More Chuck wagon

[Subdeacon Joe]

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In 1892, 10 cowboys with the XIT ranch in Channing, Texas drove 2500 cattle from Channing to the confluence of the Yellowstone River and Cedar Creek north of Miles City, Montana.  XIT trail boss Ealey Moore recorded the supplies that cook Sam Williamson used along the way. Sam ground and brewed almost two pounds of coffee beans a day, going through three coffee mills. Each day he cooked 10 pounds of bacon. During the 13 week drive, the crew consumed 40 pounds of rice, 160 pounds of beans, 9 gallons of sorghum, almost 300 pounds of fruit, including dried currants and prunes as well as dried, fresh, and canned apples and peaches, 405 pounds of white sugar and 1,750 pounds of white flour.

 

[irish ike, SASS #43615]

13 weeks, 405 lbs of sugar = 4.5 pounds per day?

[Subdeacon Joe]

26 minutes ago, irish ike, SASS #43615 said:

13 weeks, 405 lbs of sugar = 4.5 pounds per day?

 

A little under half a pound per man per day.  Figure about 3 TBS in coffee per day, that takes up about 0.1 pounds.   Say the cook uses about two cups of sugar to 30 cups of flour in a batch of biscuits and he has 10 biscuits a day - that's another 0.1 pounds per person, roughly.  More for pies or whatever was done up for after meals.  It's easy to see that much sugar per day for people working that hard.  Almost 19 1/4 pounds of flour a day.  About 180 pounds of coffee in total.  A fair amount of food.

 

ADDED:

I just did a rough calculation, that's only about 1200 calories per day from sugar.  Why the heck do people get so worked up about sugar but ignore other carb sources?   Almost TWO pounds of flour per person per day.  Figure they likely burned about 3,500 to 4,500 calories per day.  They worked it off.

[Waxahachie Kid #17017 L]

My great-grandfather was a real Texas cowboy, pushing longhorns up the trail in 1875. My dad, who knew him, said the old-time cowboys loved sugar, but back then it was not very available, or the cook would run out of sugar fairly quickly, and the towns were few and far between to buy more. 

Dad said later in his life, when sugar was more plentiful, he would put sugar on his beans before he ate them.

So, perhaps, the sugar went in, and on, more than just their coffee, and thus they did consume more sugar, per cowboy, than we might consider. 

[Subdeacon Joe]

24 minutes ago, Waxahachie Kid #17017 L said:

My great-grandfather was a real Texas cowboy, pushing longhorns up the trail in 1875. My dad, who knew him, said the old-time cowboys loved sugar, but back then it was not very available, or the cook would run out of sugar fairly quickly, and the towns were few and far between to buy more. 

Dad said later in his life, when sugar was more plentiful, he would put sugar on his beans before he ate them.

So, perhaps, the sugar went in, and on, more than just their coffee, and thus they did consume more sugar, per cowboy, than we might consider. 

 

 

Thank you for the bit of family history.  I know that in the War of 1861 soldiers on campaign also loved sugar, both from reading Hardtack and Coffee and various journals and letters.  Or, really, any sweetening compound.  Honey, molasses, sorghum.  In coffee, on hardtack or biscuits, stewed fruit if they could find fruit.  One of the reasons Arbuckle's was so popular, besides the candy cane in it, was that the beans were glazed with an egg white/sugar mix.  Made it a little sweet, and reasonably smooth.  Plus that glaze sort of sealed the beans and kept the oils in.