Yes, I would like to talk about the galley, because this is a more weighty thing than land-based counterparts. In fact, even the ancient Romans or Greeks, who traveled through their flat world, would agree with me that everything is easier on land. And with a trireme or any other vessel, hell are you going to get to.
Meanwhile, the kitchen, that is, the galley on the ship, is not an old thing. People have swam in the seas for hundreds of years, but they began to cook food on them relatively recently. The same ancient Greeks and Romans, who traveled along the coast, always pushed to the coast at night and there they made a fire and cooked their own food.
And the galley itself appeared much later. And he immediately gained eerie fame. What are the names “Purgatory”, “Room of fear”, “Kingdom of filth”.
It is known for certain that there were no galleys on the ships of Columbus. Some 400 years ago. The daily distribution of food was carried out by a food master, also called a salting agent, and a bataler in charge of barrels of water, wine and brandy.
What did the sailors feed on? Depending on the condition of the ship owner's pocket.
Crackers. This was the foundation. It is clear that there were no ovens for baking bread on wooden sailboats, and if there were, how much coal and wood would have to be carried with you? So yeah, seafood.
Huge chunks so hard they could barely be broken with a hammer. Depending on the flour used to make them, rusks varied in appearance and taste. The English were light, as they were baked from wheat and corn.
Swedish "knekbrod", "crispy bread" for its hardness and configuration was called "touchstone", because it had the shape of a donut. German "knallers" ("cods") were baked from rye and were a favorite variety of rusks among sailors.
In addition, there were also special double-hardened crackers. For the most distant journeys. They were also called biscuits, which in French means "baked twice".
But even dried to the limit, to the point of ringing, crackers, in the conditions of the sea-ocean, under the influence of constant dampness, quickly grew moldy. Or hello worms and other protozoa. And this is despite the fact that already in the 18th century crackers began to be sealed in jars.
In such cases, the crackers affected by worms were simply soaked slightly with sea water and baked again in an ordinary oven. Well, how would you get the same crackers, but with meat seasoning in the form of baked worms. Enjoy your appetite, so to speak.
In general, the ship's dry ration consisted of the simplest things that did not require special storage conditions. Cured or salted meat, salted bacon, crackers, hard cheese, vegetable oil, alcohol, dried vegetables, vinegar.
By the way, vinegar was not a seasoning, but a disinfectant. The seasoning was wine until it turns sour and turns into vinegar, and a little later (after 300 years) - rum or aquavit.
By the way, I can throw such a recipe under rum. British. The dessert was called "dog cake". He was very popular in the fleet of Her Majesty Queen Victoria.
Crackers, or rather, their remains, were ground into small crumbs, then lard and sugar were added to the crumbs, ground in a mortar (for example, for tobacco) and all this was diluted with water. It turned out to be a greasy-sweetish pasta, which was given the rather outlandish name "dog cake".
It is believed that sea pudding originated precisely from the "dog cake", because well, there is something in common in the recipes.
Pudding was prepared from flour, sugar, raisins and ghee, mixed with water. Then this dough was put into a canvas bag. The bag was tied up, an identification tag was attached to it, and, along with the pudding bags of the other cisterns, lowered into a large galley cauldron. But this appeared when boilers for cooking were firmly assigned on ships.
Well, in general, 400 years ago, food was rarely cooked on a ship, and edible even less often. The first invention for a galley was an open hearth with a brick hearth filled with sand. Usually one cauldron was suspended in which food was prepared.
The most common recipe was half-loaf, half-loaf (depending on the amount of water that could be spent on the dish) of their cereals and corned beef.
It was possible to vary. Peas, lentils, pearl barley, beans, rice, millet - depending on the region. And corned beef. It could have been added if there was olive oil and other oils.
On ships of old times there was such a position - tank. This is, in his own way, an unhappy person, whose duties included receiving food for a certain number of sailors and, most importantly, a portion of meat.
The rum battler was given out to each sailor personally. As they say, rum is sacred.
But the cook did not enjoy authority in marine folklore. On the contrary, the nicknames awarded to him were usually more than offensive.
But here you just need to figure out why the cook was a condemned figure. Probably, it is worth noting for the sake of justice that the ships of that time did not differ in their huge dimensions and were really limited in carrying capacity.
What was the galley like in the face of the eternal shortage of fresh water?
A dirty, fetid room with a brick slab in the middle. The rest of the area housed kitchen tables, decks for chopping wood and cutting meat, barrels and tanks, cauldrons, shelves with pots, woodpiles of firewood, sacks and provisions.
And in the midst of all this hell, the cook reigned. More precisely, I tried to cook something like that. It is clear that in the overwhelming majority of cases only one dish was also prepared for the team. And not the best quality.
The lack of water gave rise to unsanitary conditions. The lack of normal storage conditions gave rise to crowds of rats. And so on.
The cook on the sailing ship was an odious figure. Disrespectful, cursed, often the cooks were drowned (mostly due to stupidity), but this did not improve the state of affairs. It is clear that the chef from the restaurant will not go to serve as cook on a sailboat.
Nevertheless, something was being prepared. Here are a few recipes to complement the "dog cake" and peas with corned beef.
By the way, on the second day after the peas with corned beef they could have served corned beef with peas. Marine humor, yes. And at the same time the reality of life.
Russian ship soup.
We take the boiler. We have only one, that's why we do everything in it. To begin with, bring pork fat, sauerkraut, onions, carrots and parsley root into the kettle and fry them all.
We chop the fish (no matter which one we could catch) into pieces and also lightly fry it in this beauty.
Then add water and bring to a boil. We add vegetable oil, salt, pepper and, in principle, we call the cisterns. The cabbage soup is ready.
Fine? Well, those in the know will say - you can eat. I agree. What about potage? Okay, let's leave it for dessert.
Soup.
We take a cauldron, put lard or butter and onions into it. Lots of onions. There is garlic - a lot of garlic. And it is useful, and it will be necessary to fight off the smell. Fry. Until ruddy.
Then we fill in water and throw in pieces of corned beef. Not cleansing or soaking, for water is a value. And so it will do. Cook for an hour and a half.
When the corned beef is boiled down to the point that it can be chewed, we go to the batalerka and take the bag. It doesn't matter with what. Peas, lentils, pearl barley. Anything that can be cooked. We fall asleep, as it is, with worms and larvae, there is nothing to scatter with protein. Cook!
Then comes the hardest part. It is necessary to take from the stocks of pepper and laurel and add just enough to fight off the smell. Everything's Alright. The food is ready.
It is clear that with such a "menu" the arrival of scurvy is a matter of time. And then food goes into battle, which could easily be swallowed by any scurvy with bleeding gums and loose teeth.
Labskaus.
They say the recipe from the Vikings has come yet. I don’t believe it was easier for these brave guys to knock down a sick person, to bother like that for weeks.
We take a ration of corned beef and boil it. This is 2-3 hours. Finely chop the boiled corned beef, add also finely chopped salted herring and grind it with a pestle in a mortar. In the resulting something we bring down from the soul pepper (there is already enough salt), diluted with water and rum. The first is so that you can swallow, the second is so that it does not smell like that.
True, it is worth noting that Labskaus did not completely solve the issue of getting rid of scurvy. In the sea, the corned beef still gradually rotted and smelled like a dead man. Yes, when canned meat came into use under Napoleon, it was not for nothing that they were nicknamed "the dead Frenchman" in the British navy.
And of course, potage. The most damned dish of privateers, pirates and tea clippers. The dish was prepared when the stocks of provisions were running out, and there was no way to replenish them.
The potage was prepared very simply. A boiler of water was taken, where everything that remained on board was thrown. Rats, wormy rusks, worm meal, scraps, fish tails, and so on.
Usually, the preparation of the potage was followed by a riot of the team, but …
The world of sailing ships was somewhat different from the civilized world. And first of all - food.
Hot food on sailboats was delivered from the galley to the crew's quarters in tanks. Of these, and if, since bowls on a ship are still a luxury. During the meal, each sailor in turn ran a spoon directly into the common tank. Anyone who could not keep up the rhythm and climbed out of turn received a spoon on the fingers or on the forehead.
In general, everything is so sanitary and hygienic that there are no words.
But that's half an orange! Okay, food quality. What about water quality? It is clear that most often the team received cheap and not entirely benign products. Corned beef, beans, cereals, bacon … But the water, which was mainly collected at best, from bowel wells, and at worst - from the nearby rivers, was also not a gift.
The main thing is that she was not enough. And it quickly deteriorated in the only container at that time - wooden barrels.
Considering that the most common preservative was salt, the question of the edibility of salted meat was not raised either. Simply because it had to be soaked in the same fresh water in an amicable way. Which was completely lacking, and which, moreover, quickly deteriorated, especially in hot latitudes.
With each month of sailing, the water became thicker and smelly. Later, wooden water tanks were replaced by iron ones. However, water on a ship is still considered a value: a person can overcome hunger for a week, or even more, but must drink a certain minimum of water every day.
In general, cooking on the ships of the old days was not the most fun and rewarding business. And here it's not even about ships and cooks.
More precisely, mainly in ships. More precisely, as I have already noticed, in their size. If a normal and loving people do not have the proper amount of kitchen utensils, then no amount of punishment can make him work miracles. And the lack of water nullifies all dreams of "tasty and healthy" food.
I don’t know how the British had with their traditional "five-o-clock", that is, evening tea on ships. Probably, it was not the most delicious drink. Repeating what was for lunch, only in a diluted form.
Plus constant water savings.
On the ships of Vasco da Gama, when sailing to India, each sailor was entitled to a day:
- 680 grams of crackers;
- 453 grams of corned beef;
- 1 liter of water, - 40 grams of vinegar, - 20 grams of olive oil, - onions, garlic, dried and fresh vegetables.
Probably because Vasco da Gama came back. And here is an example of another diet. The sailor of the British expedition on the Bounty transport, which ended in a mutiny and the captain's disembarkation:
- 3 kilograms 200 grams of biscuits;
- 1 pound of corned beef (450 grams);
- 160 grams of dried fish;
- 900 grams of peas or cereals;
- 220 grams of cheese;
- water, rum.
For comparison, I can cite the ration of a Russian sailor from the time of Catherine II. With the "Bounty" at the same time, in fact.
For a month, a Russian sailor was supposed to:
- 5, 5 kg of beef meat in the form of corned beef or fresh;
- 18 kg of crackers;
- 4 kg of peas;
- 2.5 kg of buckwheat;
- 4 kg of oats;
- 2.5 kg of oil;
- more than 0.5 kg of salt;
- 200 g of vinegar;
- 3.4 liters of vodka (28 glasses).
Potage was not cooked on Russian ships …
