Primitive Cooking Set

[Tsalagidave]

When I have attended various living history events, I rarely see the true representation of a campfire cooking array. Most people have switched to iron tripods, trivets and fire dogs.  Although a case can be made for each existing in the old days, I really long for the campsites that really go after the true woodcraft and focus more on frontier skills rather than unrealistically carry a heavy load of iron cook frames. Now for those who use them out of ease, I get it and I'm not bashing you. I just wish that the true trail representation of making their camp gear from the furnishings the Good Lord provides was used more often.
I recently took my family out hiking and was going over the usual checklist of local trees with my daughter when the question of their usefulness came up. In addition to the various medical and nutritional virtues many trees have, I took this as a great opportunity to show her how to make something useful from a couple of branches in about the same time  it takes to slice up some vegetables for a salad. This time, I decided to make a primitive cooking frame.
It literally takes about 5-minutes and because the materials are so readily available, I have never seen the use in buying a cumbersome iron kit unless you are camping in some city park and you cannot dig whatsoever (events that I avoid at all costs). I prefer this over the iron for the following reasons:
1.   It's free.
2.   You don't have to lug around all these heavy irons. Instead, nature provides it whenever you need it.
3.   Apparently, they rarely (if ever) did it as well previous to the 19th century. There is little historic evidence that such cooking irons were used on the trail unless it is perhaps documented to some large wagon train but even the image from an 1856 newspaper in my collection refutes this.
4.   It allows one to practice and demonstrate their woodcraft skills in short order.
Making this is easy. First, keep your hatchet blade as sharp as a knife blade. This means that you will need to transport and handle it safely. I use a simple leather flap with the edges sewn (see Pic) wrapped over my hatchet. That way, the blade does not get away from you and you don't slice your fingertips while fumbling through your pack in the middle of the night. Next, select the right tree. You will need a tree with straight branches over a meter long each like a poplar or cottonwood. In my case, I used branches from a white alder (common in the mountain valleys of Southern California). 
The key is to move fast after separating the branch from the tree. When whittling down, make an angular cut away from you. Brace the branch over a log or on a stump when cutting. If you brace your sticks on the bare earth and then chop down into it, you'll hit rocks and dull your blade. The two upright forks each took about a minute to cut down to size and whittle for placement in the ground. The cross-beam was some deadfall that I broke with my foot to size. The pothook was a typical frontier cut.  All this lays over a small trench firepit flanked by green log cuts or stones so you'll have a place for your frypan and coffee pot. This is the basic item for a wide array of camp craft so making ovens, speygelia's etc. can easily occupy their own article at a later time.

[Tsalagidave]

Here are shots of the 1856 Newspaper. Notice that they made room for a cast iron pot but use the same wood array that I built. Other little details are the gourd canteen, the Pawnee in camp and the high frequency of longarms vs. pistols.

-Dave

[Tsalagidave]

Here's a shot of how I have the camp hatchet wrapped. I keep it knife sharp but am careful not to give it the same fine edge as a shaving razor due to the fragile condition of that fine an edge. It is as sharp as my patch knife but durable enough to hack  up all the necessary camp furniture before needing to be re-honed.

-Dave

[Blair]

Tsalagidave,


Thank you.
Great reply!
My best,
Blair

[Tsalagidave]

Thanks Blair.

[James Hunt]

Great topic Dave: I have seen more people go wrong on authenticity when it comes to cooking and the fire than any other thing. "Period" campsites are often made or destroyed on this issue. Even when we do our "heavy" camping impression of a buffalo hunter we use available amenities for the fire. Most people are shocked to see how little space there is in the traditional freight wagon a hunter would use that could be pulled by a team of mules (as opposed to the hide wagons pulled by oxen). If we had to start with 500 lbs of lead and go from there, why would we want to carry another 50 lbs of iron work when it simply was not needed.



I remember the buckskinning days when guy's would show up with an old school bus, hauling their 18 ft teepee, and enough cooking iron and blue enamel to open an eatery. Portraying the mountain era when you had but a couple of pack animals to haul your stuff around on - I would ask, how were you planning on hauling all that stuff in the year 1832?

[Tsalagidave]

By God's grace Jim, I was wondering when you'd turn up. How have you been brother?  I completely agree and your insight is always spot on.  There are a lot of people who read the books out there but few are the actual "living historians" who teach by hands on experience. Thanks for being a pard who knows this topic well. Your input is always welcome my friend.

-Dave

[Blair]

Cast Iron cook wear is great stuff and does an excellent job of campfire style. cooking.
But, it was and still is heavy stuff to haul around with all the other important things like the food stuffes to cook in it.
Just my thoughts...
My best,
Blair

[Tsalagidave]

Blair, You are right about the weight of cast iron gear not being found unless it is packed in a wagon. The picture that James posted is more representative of him working off a wagon which he would need as a commercial buffalo hunter bringing in hundreds of buffalo hides per haul. Other items in the picture indicative that he is depending on a wagon is the camp chest and kegs of powder so I give him a pass as it is all part of a realistic impression.  When it comes to pack horses and working out of a pack, I think we all prefer tinware.  I am pacing an order with Otter Creek for a new tin boiler that I look forward to using in an upcoming trek.

Getting back to the cast iron, I have attached an image from an 1850s era newspaper that portrays the same kind of pot James has in use with a wagon train. Definitely something for wheeled transport but historically accurate nonetheless.

-Dave

[Tascosa Joe]

the school bus guy was probably trying to keep a wife and 3 or 4 kids happy for a week in camp.

[Niederlander]

Interesting topic, Dave.  I have a book on camping from 1943, and it struck me that your woodcraft is identical to a lot of the stuff they show how to make in the book.  (I'll try to scan a couple examples and post them for you to see.)  Evidently, camp craft in 1943 was very similar to that of a hundred years earlier.  Of course, this was before there were all kinds of specialized camping gear available to buy.  The author states he learned a lot of these techniques from old woodsmen he had known and camped with through the years.  It would make sense with the time frames involved that those old woodsmen learned the techniques you're talking about from there fathers and uncles.  Cool!

[James Hunt]

My cast iron pot hanging from the makeshift tripod is accurate for it's use/period. There are scant references by hunters to what they cooked with - who would have recorded such - but there are some references.  I love the one where a hunter refers to melting lead in his iron skillet (that must have added flavor to the meat roasted the next morning. And, I have one image of what appears to be a huge iron pot sitting at the camp site. But most images show what appears to be tin or brass pails.

Interestingly, there are references to Kentucky hunters a century before packing a large iron pot to make salt. Traveling with small horses as pack animals they would often cache after applying bear grease, and return months later digging them up and they'd be in great shape - great stuff that bear grease.

My iron pot is ancient, early 19th century I suspect and I can not resist packing it as we use it render buffalo fat, needed for greasing our guns, wagon wheels, and baiting wolves and coyotes (if the Feds are monitoring this site we don't actually poison wolves, the strychnine bottles actually have baby aspirin in them). I would not cook in it, who knows what has seeped into those pores over the years.

Hear is an image of us boiling coffee in camp. A pail full would last a day and a half, and by the end you had a serious caffeine rush.



My hunting partner Greg mastered the art of baking bread in a pan. He would sit the dough on some sticks in the pan and then cover it with another pan. Living on a meat, dried peas, and bean diet made bread such a treat.




The trunk held all our cookware, a bit of a luxury but Greg is into the whole cooking thing and we did have a wagon. We never hauled hides in that small wagon, we'd mark the hides, cache them and pay a freighter to pick them up with a heavy wagon and oxen pulling them. All the camping stuff shown would fit into our wagon with lead and powder. I love the picture below, look at the size of that sharpening wheel these guy's hauled around. That baby must have weighed a ton.



We carried the more common sharpening implement below.



This is a bit beyond the plains era discussed here, but the camping and cooking is pretty much similar.

[Blair]

Jim & Dave,

I have no issue with the "black iron Pot", in either your photo Jim or in your image Dave posted.
It has more to do with the large quantity of  "black iron/cast iron" cooking items that some folks tend to haul around. It just wasn't very practical by any mode of conveyance during the time period.
Certainly not when sheet iron utensils were available, at half the weight along with tinned-iron wear.
My best,
Blair

[James Hunt]

Blair: no issue taken. Conjecture and the available literature of the period support your comment. The sheet iron pans we have (seen above) are real winners, easy to cook in and very hardy! The iron skillet cited above used to melt lead continues to fascinate me. We carry a small iron pot for melting lead, I am thinking a commercial hunter had needs for a larger amount of melted lead and the skillet was there. Heavy metals must have been small worry for guy's who were known to load cartridges by the light of a fire.

[Tsalagidave]

Niederlander, you may have a reprint of a DC Beard book. His stuff was published from the turn of the century through the 1900s. He was born in 1850 and learned from frontiersmen and Civil War Vets when they were all still in their 20-30-40s.

I guess the next thing to ask is what kind of meals are a favorite to make.
I do a decent pea soup, biscuit and vinegar pie.

-Dave

[Blair]

Dave,

Vinegar Pie?
That sounds interesting, how is this done up?
My best,
Blair

[Grenadier]

I'm lucky that I grew up in a poor Boy Scout troop with a few older gentlemen who were scouts during the Depression. I learned many of these same camp and woods skills from them by making due with what can be scrounged. I've cooked many meals in my cup alone.

[Tsalagidave]

Vinegar Pie is absolutely delicious.  I also have a good recipe for it along with "Jeff Davis Pie" written by an ancestor in an 1870 cook book.
It is slightly tart but sweet by a heavy infusion of sorgum. I mix the crust up in an old flour bag then roll it out on an old board or flat stone. I make it into a turnover and cook it in a Dutch Oven when I have baggage and a Bank Oven when I don't.  Its always good practice to make more than just bacon, beans flapjacks, and hoe cakes in camp.

-Dave 

[pony express]

Never heard of it, so I looked it up. Lots of variations online, I'm sure most use more ingredients than yours.

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

Never heard of it - until now! I also looked it up. Here's my first hit;

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/vinegar-pie-i/