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Winner of an Andre Simon Food and Drink Book Award - Special CommendationFinalist for a ForeWord Book of the Year AwardAntarctica, the last place on Earth, is not famous for its cuisine. Yet it is famous for stories of heroic expeditions in which hunger was the one spice everyone carried. At the dawn of Antarctic cuisine, cooks improvised under inconceivable hardships, castaways ate seal blubber and penguin breasts while fantasizing about illustrious feasts, and men seeking the South Pole stretched their rations to the breaking point. Today, Antarctica's kitchens still wait for provisions at the far end of the planet's longest supply chain. Scientific research stations serve up cafeteria fare that often offers more sustenance than style. Jason C. Anthony, a veteran of eight seasons in the U.S. Antarctic Program, offers a rare workaday look at the importance of food in Antarctic history and culture.Anthony's tour of Antarctic cuisine takes us from hoosh (a porridge of meat, fat, and melted snow, often thickened with crushed biscuit) and the scurvy-ridden expeditions of Shackleton and Scott through the twentieth century to his own preplanned three hundred meals (plus snacks) for a two-person camp in the Transantarctic Mountains. The stories in Hoosh are linked by the ingenuity, good humor, and indifference to gruel that make Anthony's tale as entertaining as it is enlightening
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HOOSH At Table ROAST PENGUIN , SCURVY DAY , and Other Stories of ANTARCTIC CUISINE JAS ON C. A N THO N Y Universit y of Nebraska Press Lincoln and Lond on © 2012 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska Acknowledgments for the use of copyrighted material appear on page 252, which constitutes an extension of the copyright page. All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Anthony, Jason C. Hoosh: roast penguin, scurvy day, and other stories of Antarctic cuisine / Jason C. Anthony. p. cm. — (At table) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8032-2666-1 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Food habits—Antarctica. 2. Outdoor cooking—Antarctica. 3. Antarctica— Social life and customs. 4. Antarctica— History—Anecdotes. I. Title. II. Title: Roast penguin, scurvy day, and other stories of Antarctic cuisine. GT2853.A515A48 2012 394.1'2—dc23 2012011994 Set in Minion by Kim Essman. Designed by Nathan Putens. For my parents, Vaughn and Joanne Anthony Hooshes to-day have been excellent in spite of a decided tang of penguin guano. —Raymond Priestley, Antarctic Adventure I think that the palate of the human animal can adjust itself to anything. —Sir Ernest Shackleton, South Prologue: A Recipe for Something xi CONTENTS 1 All Thinking and Talking of Food 1 2 The Secret Society of Unconventional Cooks 15 3 Slaughter and Scurvy 38 4 Meat and Melted Snow 66 5 How to Keep a Fat Explorer in Prime Condition 94 6 Into the Deep Freeze 123 7 Prisoner-of-War Syndrome 143 8 The Syrup of American Comfort 165 9 A Cookie and a Story 191 10 Sleeping with Vegetables 206 11 A Tale of Two Stations 229 Epilogue: Not Under These Conditions 247 Acknowledgments 251 Appendix 1. Selected Recipes 253 Appendix 2. Hoosh Timeline and Expedition Chronology 259 Notes 263 Selected Bibliography 279 PROLOGUE A R EC IPE F O R SO M E T H I N G A day before I flew by Twin Otter from Ross Island into the Transantarctic Mountains for a three-month deep field assignment, my friend Robert Taylor led me quietly into the McMurdo Station kitchen and surprised me with a dozen loaves of his exquisite bread