What Did the Scouts Cook?

Here is a sample of 100 years of scouting cooking. The Illustrations and extracts were taken from “Scouting Out-of-Doors”, 1926 and “Camping and Woodcraft, 1944.

             Link to: Food Heritage display 100 years of Scout Cooking

Note: The text and illustrations were originally used in a display at the Pavilion for the Berwick-upon-Tweed Food Heritage Weekend in 2009.

How Do I Make Squirrel Soup?

1. Put the squirrels (not less than three) in a gallon of cold water, with a scant tablespoonful of salt.
2. Cover the pot closely, bring to the boiling point, and then simmer gently until the meat begins to be tender. Then add whatever vegetables you have.
3. When the meat has boiled to a rag, remove the bones. Thicken the soup with a piece of butter rubbed to a smooth paste in flour. Season to taste.

How Do I Clean My Utensils?

The utensils you use must be quite clean.

Earth, and better still sand, are good cleansers provided that at the end of the cleaning process the earth or sand is itself removed. It is not sufficient to jab a knife into the ground and then straightaway proceed to cut up the vegetables you and others propose to eat.

A rack for knives and forks and spoons is made by splitting a stick lengthwise, and whipping the two together again, not too tightly, at the ends and in the middle, and fixing it up like the one in the illustration. If you find it difficult to split the stick, two sticks lashed together in the same way will do.

Perhaps you would prefer to broil your meat.

How Do I Broil My Meat?

Broiling is a very good thing to learn since it does not require any utensils. You can stick little pieces of meat on the end of a stick and broil, or toast, them. You can broil a steak or chop on a camp broiler made like those in the illustration, or green sticks of ash, beech or elm - yew and laurel and such-like are poisonous; you can broil on large hot stone; or you can broil on a grid of green twigs laid across a fire. Have a suitable size bed of glowing embers, without lame or smoke, so that you do not need to add sticks to the fire.

At first seal the outer surfaces of the meat by placing it almost on the embers for a minute, turning it every ten seconds. Salt the meat after broiling.

How Do I Make a "Kebob"?

A favourite dish in America and elsewhere is “kabob”. For yourself alone you want anything up to a quarter of a pound of steak, half and onion and half a good sized potato. 

1. Cut the meat into slices, an inch or so square.
2. Cut the onion in half from top to bottom, and separate the leaves of one half.
3. Cut the potato into thin slices, Cut a stick and sharpen it at one end.
4. Pierce with it first a slice of meat, the a leaf of onion, then a slice of potato, then a slice of meat, and so on until you have all you want on the stick.
5. Cook it by laying the stick across the logs of a afire, or prop it over glowing embers.
   Note: Be careful to turn the stick from side to side so that the “kabob” is properly cooked all the way round.
6. When finished, salt it, and proceed to eat it off the stick.

What can be simpler, no pots, no pans, no forks? There are many ways in which you can build an oven .

How Do I Build an Oven?

Many people say that roasting is too difficult in camp, generally because they haven’t tried. Roasting potatoes, for instance, in hot ashes is quite an easy thing to do, and we have all done it at one time or another.

Roasting meats, and so on, in front of a fire is more difficult, because it is hard to regulate and reflect the heat. A simple and workable method is to use a small oven.

One way is to dig a hole in a bank, a clayey one if you can find it. Another was is known as the “biscuit tin oven.” The tin is placed on its side over a trench - in which the fire is afterwards lit - with a wooden handle, a cotton reel makes a good one, fixed to the lid.

Round the tin are packed bricks or clay or any old rubble so that an air space is left between the tin and the outer shell, except on the lid end. The outer shell should be made air-tight and a chimney provided. It is best to insulate the bottom of the tin with small pebbles. This will be found to make quite an efficient oven.

How Do I Make a Stewing Fire?

Important Note: Hang your pot on a crane clear of the fire.

Stewing usually takes such a long time, and a stewing fire takes such a lot of attention that very little of it is done in camp. Here,
however, is a description of an automatic stew fire that is well recommended.

1. Dig a hole about a foot deep and twice the diameter of your pot in width.
2. Make the sides of the hole as steep and straight as you can.
3. Build a fire in the pit, and hang your pot over the fire so that the bottom of the pot is only two or three inches above the surface of the ground.
4. Put a good supply of sticks, twice as long as the pit is deep, into the pit so that one end is in the fire and the other ends are above the ground round the pot.

As the lower ends of the sticks burn, the upper part will settle down, thus automatically feeding the fire and allowing you to go off and play!