Sometimes the best way to understand the past is through the tongue.
To better respect the lived experience of our ancestors, Phelps County Focus will be cooking and consuming historical meals for the Foods of Phelps County’s Past series.
For each article, a panel of historical or culinary experts will be assembled. The following diners were present for this week’s edition:
• Rachel Buenemann, Nutrition and Health Specialist with MU Extension in Phelps County
• Michael O’Halloran, nutritionist
• Kathleen Seale, Senior Archivist with State Historical Society of Missouri’s Rolla Research Center
• Erin Whitson, Archeologist with Missouri Humanities Council
Tobacco-tinged Mulligan Stew with ‘Shit on a Shingle’
The 1929 stock market crash and Great Depression brought prolonged unemployment and a culture of wandering to the railroad lines of Rolla and the wider United States. So-called hobos, tramps, and transients sometimes stowed away in trains or went “blind riding” on top of the cars. When not in motion, homeless camps existed as temporary communities in woods or thickets along the tracks.
As a Frisco hub, Rolla no doubt hosted several of the era’s “Hoovervilles.” Most of that history is unfortunately lost, as no one had supplies to write their own stories and reporters crept not into those spaces.
One artifact of the hobo age that survived is Mulligan Stew, a hardy soup and staple food for the Great Depression’s transients. The dish was created in community fashion with each person in a camp tossing in whatever vegetables or meat they could scavenge, beg for, or “nick” from a garden.
Tobacco is cited as a consistent Mulligan Stew ingredient. Salt, pepper, and other spices were not always easily had in remote camps. However, a couple of cigarettes or a pouch of loose-leaf pipe tobacco was usually in someone’s pocket. Tossing some into the soup could provide the little bit of flavoring needed to make an edible meal.
Phelps County Focus did not beg, borrow, or steal any ingredients for its Mulligan Stew. Carrots, celery, potatoes, and lettuce were used. Tobacco was also added for authenticity. Specifically, Gambler brand pipe tobacco purchased from the Smoker’s Outlet.
Descriptions from the panel of Mulligan Stew ranged from “woody,” to “oaky” and “hickory smoked.” The effect of the tobacco also not only flavored the broth but created a burning sensation in the throat. From a historical perspective, that aspect earned the respect of the panel for the depression-era consumers of the soup.
“It’s not awful, but I don’t know that it would be my first choice,” Whitson said of the stew. “If you're starving, or don’t have a lot of options, this may be all you've got.”
From a nutritional standpoint, Mulligan Stew may have plenty enough veggies to be heathy, but its use of tobacco should not be forgotten.
“It is a carcinogen, so you have to weigh that,” O’Halloran said.
A lesson learned from the Mulligan Stew batch made by Phelps County Focus is to add the tobacco post boil. Phelps County Focus added the dried leaves in with the lettuce and the resulting simmer seeped the broth like a tea making the overall tobacco flavor oppressively strong.
Served as a side with the Mulligan Stew was “Shit on a Shingle” or SOS. The colorfully named dish is a primitive gravy served over toast. Its origins are rooted as a cuisine of the US military. It entered civilian during war rationing and hard times due to its ingredients usually being in supply even when items were scarce at grocery stores. All that’s needed is flour, milk, butter, and bread. Chipped or dried beef and bacon are also easy additions.
Seale said she was already familiar with the dish.
“My dad would make it, that may have been a leftover from the Marines,” she said.
Although the consensus was SOS was better than Mulligan Stew, it would nutritionally not be a good choice as an everyday meal option.
“This is majority fat calories,” Buenemann said, adding SOS would be a good high-energy food for work days. O’Halloran added, “It’s probably also going to be higher in saturated fats which those are the fats that increase your bad cholesterol, which then in turn increases your risk of plaque developing on the arteries”.
Savory Beef Gelatin with Economy Loaf
During the age of ice boxes and larders, chilled dishes in need of prolonged cooling were mostly unavailable for the average home consumer. However, the invention of Freon and its later use in mass produced electronic refrigerators made safe and affordable cooling available to the average citizen for the first time.
Much like how the owner of a new smartphone can’t stop showing off pictures from its camera, or whatever new app they’ve downloaded, so too did owners of newly acquired refrigerators want to show off what their devices could do. So how did these home cooks flaunt? Gelatin! Brands like Jell-O and congealed desserts went mainstream through refrigeration. For the more ambitious, gelatin could also be a way to serve a main dish.
Savory Beef Gelatin, or Jellied Beef, was one entree that could serve as a dinner’s centerpiece while also stretching out a scarce supply of meat. It’s created by infusing beef broth with gelatin and other ingredients in a mold.
“It's like the day after the holidays, when you get the gravy out of the fridge,” Buenemann said of the taste. O’Halloran added, “In terms of the flavor, it's beef stew, but cold, and the texture is a psychological hurdle in that we're trained to associate this as warm.”
In terms of nutrition, the meal is higher quality with salt from the broth being the only area of advisory. The addition of gelatin provides an extra source of protein for the dish. Buenemann said to make it more palatable she would personally add cranberries to enhance its Thanksgiving-taste appeal.
Historically, the Savory Beef Gelatin had the utility of making a full meal out of what would have otherwise been a meager portion.
“Rather than just a stew that you’re slurping down, the gelatin has more substance to it, so you feel like you're eating more,” Seale said. Whitson added, “Soup is a starvation food, and when you’re eating it day after day, this would have been a change of pace for using leftovers.”
Sometimes hungry cooks had to imitate meat when it was totally unavailable because of one’s personal budget or due to the local supply being to the frontlines during World War II. The so-called “Economy Loaf” offered one solution. It’s a type of meat loaf which substitutes ground beef with a mix of mashed potatoes, mushed peas, and condensed tomato soup.
“This is mush, but its palatable enough mush,” O’Halloran. “I put this above the gelatin. There's no like visual appeal, but it hits the palette well.”
Compared to the gelatin, the Economy Loaf is also not as hardy a meal, but it is more versatile.
“This is something you could make somewhat bigger, and then have it for several days or take a slice and take this with you,” Seale said.
The concoction was also viewed as yet more evidence of human minds finding creative solutions when faced with scarcity.
“Anytime you get people who are hungry and are trying to make a meal, they're going to find a way to do that with what they have,” Whitson said. “When studying the French for my master’s degree we saw places where they would eat bear or beaver to make it work. You see other people getting creative too, but I think this works. For only having a few things in your garden that you can draw from, or in your cellar, you can make this any time of the year.”
The group ranked Shit on a Shingle as the top choice of the evening, then Economy Loaf, then Savory Beef Gelatin and finally Mulligan Stew as the worst. Recipes for all the dishes can be found on several websites.
