I will first mention that the stove was used by each of the companies of the 47th Regiment in succession. The non-commissioned officers and soldiers all spoke most favourably of it.
The portable cooking stove has, in my mind, many important advantages to recommend it—one very important one being that it can cook in any situation whatsoever, and in any weather, and with the smallest possible consumption of fuel of any kind which may be available—a very great consideration in localities where fuel is scarce or difficult of access. I imagine those stoves would have answered admirably for cooking in the trenches before Sebastopol, taking little room, consuming little fuel, and showing but little smoke, and cooking the food as securely and perfectly in bad weather as in fine.
For field hospitals they would answer admirably, especially as carrying their own fuel on a march. The cooking for the sick could commence instantly on the halt taking place.
I think here at Malta they would be very useful in many of the encampments; in fact, anywhere that troops are suddenly placed they (the cooking stoves) would be found of great use. Even they could answer very well in the event of troops having on any emergency to embark in vessels inadequately provided with cooking apparatus.
Fully convinced of their merits, I wish the invention all the military success and encouragement it deserves.
I have the honour to be your very obedient servant,
M. J. Haley,
Colonel commanding 47th Regiment.
P.S. There is one observation I cannot help adding, which is that, however desirable it is to give the army improved utensils for cooking, little progress will be made in military cookery and teaching the soldiers to turn such rations or other articles of food to account in the most advantageous and ready manner, unless it is some one person’s particular business to teach cooking. We ought to have a non-commissioned officer for the special duty, and who would be responsible for imparting instruction in that most essential craft; recollecting a most important maxime de guerre:—“C’est la soupe qui fait le soldat.”
13, Kensington Park Terrace North, July, 1857.
Dear Sir,—I understand that you are about to publish some observations respecting your valuable labours in the culinary department in the military hospitals of Scutari and the Crimea. If you permit me, I shall be happy to add a few remarks, such as occurred to me during the period I was engaged by the Government as one of the physicians in the Barrack Hospital. One of the first duties in the treatment of the sick was to ascertain the quality of the food adapted to invalids labouring under every form of fever, of acute and chronic diarrhœa, and especially dysentery. It is in vain to attempt to cure these diseases by medicines only; a carefully regulated diet was of the first consequence; and I was early disappointed and embarrassed by the wretched state of the kitchens and diet intended for the sick. I was in the habit of frequenting the kitchen which belonged to the division of the hospital in which I was doing duty, and observing the mode of cooking, and soon found that the soldier-cooks were quite ignorant of their art. I have constantly examined and tasted the mutton and fowls, the soups, the vegetables, and the puddings, and I do not hesitate to affirm that they were as unpalatable and unsavoury and as objectionable as they could be. The practice of cooking the fowls was to put them into nets—a dozen or more in one net; several nets were placed in large coppers; and then to boil them as rapidly as possible, with fierce heat. I have many times examined their quality after this process of rapid boiling, and always found them extremely tough and uneatable, and generally the sick soldier could not masticate them, especially as so many of the sick were suffering from spongy gums and decayed teeth, the effects of scurvy. The mutton, generally bad in quality, was always very badly cooked, and the broths or soups very destitute of flavour. No one, sir, can know so well as a physician the great value of palatable and easily digestible food—it is of more consequence than the whole contents of the apothecary’s shop.