Rations For All

[WallShadow]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

Dehydrated rations first appeared with the North in the American Civil War. In WW2, the U.S. use dehydrated and compressed r tions to conserve space and weight shipping food overseas. Such things as hashbrowns, chopped vegetables, and dehydrated soups. Not individual rations themselves but, as part of a overall menu reconstituted by a mess unit.

Some things from the American Civil War can still be found on supermarket shelves. Canned coffee, canned milk, canned cheese, crackers in wax paper, canned ham, bullion cubes, etc.

Heck, from the Civil War we have instant "pulverized" potatoes (described to be like instant hash-browns), instant coffee (actually a tar-like substance of concentrated coffee mixed with a liberal amount of sugar), and dessicated ("desecrated") vegetables for use as a soup additive/expander. Canned "Brandied Peaches" from sutlers was a slick way for enlisted men to get around the prohibition of liquor in the ranks. (officers, however....)
Check out the 1892 Sears Roebuck Catalog reprint in the grocery section for shelf-stable shippable foods available before the turn of the century. And Corned Beef in cans (boiled beef--in French, Boeuf Bouilli, hence the derivation of "bully-beef") was a forgone conclusion as an Allied article of mess throughout WW1.
(American) Colonial Era cookbooks have recipes for "pocket soup" or "Veal Glue", which is meat joints boiled down until the cartilage dissolves enough, the meat and bones removed, and the water component boiled off until the liquid reduces down to the consistency of a block of unmelted/undissolved glue--think unmelted Hot Glue or a blob of hard-dried Elmer's Glue. It was dry enough to literally carry in a pocket without sticking. This could be tossed into a pot of hot water and reconstituted as a broth.
Also from that era, there was jerkey, and its Native American cousin, pemmican: dried meat and berries compounded in a meat-fat matrix--carried in pouches, it provided ready sustaining nourishment in a ready-to-eat form.