ARMY COOKS AT SCHOOL

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 28 October 1915, Page 6

ARMY COOKS AT SCHOOL

FIELD IHTCHEN HINTS

One thousand five hundred soldiers are at present learning cooking at the London County Council schools. They aro divided into bodies of 100, each man having to live on the War Office allowance of Is 9d a day, a feature of the training being that if they cannot eat the meals they prepare they must go without. The training is based on cookery books issued by the War Office, which show how pne can make a dinner out: of vnectt! to nothing. The military culinary manual teHs how mushroom and marigold flowers, often found growing wild, give an excellent flavor to stew or soup, while nettles and swef^t docks are excellent vegetables in the spring. Stew for about five minutes and serve —a good substitute for other vegetables in soup. The young leaf of the mangel-wurzel is also excellent, and the War Office declares that wild sorrel, added to pea soup, makes a pleasing change. The men are not only taught many economy tricks, but, how to cook rapidly and easily. They are shown when in a hurry how cooking can be don© in mess tins so arranged that half a dozen or so can be simultaneously heated by a wood fire. Preserved meat tins will also do for the purpose, while a biscuit tin makes a good substitute for an oven. Eight or ten men in each company are taught bow to cut up meat arid make field kitchens, the latter being quite elaborate contrivances, when the camp is permanent. There are various styles of cookery trenches,, the best known being the Aldershot gridiron kitchen, which is dug deep into the ground and comprises nine trenches 12 feet long.