Historybites

 

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

So begins Alfred Lord Tennyson’s famous poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” a romantic rendering of one of the most trago-glorious military gaffes in history.  The Charge was an episode in an equally curious conflict that pitted the Imperial Russian Army against the combined forces of France and Britain on the Crimean Peninsula ostensibly over the rights of Christians in Ottoman controlled territories and the integrity of the Danubian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldova (try saying that five times fast!)

In reality the war was about age-old ambitions and concerns of the Russians, British and French – power and influence in eastern Mediterranean.  From such a strange little war waged on a piece of Europe known more for resort bathing than fighting, a great many enduring cultural relics took shape.

• The highest military award for bravery in the British Empire, the Victoria Cross, was first fashioned from the captured Russian guns at Sevastopol (although current scholarship indicates the metal came from Chinese guns).
• Florence Nightingale pioneered field nursing during this war and advanced the role of women while doing so.
• In terms of fashion, the war gave us the balaclava, the cardigan (sort of) and raglan sleeves (originally designed so Lord Raglan had a better fitting shirt after he lost an arm).
• Some of the first independent war correspondents reported from the field, blowing the whistle on the horrific conditions endured by the soldiers, healthy and wounded.

The charge itself happened on October 25^th, 1854.  On that day, the Russians had captured some British guns manned by Turkish soldiers looking down into a valley from the side.  The Russians also controlled the other side of the valley and had a well-fortified position at the end of the valley.  Lord Raglan, the British commander ordered the recently lost guns to be retaken.  The problem was that his order was not the most precise piece of communication in military history.

“Ld. Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front – follow the enemy and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns.  Troop Horse artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on your left. Immediate!”

The problem was that Lord Cardigan, the commander to whom the order was given, could not see the guns that Raglan wanted him to charge.  He could only see the guns at the end of the valley, flanked by other guns.  Dutifully he assembled the light brigade and charged down the “valley of death” – “Canon to the right of them; canon to the left of them; canon in front of them.”

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:

By the time they turned and slashed their way back up the valley there were less than 100 men left.  To quote a French General who witnessed the courage and carnage “It is magnificent, but it is not war.”

While the Light Brigade was make its blunder-laden charge into the history books, a Chef by the name of Alexis Soyer was riding into the Crimea.  Soyer was a famous celebrity chef of mid 19^th Century London.  He worked at the Reform Club in London and marketed his own commercial line of sauces and cookbooks.  After achieving fame as the Chef at the Reform Club he turned his fame and expertise to the cause of the poor.  He wrote Shilling Cookery, Soyer’s Charitable Cookery and The Poor man’s Regenerator.  Does this career path sound familiar?  He then designed a soup kitchen and accompanying recipes for the Irish Famine.  When he read of the plight of the British soldiers in the field, be took himself to the Crimea on his own dime.  Once there he took to improving the way that the British army was fed, using his own field kitchen design.  Using the same army ingredients, he staged taste tests between his new improved methods and recipes and old established army cookery.  These were huge successes and his field kitchen design was used in the British army, by some accounts, into the 1990 Gulf War.

Semi-Stewed Mutton and Barley Soup for 100 Men

• 130 pints cold water
• 70 lbs. meat
• 12 lbs. plain mixed vegetables
• 9 lbs. barley
• 1 lb. 7 oz. salt
• 1 lb. 4 oz. flour
• 1 lb. 4 oz. sugar

Put all ingredients, except flour, in pan

Set on fire and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer gently for 2 and a half hours.

Remove the joints of meat and keep warm.

Mix flour with enough water to form a light batter.  Stir into liquid and boil another half hour.  Skim fat.

Portion the meat, add to stew and serve.

 

References:

1. Brandon, Ruth, The People’s Chef: The Culinary Revolutions of Alexis Soyer. New York: Walker and Company, 2004.
2. Cope, Zachary (1959). “Alexis Soyer and the Crimean War,” Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 18, pp 6-8. doi:10.1079/PNS19590004
3. Hibbert, Christopher, The Destruction of Lord Raglan, (Longmans, 1961), pp. 112-13 cited at “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Victoriaweb.org.

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Charles Darwin, the co-founder of the theory of natural selection, breathed his first on February 12, 1809 (the same day that Abraham Lincoln did likewise).  He had a delicate constitution, which troubled him to no end during the course of his five-year journey around the world on the HMS Beagle.  Can you imagine being constantly seasick on a five-year sea-journey around the world?

The Beagle returned to England in October 1836 and two years later Darwin married Emma.  Emma, a devout Anglican, settled into caring for him while Darwin formulated his ideas on the mechanism of evolution – and played with a  lot of bugs.  While Emma fulfilled what was expected of a middle class Victorian wife, she was increasingly troubled by the religious implications of Darwin’s theory of natural selection.  Where was God in her husband’s vision of nature?  Her concern partially explains his hesitancy in publishing Origin of Species, which didn’t hit the shelves until 1859.

How did Emma care for the flatulent Darwin?  – by cooking wonderful Victorian meals, and more importantly for us, writing down how she made these meals.  Emma left to history a hand-written cookbook from which we can smell, taste, and see what Charles Darwin experienced.

 

Here is a recipe for a veal cake (I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ll keep you posted) – a veal strata-  from Emma Darwin’s cookbook.

• Boil a breast of veal and slice into 3 pieces
• Slice 8 hard-boiled eggs
• Chop a good deal of parsley
• Slice some ham thinly
• Season all with cayenne, nutmeg, and salt
• Butter a deep dish
• Layer veal, eggs, and ham, (to your mind) – repeat until all are used
• Cover with bones (Presumably from the veal?)
• Cook in oven for 3.5 hours (350º?)
• Take out of oven and remove bones
• Weight the “cake” with a brick or other weight until it is cold
• Dip in hot water, invert and unmold (“turned out with great care that the jelly may not be hurt that hangs around the cake”)
• Go out an develop a theory that will change the course of biological science, and human-kind’s view of itself in the universe forever!

 

 

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The First World War broke upon Europe in August 1914 when the German army crossed the frontier into Luxembourg, Belgium and eventually France.  While the opening weeks of the war were marked by movement and sweeping actions, it did not take long for the war to bog-down into a trench-bound war of stagnation and attrition.  The age-old cliché that is trotted out at the outbreak of all wars; that the soldiers “will be home by Christmas” was belied once again.  By the time Christmas arrived the line of trenches on the western front stretched from the English Channel to the foothills of the Alps and the men on both sides would see three more Christmases come and go, while they huddled there.

How did soldiers exist in the hellish conditions of the trenches?  Supplying these soldiers with the calories they needed was a constant struggle for the combatants, one that became increasingly difficult as the size of the armies grew and the countries’ resources dwindled.

Link: Daily Life in the Trenches

All armies strove to give their soldiers as much “fresh” (that is not preserved or canned) food as possible.  Battle conditions, however, made this difficult and so soldiers carried reserve or “iron rations” which they would eat if no regular rations were forthcoming.

The following was the recommended German field ration in 1914:

• 260 grams of Erbwurst (Dried pea soup pressed into a “sausage shape”)
• 250 grams of field biscuit, or 750 grams fresh bread
• 350 grams fresh or 200 grams preserved meat (bacon, salt pork etc.)
• 25 grams coffee or tea
• 25 grams sugar
• 25 grams salt

The British rations were more robust in theory, but as the war wore on became as meager as her enemies.

• 20 oz. Fresh or frozen meat, or 16 oz. salt meat
• 20 oz. bread, or 16 oz. biscuit or flour
• 4 oz. bacon
• 3 oz. cheese
• 5/8 oz. tea
• 4 oz. jam
• 3 oz. sugar
• ½ oz. salt
• 1/36 oz. pepper
• 1/20 oz. mustard
• 8 oz. fresh or 2 oz. dried vegetables
• 1/10 gill lime juice if vegetable not issued (for scurvy)
• ½ gill rum (at discretion of commanding general)

 

 

 

 

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There are few more infamous images in United States history than that of its 39th President, boarding a helicopter after having resigned his office in the wake of the Watergate scandal. The iconic image is awash in irony/puzzlement, flashing as he does, two “victory” signs to the assembled press and public. The date was August 9, 1974.

Richard Milhouse Nixon, however, had been washed into his second term by a flood of popularity. He had captured the Electoral College votes of all but one state and the District of Columbia. His share of the popular vote was an impressive 61%; 47 million Americans had voted for him. And yet, a short 23 months later he became the first president in US history to resign in office.

His undoing had been illegally wiretapping his political opponents and, more importantly, his attempt to use his power as president to cover-up the crime. The nuts and bolts of the scandal are that a Republican committee called the Committee to Re-elect the President, called CREEP for short – one of the most après pros acronyms in history – conducted the wiretaps. When one of the wiretaps in the Washington Democratic headquarters located in the Watergate building complex failed, CREEP sent operatives into the headquarters to fix the listening devise on June 17, 1972. The “burglars” were discovered by night watchman Frank Willis and were charged with breaking an entering. When the CREEP operatives were found guilty, Congress began to question the involvement of members of the Nixon administration and set up a Senate Committee to investigate – the Ervin Committee. The more the Ervin Committee questioned, the more those same members of the administration got nervous. Nixon began distancing himself from those involved.

During the course of the committee hearings, it was revealed that there was a secret recording system in the Oval Office. In fact, the system had been installed by a previous President. When the judge in the original burglary trial and the Ervin committee demanded to listen to the tapes, the Nixon administration fought to withhold them. The Senate forced Nixon to appoint a Special Prosecutor who also demanded the White House turn over the tapes. Nixon had the Special Prosecutor fired. The new Prosecutor did not let up and also demanded the tapes. By June 1974, the Supreme Court ordered that Nixon present the tapes and when he did there was segments that had been erased. The tapes revealed that Nixon had, indeed, attempted to use the CIA to stop the FBI investigation into what was now known as the Watergate Scandal. When it became clear that the House of Representatives would vote to impeach him and he had few remaining allies in the Senate where the impeachment trial would be held, Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency.

The audio tapes that formed the majority of the evidence against Nixon were recorded between June 1972 and April 1973. On April 17, 1973 Nixon discussed potential blackmail by the Watergate burglars and the possibility of finding $350 000 if this was the case with his Chief of Staff, H. R Haldeman. The following links will take you to the audio recording of the tapes:

Link: April 17 Tape 1

Link: April 17 Tape 2

After these discussions, Nixon retired to the White House Dinning room and was presented with this menu:

Supreme of Duck  Bigarade

2 duck breasts
2 tbsp minced shallots
2 tbsp butter
½ cup port
3 tbsp Cointreau
½ cup demi-glace or concentrated consumé
1 tsp orange zest
1 large orange, sectioned (not excessively sweet)
¼ cup orange juice

1. Score duck skin
2. Place duck breast in heated pan, skin side down. Sauté until skin is crisp. Turn breast over and cook until medium rare. Remove and cover.
3. Melt butter in pan.
4. Sauté shallots, scraping up brown bits in bottom of pan.
5. Add port, Coitreau, and orange juice. Reduce by half.
6. Add demi-glace or consumé and reduce again.
7. Add orange zest and cook for two minutes.
8. Add orange sections and heat through.
9. Pour sauce over duck breasts and serve.

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