Shipboard cooking

[Black Dog]

Fire on shore - good. Fire onboard a wooden ship - bad. How was fire for cooking dealt with aboard the ships? What sources of info is out there for info on what was prepared and how. I expect lots of boiled salt pork and some type of bread. If any have some valid information please share or point me in the direction of resources that may have that information.

thanks mates,

Willie the rumrunner

[Fox]

Fires on ship had to be contained, and there were various ways of doing this. The simplest was perhaps a metal "cookbox" which had three sides and a kind of tray in the bottom. Raised from the deck on short legs it made a small fire fairly safe. At the other end of the scale the Mary Rose had an enormous brick built affair, rather like a chimney, with the fire on the inside and the cook pot rested in the top.

As for what types of food were cooked and eaten, there was recently a whacking great long thread about food in the golden age, a quick search should turn it up.

[JoshuaRed]

Smaller ships had portable iron stoves that could be set out on deck for use in good weather, and stored below in foul weather. Storms meant no hot food. :(As mentioned above, another option was a stone/brick hearth set below deck with a chimney/stovepipe that funneled the smoke outside.

[blackjohn]

This is from a LONG time ago...

http://ic.net/~blues/galleys.htm

[Capt. Sterling]

okay running over this quickly... most of the illustrations were cut aways, so in actuality the kettle would be bricked in on all sides? Would the kettle be removable or permanent?

[Capn_Enigma]

This is the galley layout on the VOC Retourschip "Batavia" (1629). (Note that you need a QuickTime VR plugin for this link to work, but you may probably already have one installed).

Just "turn around" and you can see the galley. Above the brick walls there is a copper lined section that leads the smoke to a chimney on deck. This layout is typical of the 17th century ships. No "iron stoves" there. There is even a skewer to roast livestock like pigs.

[Misson]

In his book Life at Sea in the Age of Sail, W.R. Thrower has a lot to say on this interesting and rather curious problem. (The reader is warned that Thrower's book is not well sourced and he tends to range all over the place as far as dates go, so caveat emptor):

“...there was the ever-present risk of fire, yet it was impossible to cook without adequate facilities. If a wooden ship caught fire badly, she was almost always destroyed. In those days it was quite a problem, even ashore, to construct fireplaces in wooden houses without danger… At sea, there was not only the problems of building satisfactory fire-proof cooking places in wooden ships but the constant hazards from pitching or rolling. In bad weather the galley fires were always extinguished and might not be relighted for a week or more, which increased the misery on board during a gale since no hot food could be served. When the Centurion under Commodore Anson rounded Cape Horn in 1740 there was no hot food for three weeks.” (Thrower, Sea, p. 37)

“Before proper cook-rooms or galleys were constructed, one place where it was deemed safe to have a cooking fire was on top of the ballast. In fact the early cook-rooms were placed over the ballast, though this practice does not seem to have lasted very long, for the surrounding filth made it hardly a good place for preparing food [Note: The ballast often served as the restroom, in rough weather especially. On French ships, Thrower says that dead bodies were also put there.] Obviously somewhere higher in the ship was desirable once a means for adequate fireproofing had been devised. When you think of all the research that was done to discover safe ways of constructing cooking places and fire hearths in wooden houses ashore, how much more difficult must have the problem been at sea. Basically, the principle finally adopted was to arrange a good layer of lime with an air space to insulate brickwork from adjacent timber.

Constructional details of cook-rooms are not available before the middle of the 18th century, but which time the design was established and bricks were used to build a safe room Before brick rooms were built such room were compartments made of timber with brick fireplaces, which was the practice in the early 17th century… In all ships boiling was the routine method of cooking, and a suitable number of specially shaped coppers with lids were provided and deeply set in the brickwork. Over the coppers there was usually a funnel passing through the deckhead to allow steam to escape. No proper ovens could be permitted because of the dangers of over-heating, although various attempts were made as early as the 15th century to provide means of baking.” (Thrower, Sea, p. 37-8)

“It is quite clear that for a couple of centuries or longer the only real baking that a ship’s company would enjoy was done in portable ovens set up ashore when the opportunity arose. Portable ovens were a normal piece of equipment because wet biscuit had to be rebaked periodically. Rather strangely, no regular attempt was made to check by heat treatment the ordinary ravages of weevils and other parasite so common in biscuit.” (Thrower, Sea, p. 38-9)

“Even in smaller ships an oven was sometimes devised, certainly there was one in Captain James Cook’s Endeavor, a ship about which we know so much, but that evidence is that this oven was only used when the ship was anchored.” (Thower, Sea, p. 38)

“Both the bread-room and the powder magazine received special attention owing to the ever-present problem of how best to keep out the damp and, in the case of the bread-room, vermin as well.” (Thrower, Sea, p. 39)

[Lady Seahawke]

Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Area: Susan McLellan Plaisted

Susan McLellan Plaisted offers hearth cooking classes at several historic sites and is one of the most broadly knowledgeable interpreters of early American foodways. Susan has the receipts (recipes), techniques, attire, and equipment to correctly interpret and demonstrate Scottish, Welsh, English, Dutch, German, Swedish, Colonial, and Native American foodways practices from many periods of history.

She also provides programming in late 18th century English and American ship-board cooking. Susan is the director of foodways at Pennsbury Manor, the recreated 1680’s home of Pennsylvania’s founder, William Penn. Susan also directs the hands-on German foodways program at Rittenhouse Towne, the home of Wilhelm Rittenhouse, the first Philadelphia paper maker.

________________________________

bolding is mine.

Has anyone taken this class?

BTW - found a list of historical cooking classes at http://www.williamrubel.com/hearthcooking/...cooking-classes

there are list of offerings from around the country and in England.

[Commodore Swab]

We find large lightweight stones around shipwrecks that have been identified as stones used to cook on, roughly 18 inches square or larger

[Silver]

i have been doing some research on period shipboard cooking and have been drawing up plans to build a fogan and try some recipes using the ingredients that are found in old shipboard food storage lists.

[Dutchman]

L. Silver,

use caution if you use the ole dried peas, oatmeal, beef, bread, butter combination. I tried it for a week about a year ago and buggered my intestines. Our bodies digestive systems and enzymes are not of those 300 years ago- weve gotten soft on sugars and such. Things that go haywire are your sugar/insulin levels, sodium/potasium pump gets screwy as well. digestive output is far less than input creating a renal problem, then the cramping I imagine is right up there with child birth. No matter how much you try to rehydrate the hard tack, dried peas, or oatmeal it is just not the same. once you do get enough liquid back into your system to dislodge "the brick" you will wish you had not. But the good news was I lost some weight.

[callenish gunner]

Dutch don't tell me you're an on the job carboholic (donuts) doh!!!!

[Dutchman]

gunner. i'll have you know saying that i'm eating donuts is steriotypical and sets an unprofessional immage. Do you really think I sit around the convenience store slurping free coffee and eatin donuts? ....................................I'll have you know they are law enforcement power rings and they fit on the horn handles of the patrol bike very well! thank you very much

[callenish gunner]

The Rings of Power ......By The Power Of Dunkin' ....HiHo Krispy Kreme away!!!!

[Silver]

L. Silver,

use caution if you use the ole dried peas, oatmeal, beef, bread, butter combination. I tried it for a week about a year ago and buggered my intestines. Our bodies digestive systems and enzymes are not of those 300 years ago- weve gotten soft on sugars and such. Things that go haywire are your sugar/insulin levels, sodium/potasium pump gets screwy as well. digestive output is far less than input creating a renal problem, then the cramping I imagine is right up there with child birth. No matter how much you try to rehydrate the hard tack, dried peas, or oatmeal it is just not the same. once you do get enough liquid back into your system to dislodge "the brick" you will wish you had not. But the good news was I lost some weight.

thanks for the waring, may i ask what was your beer intake during this period? i have people ask me what did sailor eat during the 1700, i have heard of the ships bisket and have seen some hardtack. but after looking at some of the food stuffs taken to sea i was thinking what could a creative cook come up with, before he is thrown over the side. there was a time when i was trying to save money and i ate alot of rice. i came up with alot of different dishes using it as the main dish. i have two different manifests and rice is on both.

[Dutchman]

alas, having not so pleasant reactions to alcohol, the beer was right out. water (well ok coffee) and milk were the staples. the one thing i had problems with was the liquids alotment. i'll have to find the chart to get exact units, but there is practically no way to reconstitute the dried foods with the ammount of water alloted. so in effect if we take the charts literally there is no liquid other than the ale to consume. there is definitely a fine line with the water absorbtion v/s burning your food to make sure its reconstituted. If there is water left in the pot- the beans are still hard, but you can skim some water to drink. or no liquid left and you're not quick on the burners you've burt your food and then you will wish you had the water! let me go look for the table i used.