Cowboy cooking

How can you learn about "Cowboy Recipes" that were served by chuckwagons in the 19th Century American West? There are several books, Web sites, reenactor groups, and museums you can tap for authentic (and adapted) recipes as well as cooking techniques (Dutch Oven, for example). There is even an annual chuck wagon gathering where you can sample the fare for yourself. Are you writing a report for school? Working on a Boy Scout merit badge? Collecting details for a historic novel? Establishing a foodways program in a living history museum? The amount of information you need depends upon your project. The following sources will get you started:

Charles Goodnight & Oliver Loving (from Texas) are credited with *inventing* the chuckwagon in 1866 in order to accomodate the gustatory needs of American cowboys: "The nature of the cook's job required that he get up several hours earlier than the cowhands, so he worked longer hours with less sleep. When the outfit was on the move, he had to be at the next appointed camp and have a hot meal ready on time."

Cowboy coffee
Cowboy biscuits
Cowboy beans
jerky
Cowboy menus for K-12 teachers

Recommended reading--your local public librarian can help you find these:

Chuck Wagon Cookin': An authentic collection of roundup lore, cowboy humor and more than one hundred old-time recipes, Stella Hughes
...excellent source for modernized recipes
Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries, David Dary
...food history and social details
Eating up the Santa Fe Trail, Sam'l P. Arnold
...original recipes with modern adaptations, history and lore
The Old West Baking Book, Lon Walters
...old-time recipes adapted for modern ovens (cowboys enjoyed biscuits on the trail, pies & cakes would have been baked back at the ranch)
Up the Trail from Texas, by J. Frank Dobie
...chapter titled "The Cook and his Chuckwagon" which explains what, how, when, where and why Cowboys ate the foods they did.

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As you slide down the banister of life, may the splinters never point the wrong way.

C

OH! I almost forgot to mention that LL wrote about the travelers eating 'pemican'. And LL wrote that the Apaches left a bag of 'pinole' with Tell Sackett when they left him in 'The Sackett Brand', which I am re-reading now.

Tennessee Dave

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As you slide down the banister of life, may the splinters never point the wrong way.

TOM

A corndodger, or just dodger, is a ball of cornmeal (and sometimes flour), water (or milk), oil (or lard) and usually sugar. This is deep fried (like a hushpuppy), or baked. They are also known as Johnny Cakes and seem to come out of the Colonial Era.

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As you slide down the banister of life, may the splinters never point the wrong way.