ate a lot of salt pork, and hardtack, [clack clack] the ingredients from Hellofresh are just that fresh. They deliver boxes of quality ingredients right to your doorstep so
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have really appreciated some some free dessert. Alas, at least in the mornings all they had was Johnny cakes and bacon. They had other things but to make Johnny cakes and bacon what you'll need is 2 cups, or 300 grams of fine cornmeal, 1 tablespoon of molasses, 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 tablespoons or 30 grams of unsalted butter, and some boiling water. And then you'll also need some grease to grease the pan, and the best way to get grease and probably how they would have done it is to fry the bacon in that pan. It also should give the Johnny cakes some nice bacony flavor. So first fry up your bacon however you like it. Then set it aside but keep the grease in the pan. Then add the molasses, salt, and the butter into the cornmeal, and then work it all in by hand. Then pour some boiling water in, and using a spoon start mixing it together. Now the amount of water that you add is really up to you. For a firmer cake you're going to add about 3/4 of a cup of water but you can add a little bit more for a looser cake. He's not super specific in how wet this mixture should be, but he does say that it should be smoothed on the top. So if it's too loose you won't be able to smooth it, it'll just automatically do it so I'm guessing it's a little firmer. So form up some round cakes by hand and then heat the grease up and carefully set the cake in. Now unlike pancakes which will have little bubbles form on
the top that let you know when it's time to flip it, these don't have that so you kind of just got to eyeball it. For me it took about 3 minutes on one side, and then 2 minutes on the other side. So obviously if we're able to make these we know that the immigrants would have been bringing cornmeal, molasses, bacon, and salt. When it comes to the butter they would have often brought a milk cow
with them, and in the morning they would milk it put it into a pail and attach it to the bottom of the wagon, and throughout the day the jostling of the wagon would actually churn it into butter that they would have that night, some nice fresh butter. But it wasn't all Johnny cakes and bacon for every
meal every day, so what else did those pioneers pack up to take with them before shouting wagons ho! So it's the 1850s and you have just had it with the east coast so you're moving west using that new fangled Oregon Trail. So you make your way to Independence, Missouri where you pack up your covered wagon. Now these were not the really big covered wagons that were rambling down the streets of America at the time. No these were smaller covered wagons known as prairie schooners and you need to gather up 4 to 6 months worth of provisions, and pack it all into this rather small wagon. Luckily people who have gone before you have written down general guidelines of what you might need and when it comes to food which is what I'm concerned with for 3 people they say you should bring about
five barrels or one 1080 pounds of flour, 600 pounds of bacon, 100 pounds of coffee, 5 pounds of tea,
150 pounds sugar, 75 of rice, 50 of dried fruit, 50 of salt, pepper, and other seasonings and 10
pounds of saleratus or baking soda. Other guides from the period say to bring about 200 pounds of lard,
plenty of dried beans, dried fruit, and cornmeal, and of course about 120 pounds of hardtack. [clack clack] Many people also brought that milk cow, as well as chickens for eggs. Now all this food was either packed in barrels or more often in provision boxes which could be stacked, and so they wouldn't jostle around too much, and they could be used for chairs and tables which was really convenient when you had no chairs and tables. Now since there was no refrigeration you might think that things like bacon and lard would go bad really quickly, but people would take that and pack it inside
of the barrel that had the flour or the cornmeal to keep it away from any sun, and so it would
stay for pretty much the entire journey. Now in addition to food you needed to bring some cooking
utensils this typically meant a frying pan, a Dutch oven, a kettle or coffee pot, tin plates, and cups and maybe a reflector oven which would bounce the heat off of an open fire to bake cakes and pies, but in general when it comes to packing less is more. There was actually one pioneer from the time who had made the trek before, and he is scoffing at those he sees overpacking. "They laid in an over supply of bacon, flour and beans, and in addition there to every conceivable jimcrack and useless article that the wildest fancy could devise or human Ingenuity could invent pins and needles, brooms and brushes, ox shoes and horse shoes, horseshoes, lasts and leather, glass beads and hawk bells, jumping jacks and jew harps, rings and bracelets, pocket mirrors and pocket books, calico vests and boiled shirts." And much of this stuff would end up abandoned on the side of the trail within the first few weeks of travel. Now the food that you're packing is not of course the
only food that you're going to have on the journey. People were walking most of the 15 to 20 miles that they traveled each day because being in the wagon was really uncomfortable, it was really bumpy they didn't have any shocks or anything so most people were walking so they were using up a lot of calories so it was necessary to find extra victuals along the way. And in the early years there were no shops or trading posts along the trail but by the 1850s forts like Fort Kierney and Fort Laramie would have stores where you could top off your provisions or replace anything that might have broken, provided that they had it and they very often didn't. They were usually just as just as out of things as you were but if they did have it you were probably going to be paying like five times as much as you would back in Missouri because what
else are you going to do? A much less expensive way to get food, if a little more difficult, was to go back to your roots, and hunting and gathering, and sometimes that would mean actual roots. Things
like wild onions and garlic and something called Camus root. The pioneer Phoebe Judson writing about the
American Indians she met said "The camus root, a very nutritious, pear-shaped bulb, about half the size of an onion was their chief dependence. It was to them what bread is to us, 'the staff of life'. After steaming the bulbs in a hole in the ground with hot rocks covered with ferns, they were dried this with game was their usual diet." You could also go fishing provided you knew how and were near a river, and if you didn't know how you could also do like Phoebe Judson and just trade for some fish. "When we reached Salmon Falls, on Snake River, the Indians brought some red-meated salmon to the camp... Mr. Judson traded some sugar for a fine, large one and as it was too late to cook it that night, he dressed it and put it into the water keg under our wagon... We were really so delighted with the prospect of salmon for breakfast that we could not sleep." But the next morning when they woke up "Our beautiful fish was missing, and so was Mr. Bryant's dog. As we never saw him again, he evidently indulged in too much salmon for breakfast, and paid the penalty with his life." As for game meat on the prairie at least you had prairie dogs which were supposedly very, very fatty but also ducks, and rabbits, and geese and sage hens. They'd use these hens to make a soup with dumpling that most people seem to really enjoy, but one woman did not. "I think a skunk, preferable, their meat tastes of this
abominable mountain sage." Now these were of course small little critters good for maybe one meal but if you wanted to save up some meat they had big game like antelope, and of course buffalo. But the thing is even just a couple buffalo or bison is going to be so much meat that not going to be
able to eat that all in one sitting even if you've got several hundred people in the wagon train so they would have to to store it, and usually that meant making it into jerky. They would cut it into strips and then hang it on a rope around the edge of the wagon, and so as they went down uh the the prairie it would dry in the wind. And one person said it made all of the the wagons look like they were decorated with a coarse red fringe. Now most people really enjoyed the meat of the buffalo
but there is one story about a man who got an old baull and I guess the meat was not very good. It "tasted like the 'chef d'ouvre' of the devil's kitchen, the most offensive meat I ever tasted and so that
I found it impossible to eat it." But typically the meat was very much loved. Now the immigrants on the Oregon Trail rarely had time to stop to get any more buffalo than they could eat or carry, but it was around this time that other people with more sinister intentions were decimating the buffalo population in an effort to destroy the food source of the plains Indians. In 1864 near the end of the Oregon Trail era one immigrant wrote that "Some of our men went today hunting for buffalo and
antelope but saw none. While the bleached bones of the buffalo are strewn all along the road, not an animal was seen. The needless and wanton slaughter of these once numerous animals has almost caused them to be extinct." The thing is it wasn't just the meat of the buffalo that both the plains indians and the pioneers relied on, it was their poop. See if you've ever seen the Great Plains you'll notice
there aren't a lot of trees, not a lot of firewood going on, and so they would gather the chips or the the poop of the buffalo to start fires. And I guess as long as it's dry it burns really well and
doesn't smell that much. "Many of the ladies can be seen roaming over the Prairie with sacks in hand, searching for a few buffalo chips to cook their evening meal. Some of the ladies are seen wearing gloves but most of them have discarded their gloves and are gathering the buffalo chips with their bare hand." And with your dried buffalo poop in hand it was time to actually get to cooking. And this is where the pioneers just really, really impressed me because especially in the first part of their journey where they still had a lot of the ingredients that they were bringing, they were making up some really fancy complicated foods. If not maybe not fancy but complicated foods. They would always have fresh bread that could be risen with either saleratus, which is baking soda or the new fangled Preston's yeast powder, no excuse for bad bread. And should they run out of these they would make salt rising bread which is just ingenious. So you know how like a sourdough starter relies on yeast to to build up to rise the bread, well salt rising bread relies on bacteria. Usually the ingredients were just water, salt, flour, and then some cornmeal or dried potato, and it needed to be kept warm all day so they would make it up, and then put that ferment, or that starter, in the front of the wagon where it was warm and the sun was hitting it. And it would start to rise and then that night they could use it to make fresh bread. Absolutely brilliant. But even more impressive than the bread was the fact that they were making pies and cakes out there. There are letters that talk about fresh-made antelope pot pie, and pound cake, and peach pie, and apple pie though often the apple pie was made with dried apples which I guess was not always the best thing as there was a a slogan during the time that said "Spit in my ears and tell me lies, but give me no dried apple pies." Now the meal that they seem to go hog wild for was the Fourth of July dinner. Part of it was that it was a big celebration 'cus Fourth of July but also it was around the halfway point for many of of the immigrants, and so they would kind of splurge and use up a lot of the good things that they still had left. In 1849 William Swain wrote about the midday meal on the 4th of July. "Dinner consisted of: ham; beans, boiled and baked; biscuits; John cake; apple pie; sweet cake; rice pudding; pickles; vinegar; pepper sauce; and mustard; coffee; sugar; and milk. All enjoyed it well... The boys had r and scraped together all the brandy they could, and they toasted, hoorayed, and drank till reason was out and brandy was in. I stayed till the five regular toasts were drunk; and then,
being disgusted with their conduct, I went to our tent, took my pen, and occupied the remainder of the day in writing to my wife." Or at least that's what he told her he did, I'm sure. Now since this was a time when provisions started to run low, at least the more luxurious provisions, there were of course people who had already gone throug them. George Keller had "a Fourth of July dinner on musty hard bread, and beef bones in a state of incipient putrefaction." And Amos Steck said that it was just like any other day for him and he had spent it "driving a slow ox team in a sandy road, his eyes
filled and his throat choked with it... [With] no other refreshment than hard bread for dinner and poor bread at that, he will feel little patriotic ardor stimulating him even on this Great Day." Granted these were the wagon trains that were made up of pretty much just men because it was the women who did most of the real cooking. As James Hutchings lamented "I wish I had taken lessons in the art of every man his own washerwoman, cook and general housewife." But whether or not you could cook didn't really matter when you started to run out of ingredients, which would happen the further down the road." You got all of the little delicacies we brought with us from home were gone, and we had nothing left but flour, bacon, beans, sugar and tea. And, like the children of Israel, my soul loathed
this food and I longed for something fresh... The farther we traveled the more meager became our fare." This was the time when the pioneers came to rely on things like buffalo jerky, hardtack [clack clack] and portable soup. This was something where you would boil down the meat and bones of an animal so much that it became just this gelatinous kind of layer on the bottom of a pot. And then you would cut that up and let it dry and you could take that then and later put it into some water and make a soup. It was like a bullion cube. Then there was something called "Meat biscuit. ...one pound of it contains the nutriment of five pounds of the best fresh beef... it will keep in perfect preservation for any length of
time. In tight tin canister or casks... The traveler across the plane can always have a fresh supply of food easily and quickly prepared." Now the problem with the dwindling food supply was not just that it left everyone rather hangry, but also depressed because when you're traveling every single day, all day it's kind of boring and monotonous and the only thing people were looking forward to was their next meal. Eating was the best part of the day even in the harshest conditions. "Ate breakfast this morning in a snowstorm, and although the prospect did look rather gloomy, still we kept in good cheer, and our victuals, crusted, (not with sugar) but snow, certainly disappeared in a manner that plain showed that we had not lost our appetites even if we were experiencing all the delights of
a snowstorm in the open prairie." It was also around this time that they started to run out of lemon extract. See they would often add lemon extract and maybe a little sugar to their water to make a sort of of lemonade because the water did not taste good. It was hard to find any kind of thing resembling clean water at all but especially out in the prairie everything was covered in dust. All of their stuff, themselves, their food, and their water just caked in dust, and so they would often add aluminum ammonia sulfate to the water which would kind of help purify it but it made it taste absolutely awful. When they didn't have that they would just put cornmeal into the water and wait like 20 or 30 minutes, and as the cornmeal dropped to the bottom it would take some of the dirt with them leaving a little cleanish water on the top but still didn't taste great. And with people running out of their luxury items, their food, and sometimes clean water the Oregon Trail was about to do them real dirty when they came upon Fort Laramie, also dubbed Camp Sacrifice. This was the last major stop before you headed over the Rocky Mountains and as difficult on the oxen as it's
been to drag your butt across the Great Plains it's going to be even harder for them to drag it up the Rocky Mountains. So you had to get rid of everything that was extra and I don't mean just like things like books and fine china, and things that are kind of not necessary, though they did get rid of those, but in some cases even things that were necessary if it was deemed too heavy. There was one wagon train who just needed to lighten the load and so they discarded a "ton of bacon, several barrels of bread, six dozen steel shovels, axes, hoes, etc etc, amounting in value to nearly $1,500 dollars." Also I love how they used to write etcetera which was the ampersand C because the et in etc literally means "and". I just think that's cool, I don't think anybody ever writes that anymore now it's just etc. Anyway one thing that someone had to discard kind of brings a tear to the eye. "A man named Smith had a wooden rolling pin that it was decided was useless and must be abandoned. I shall never forget how that big man stood there with tears streaming down his face as he said 'Do I have to throw it away? It was my mothers. I remember she always used it to roll out her biscuits and they were awful good biscuits." It's really amazing what these people went through and gave up to start this new life, and I don't just mean giving up their mother's rolling pin but giving up everything that they had left behind. Many of these people would never again see the family and friends that they had known back east and I don't think I could have done it. I really don't think
I could have lasted very long doing 6 months of hard living, hard traveling, and hard eating. Maybe a week. I think I could have lasted a week, maybe two if these Johnny cakes taste as good- as good
as they smell. And here we are a pioneer breakfast of Johnny cakes and bacon from the Oregon Trail. So sometimes people would've put honey, or syrup, or more molasses on these but I'm going to just try them- still hot- as is. Here we go. [munch munch] So the texture is a little- it's not dry it's almost like gritty but not unpleasantly so but it's kind of- it's a little grittier than than I might like but the flavor is really, really good. I kind of expected them to be bland but they're not. It's- you know it's kind of like cornbread, cornmeal, it's like cornbread, and molasses mixed together so you kind of get that sweetness but then the fact that it's like fried basically in bacon grease, that's really nice and you get a really,
really nice bacony flavor to it. It kind of reminds me of like a 19th century version of
a McDonald's McGriddle. I actually think that that these are going to grow on me. This is something I could I could eat one or two of them. They're a little- I think it's just that they're a little more dense than like a fluffy pancake 'cus there is nothing in there to raise it, no raising agent, so it's just kind of heavy but comes with bacon the
bacon of course is uh it's just bacon but it's really fatty bacon 'cus that's what they would have had so I got the fattiest that they that I could find. Aand it's really, really good. Also how cool is this fork? I got it from Townsends, they have a bunch of really just cool stuff from this period, mostly earlier 18th century but I thought it fit. Plus it's just just cool looking. So I think these are something that you should try. It's totally worth it maybe swap out some of the you know water for milk , or just kind of play with it. You can add some spice make the fancier version but even as is, especially you know if you're going across the prairie, and you're really hungry it's a great meal. So give these a try, don't die of dysentery and I will
see you next time on Tasting History.
