To feed the crew of a wooden sailing ship in the 18th and 19th century
a ship's cook would often turn to a dish called lobscouse,
a simple stew of meat, vegetables, and ships biscuits.
So thank you to Made In cookware for sponsoring this video as we make lobscouse,
this time on Tasting History.
Lobscouse was a favorite of sailors at least since the beginning of the 18th century and
very likely far before that just under different names.
In 1785 it was described as "Lobs-couse a dish much eaten at sea,
composed of salt beef, biscuit, and onions, well peppered and stewed together."
A simple one pot meal that would have been pretty easy to make in the cramped quarters
that were a galley on an 18th century sailing ship
but this definition which comes from the 'Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue' isn't really a recipe.
For a recipe you have to look quite a bit later to around 1907
when Joe Tilden's Recipes for Epicures' says to
"Soak four thick slices of corned beef in fresh water for two hours.
Fry four slices of salt pork or bacon. In the fat fry four sliced onions a light brown.
Place in a stewpan the beef, onions and pork or bacon.
Add a dozen sliced potatoes, cover with water and season highly with pepper.
Cover and stew gently until the meat is tender. Then break into the saucepan four sea biscuits, cook for five minutes longer.
The liquor may be thickened a little more with a tablespoon of flour mixed with a little cold water."
Pretty simple once you have all of the ingredients. Now I'm cutting this recipe down because I don't have an entire crew to cook for
and even half a portion will still make a lot of lobscouse that will last me the entire week.
So for that I am going to need two thick slices of corned beef.
You can also use fresh beef but you'll want to add some salt for seasoning. Two slices of fatty bacon
and for this you want something really fatty like lardon or just pork belly, something with like 90% fat.
Two onions and six potatoes, and you want all of those ingredients chopped up into bite-sized pieces.
and then a tablespoon of pepper and two ships biscuits also known as hardtack.
[clack clack]
Now this is the one ingredient you are not likely to find at your local grocery store.
For the uninitiated "Sea biscuit is a sort of bread much dried, to make it keep for the use of the navy,
and is good for a whole year after it is baked."
Of course I've made this here on the channel before but it's been 3 years and
between using it for several other recipes that I've made and for taking pictures for the Tasting History cookbook
I have run out so I am going to make some fresh hardtack.
[clack clack]
All it is is one part water to four parts whole wheat flour.
For a dozen biscuits that's 8 cups or 2 pounds of flour, and 2 cups or 475 mL of water.
You can also add some salt if you want but it is not necessary.
So just mix all of the ingredients until you have a dough come together.
Now mind you this is going to be the driest dough you have probably ever worked with and so you're going to be tempted to add in more liquid,
you can but that'll just make it so it needs to bake longer because essentially you're trying to dry it out,
get rid of all of the moisture so don't add any more water than you need to.
Knead the dough for about 15 minutes until it becomes nice and smooth and then divide it into 12 pieces.
Now if you're trying to make Civil War era hard attack then you're going to cut this up into 12 squares
but since we are making the sea fairing variety they should be round.
So roll them into balls and press them down to between a 1/4 and 1/2 in thick,
and then set them on a lined baking sheet and poke holes throughout so they look like a giant Ritz cracker.
Then set them in the oven at 300° F or 150° C for 3 hours.
Then turn the heat down to 200° F, that's 95° C, and let them bake for another 3 to 4 hours
or until they are so hard that you can do this.
[clack clack].
So now you have all of your ingredients and you can start making your lobscouse.
Now you can make this in pretty much any pot,
but I am going to be using a non-stick pot that I got from today's sponsor Made In.
Made In designs professional quality products for the home cook yet they are strong enough
to withstand the rigors of a restaurant.
They're used in multiple three Michelin star restaurants including La Bernardin in New York,
and Alinea in Chicago both of which are on my bucket list of places to try.
Made In's Performance nonstick collection is made both here in America and in Italy,
and they are remarkably durable. The double cured non-stick surface is wonderful to cook on not just because
nothing sticks to it like the name would imply but underneath that surface
is their five ply stainless steel collection which will allow the pan to heat up nice and evenly and quickly
so you can get a nice char or sear when you're cooking on it.
Though I think my favorite thing about them is how easy they are to clean,
you just rinse them and wipe and they're done.
Especially with something like this dish like lobscouse where no matter what you do
there's always going to be stuff stuck to the bottom of the pot and you know you got to scour it,
not true with Made In's non-stick collection.
And you can check out their nonstick collection along with all of maiden's other cookware
by just clicking my link in the description to save on your order.
So thank you Made In for sponsoring this video and for making it a little bit easier to make my lobscouse
for which you actually need to first soak your beef.
See corned beef is going to be full of salt so you need to soak it for a couple hours just to draw out some of that salt,
and historically it would have been even saltier than the kind that you get today but still you should soak it before cooking with it.
If you're using salt pork you're going to do the same thing with that but if you are using bacon like me
then just toss it into the pan to start frying. Now you would think that this being a one pot meal
I would do this all in one pot because I should have, and you should as well
but I was watching TV when I started cooking and so I wasn't really paying attention so I started frying it in a pan
which is fine but you don't need to do that, do it all in one pot, save yourself a pan cleaning.
Regardless let it fry at high heat for about 5 minutes until most of the fat has melted,
and then take your sliced onion and add it in turning it over in the fat to get it evenly coated.
Then reduce the heat and let the onion fry until it's lightly browned about 7 or 8 minutes.
At this point I transferred it to the large pot,
then you add the corned beef drained of its salty water, along with the potatoes and then add just enough water to cover everything.
This was about 6 cups or 1 and 1/2 liters for me but it doesn't really matter just fill it up until it's all covered.
Then add in the pepper, I would start with a tablespoon you can always add more in later
and if you are using fresh beef for this then also add in a couple teaspoons of salt at this point.
If you're using the corn beef you probably don't need to add salt but you can if you want.
Then turn on the heat and bring the lobscouse up to a simmer.
Then set the lid on and let it simmer for 45 minutes.
That'll give the potatoes and the meat some time to cook and soften up
while I tell you the history of lobscouse and the sea cooks that made it.
The origins of lobscouse both the dish and the name are really unknown.
Many have claimed that since the Nordic languages as well as German all have versions of this word
that that proves the origin but since all all of the meanings of those different words
are slightly different, one isn't even a stew it's more like a hash,
it's hard to make the connection or really prove anything out especially because
in the written record it first appears in English.
Now if it did originate in English it's possible
that it's related to an earlier West country dish called loblolly which was really just a thick gruel
but again the connection is merely conjecture. What is known is that lobscouse using many different spellings
was popular with the sailors of the 18th century as well as in cities where those sailors lived namely Liverpool.
Liverpool was a major port in England and there are numerous historic records
that show the dish being eaten there though from a very early point in time
they had shortened the name to scouse.
They would often ditch the ship's biscuit since they were on land and instead replace it with barley or some other grain,
and they would add in other vegetables very often carrots and sometimes they would just ditch the meat all together,
and just have a vegetable version that they called blindscouse, and when I say called I mean still call it that
because they still eat scouse in Liverpool.
In fact Liverpudlians are also called scousers.
Now since the dish is associated with seafairing it's no wonder that
it quickly spread to other port towns around the world.
In fact the recipe that we are making today comes from Joe Tilden from San Francisco.
And in 1852 Asa Benet Clarke in his journals about his travels to Mexico and California
wrote about eating this dish shortly after leaving port in Florida.
"Rainy, rough and boisterous. We are kept on what is called seamen's fare.
No bread but hard navy bread. The water positively horrible.
Salt beef and pork every day and for a change, a kind of thick soup they call lob skous."
Which don't tell him is just a stew made of all those other ingredients he didn't like.
So he wasn't a fan of of the seaman's diet and it's kind of understandable
because the diet of the average sailor at the time was pretty monotonous
and rarely included fresh ingredients so the sea cook just had to make do.
And now the captain and his officers they did eat much better but
depending on the size of the ship there was actually a cook specifically for the captain and officers,
and a cook specifically for everyone else.
In the 1708 book 'The Wooden World Dissected: In the Character of a Ship of War' the author Edward Ward describes
how these two men, the ship's cook and the captain's cook, stayed out of each other's way.
"The captain's cook and he, are opposites, as well in their practice as in their habitations,
and seldom or never make incursions into each other's provinces."
In general the sea cook worked alone or maybe had an assistant or two depending on the size of the ship.
Now if it was a really large warship then he would have more people helping him
but they would be crew members that also had other duties not dedicated necessarily to helping him.
As for the sea cook himself all of his work was done usually on one stove
that might have an oven that was useful and a couple burners and maybe a kettle and a cauldron,
and that's about it.
Now originally these setups were made of brick but
because a ship is out on the waves and would be moving the bricks over time would start to crack
and would fill the ship with smoke every time he was cooking.
In the mid 18th century the British Royal Navy began installing larger iron hearths that addressed this problem,
and they also included spits for roasting and grates for grilling.
Again depending on the size of the ship sometimes these these were massive
and would take up a very large portion of one of the decks
but for most ships they were rather small and sometimes all they would get is something called a caboose
or a camboose stove and that was a small stove that was actually outside of the ship
on one of the open decks because it didn't have a funnel or chimney to vent the smoke.
Also the word caboose or camboose doesn't mean the the back of a train in this instance
it was another word for the galley or the kitchen on a ship.
Anyway in 1803 a US schooner called the Nautilus
received one of these camboose stoves and the lieutenant who was in charge of the ship had mixed feelings about it.
"This day I received the camboose on board and am much pleased with the plan -
but do not approve of the coppers being cast iron. They are very rough
and if not able to stand the fire or by accident get split, can never be repaired."
I'm not sure if he ever got his copper kettles but either way it was the sea cook that really had to make do.
So who were these sea cooks what was the sort of man who got this job?
Well typically especially in the 18th century they were older sailors
who were no longer up to the physically demanding jobs above deck or else sailors who would become injured in some way.
Of course on 'Treasure Island' the cook aboard the ship was the one-legged pirate Long John Silver
but even in real life this seemed to be a theme because in the 1740s both the HMS Flora and the HMS Sovereign
had cooks that only had one eye.
And in 1704 the British admiralty actually sent an order calling on the Navy Board in their appointment of cooks
"to give the preference to such cripples and maimed persons as our pensioners of the chest on Chatham."
And going back to 'The Wooden World Dissected James Ward says that the sea cook on his ship
"Has been an able fellow in the last war, and has been so in this too but for a scurvy bullet at La Hogue,
that shot away one of his limbs, and so cut him out for a sea cook."
Now the author of this James Ward was also a very famous satirist
and so all of his descriptions in this book are wonderfully colorful and can give us
300 years later an excellent description of of what kind of person a sea cook might be.
"His knowledge extends not to half a dozen dishes; but he's so pretty a fellow at what he undertakes,
that a bare fight of his cookery gives you a full belly all his science is contained within the cover of a seakettle."
That is to say if he can't cook it in a kettle he's probably not going to make it.
"The composing of a minced pie is metaphysics to him: and the roasting of a pig as puzzling as the squaring of a circle."
But that doesn't mean that he's not good at what he does do.
He talks about the sea cook being able to take off the silver skin from beef,
that's like a rather unpalatable membrane that's on beef
and again his description is pure poetry.
"...he has an admirable hand in squeezing the silver from beef fat;
which he does with as much dexterity as a quack does gold from a dog's turd;
and though the extraction be very gross it's yet so well refined that it does not in the least, smell of the kettle."
Then he would take the beef fat and render it down into tallow and give that to the purser to make candles.
And he says that he spent so much time doing this and making food in the smoky kitchen
that it was almost like he was in league with the devil.
"...for Lucifer himself can never be more busy than he every day and burning, boiling and broiling.
The real truth is, anyone would guess him to have been a seven years apprentice to the prince of darkness;
for he is never without a pair of tormentors in his hand, and the Devil in his mouth...
reaking with sweat and grease, as if he was come just piping hot from Old Nick's kitchen."
And if this old sea cook is ever caught praying it's only to tell someone
"to fetch him a little ship beer..."
He says that the cook so rarely left the galley that unlike the other sailors who were always tanned
his face was on top covered in black soot.
And then he had a beard on the lower half of his face but when he would shave that once a month
then it looked like "the posterior of a scalded hog or whiter."
And he says he's always smoking and this smell of smoke and sweat and cooking food all mingled together
makes him smell "as good asafoetida."
And I was really surprised to come across that term in an 18th century English document because
while asafoetida was a very popular ingredient in ancient Rome
it really hadn't been used in northern European cooking for hundreds and hundreds of years.
And it was still used in of course Indian cooking so the only thing I can think is that James Ward on his travels
went to India and came in contact with this ingredient which I've used here on the channel and
it is often called Devil's Dung cus it does smell so bad so I guess the ship's cook didn't smell so good.
Now as Ward describes this sea cook from hell he does get around to mentioning the dish that we're making today.
"He has sent the Fellow a thousand times to the Devil, that first invented lobscouse..."
So I guess he wasn't a fan but I have to say I think it smells really, really good,
and it should be about time for us to thicken it up with some hardtack.
[clack clack]
So take your ship's biscuits and put them in a bag of some kind and beat the hell out of them.
Really, use a hammer or a mallet to break these up into pretty small pieces.
They're really, really hard so give it what for.
Then add those to the lobscouse, stir them in, and cover it up to cook for another 5 minutes.
This should help the stew thicken up but if you want it even thicker he says that you can take a tablespoon of flour,
mix it into some cold water and add that into the stew as well,
cook for a few more minutes and it's done.
And here we are lobscouse fit for a sailor's meal.
You know what it kind of reminds me of is the Irish stew that I made years ago because it's not as liquidy
as a lot of stews today are. It's much heartier. I'm going to try to get a little bit of everything in there.
Yeah, little bit of everything. Here we go.
Hm.
It's actually pretty good. So I think it's really important to pepper this and and add some salt if you need
to really make these flavors come alive. The dominant flavor that I'm getting is from the corned beef,
and that texture is very chewy and you know it's just not going to melt in your mouth.
The potato though nice and soft, just kind of falls apart
and the hardtack it's not as as hard. I mean it definitely is softened,
and you bite into it and you just get this like flavor of of flour of cooked flour but of flour,
so you want to make sure that those pieces are as small as you possibly can get.
But honestly it's hearty and what is it they say sticks to your ribs I think that this could really fill you up
and you could put other things in there.
They often make it today with with leeks and carrots, and other meats, and all sorts of things.
It's basically just a stew but it's a really good stew, and yeah.
So I suggest you make it, it's not very hard, it doesn't take that long especially once you have your hardtack baked,
and I'll see you next time on Tasting History.
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