As promised, here are some more camp cooking recipes. I found recipes for Slumgullion and Snits and Knepp in “Camp Cookery” by Horace Kephart, 1910. On a sidenote, I thought it was interesting that this book was dedicated to “Mistress Bob – Who taught me some clever expedients of backwoods cookery that are lost arts wherever the old forest has been leveled.”

There was also an interesting foreward…

“The less a man carries in his pack, the more he must carry in his head. A camper cannot go by recipe alone. It is best for him to carry sound general principles in his head, and recipes in his pocket. The simpler the outfit, the more skill it takes to manage it, and the more please one gets in his achievements.”

Read until the end of the story to find out how not to make your dough “sad.”

Due to the name alone, I had to take a look at this recipe for Slumgullion.

Slumgullion

When the commissariat is reduced to bacon, corned beef, and hardtack, try this sailor’s dish, described by Jack London: Fry half a dozen slices of bacon, add fragments of hardtack, then two cups of water, and stir briskly over the fire; in a few minutes mix in with it slices of canned corned beef; season well with pepper and salt.

Following a similar theme of names that caught my eye, I found a recipe for “Snits and Knepp”

Snits and Knepp

This is a Pennsylvania-Dutch dish, and a good one for campers. Take some dried apples and soak them over night. Boil until tender. Prepare knepp as directed for pot-pie dough, only make a thick batter of it instead of a dough. It is best to add an egg and use no shortening. Drop the batter into the pan of stewing apples, a large spoonful at a time, not fast enough to check the boiling. Boil about ½ hour. Season with butter, sugar, and cinnamon.

Knepp, as best I can tell, are dumplings.

There was a recipe for Game Pot Pie in this same collection that gave a description of making pot-pie dough that could be used for the above recipe.

Game Pot Pie

Take ½ teaspoonful of baking powder to ½ pint of flour, sift together, and add a teaspoonful of lard or butter by rubbing it in, also a pinch of salt. Make a soft biscuit dough of this, handling as little as possible and being careful not to mix too thin. Roll into a sheet and cut into strips about 1-½ inch wide and 3 inches long, cutting two or three little holes through each to let steam escape. Meantime you have been boiling meat or game and have sliced some potatoes.

When the meat is within one-half hour of being done, pour off the broth into another vessel and lift out most of the meat. Place a layer of meat and potatoes in bottom of kettle, and partially cover with strips of the dough; then another layer of meat and vegetables, another of dough, and so on until the pot is nearly full, topping off with dough. Pour the hot broth over this, cover tightly, and boil one-half hour, without lifting the pot cover, which, by admitting cold air, would make the dough “sad.” Parsley helps the pot, when you can get it.