Talk:Foods of the American Civil War

Formality
It's never been my strength to sound boring, laughs. Some poor soul will have to come here and take a look at my writing and make the final decisions on the formality of this article. D. Farr 07:07, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
 * What were your sources for the article? Amishjedi (talk) 16:32, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * BTW, I will address a few more issues in the typing in a few days. Amishjedi (talk) 16:42, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Confederate soldiers didn't like Southern cooking to begin with?

 * "Food often became infested with insects. It did not take long for Union soldiers to get used to skimming beetle larvae out of coffee and sharing meat with maggots. As a result, many troops who were in the Confederate States of America developed a liking for southern cooking."

I'm confused? Granted, I'm a beer and a half in, but it seems to me that most of the Confederate soldiers would have entered the war with a fondness for Southern cooking, and I'm not sure what the Union soldiers having to deal with beetles in their coffee would have had to do with it. trepto (talk) 15:46, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Numbers not making sense
I've decided to take up doomsday prepping as a hobby, and started working out supplies based on the numbers given here. These numbers make a lot more sense if we're talking rations per meal, not per day. To give just one example, the coffee "per 100 rations" works out to about a cup per ration. From a 99% Invisible episode, I know that Union soldiers were about as obsessed about their coffee as British soldiers are about their tea. It'd make a lot more sense if they were getting that much coffee per meal. In the larger picture, the calorie count just isn't working out for me. Unless we want to suppose that the Union soldiers were starved zombies, or they got at least half (more likely more, if they were exerting themselves, as seems likely) from outside sources, the rations given would again make a lot more sense if we're talking meals, not days.

I've tried verifying this through the source given, Hardee's Tactics. I found an html version online, but I couldn't find any mention of rations, or hardtack, or tack, for that matter (except for "attack" and "stack arms". A lot of info on formation drill, but nothing on food. Looks like the main source for this info is Ken Burns' documentary. Probably be a better idea to track down the sources Burns used to make the documentary. 75.134.32.147 (talk) 02:21, 18 November 2016 (UTC)