The Best of Virginia Farms Cookbook and Tour Book: Recipes, People, Places. By CiCi Williamson. Atlanta, Georgia: CI Publishing; Birmingham, Alabama: Menasha Ridge Press, 2003. 320 pages. $24.95.

Many people say if you want to learn about the culture of a place, then study the food. Author CiCi Williamson describes her book: “A quilt of writing formats drawn from a wealth of sources was patched together here to showcase the individuals and enterprises who, together, tell the story of almost 400 years of Virginians and their land.”

I’d go so far as to say it’s a whole lot more than a cookbook and tour book. It’s also a history book, a guide to agricultural extension services, an encyclopedia of Virginia agriculture, a directory of Virginia bed and breakfast inns, and a compendium of quotes on Virginia agriculture by noted Virginia politicians. Not to mention that it’s an excellent resource and buyer’s guide to Virginia farmer’s markets, restaurants, farms, wineries, food festivals, museums, gardens, and arboretums.

Did you know that chickens were domesticated around 3000 B.C., but turkeys were not domesticated until 1922 when Virginian Charles Wampler Sr., came along? There’s a fascinating “interview” of Thomas Jefferson as gardener, culled from letters preserved by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

Colonial recipes, annotated with suggestions for modern-day preparation, include President James Monroe’s Chicken Gumbo and Kenmore Gingerbread. Recipes from Virginian celebrities include Willard Scott’s Country Pork Sausage and Edna Lewis’s Pan-fried Virginia Spots. Modern recipes aren’t left out. Imagine Conicville Ostrich Burgers or Stribling’s Crock-pot Apple Butter. Turning these pages, reading these stories, makes me proud to be a Virginian!

Karen Cathey

A Taste for War: The Culinary History of the Blue and the Gray. By William C. Davis. Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 2003. 240 pages. $26.95.

Napoleon’s observation that “an army marches on its stomach” was no less true in the American Civil War than in earlier wars. Soldiers always complain about the food, says William C. Davis, professor of history at Virginia Tech, but in this case, there was some justification. Neither army, according to Davis, ever “completely solved the problems of getting adequate food to the armies on time, or in the right place, or in palatable condition, let alone educating millions of strangers to the kitchen in how to cook and eat what they got.”

There are stories of hardships from both sides—rotten meat, worm-infested bread, the complete absence of a balanced diet—but Southern soldiers probably suffered more, because of the inability of the South’s transportation system to get food where it was needed. “Johnny Reb and Billy Yank went to extraordinary lengths to get food on their plates, and then to get it into their stomachs and keep it there. In the process, they overturned centuries of cultural and gender habit, demonstrated enormous ingenuity in devising things to eat from the raw materials at hand, and endured untold privations that often haunted their health for the rest of their lives.”

Davis skillfully and entertainingly weaves together journalistic accounts and observations from soldiers’ diaries and letters to document these privations. Nowhere is soldiers’ ingenuity more clearly seen than in the collection of recipes at the end of the book. Hardtack, toast soup, planked rat, Louisiana alligator, chinquapin coffee, spruce beer—it’s perhaps not a collection that I’ll cook from often, but it’s inspiring to see how soldiers and civilians did their best to make life as normal as possible in very difficult times.

On Christmas Eve 1863 officers of the Louisiana Tigers camped near Raccoon Ford, Virginia, sent a servant out to look for whiskey and eggs for eggnog. He returned just before midnight, and one of the officers records: “The eggs were quickly beaten—the sugar stirred in and then the whiskey added, and we had one of the most delicious nogs that ever mortal man quaffed. Taking a couple of glasses apiece, we retired merrily to bed—to forget the hardships of a soldier’s life, and dream of a joyful reunion with the dear absent one far away in Southland.”

Thomas Head