Had to look those up, Dave. Here's one version of skillagalee:
https://loweryleather.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/civil-war-recipe-union-skillygalee/
https://loweryleather.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/civil-war-recipe-union-skillygalee/
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Revisiting hardtack
- Thread starter BillinOregon
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Soak the biscuits in kerosene overnight, a great substitute for Sterno. 
Ya’ll are taking this too far. What’s next? Andersonville rendezvous?
appalichian hunter
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Well, I tried the "good hardtack" recipe from the sensible survival link, and with the oats, the shortening and the sugar it came out like a very disappointing children's cookie/cracker.
I will simply have to order whole wheat pastry flour and wheat bran to make Loyalist Dave's version of ship's biscuits, which should come much, much closer to the authentic hardtack experience.
Could buy pilot bread at the grocery store years ago, but not anymore, at least here. I can't even find rye-crisp Wasa Brot on the shelves. Pathetic how the grocers have dumbed down their inventories.
I will simply have to order whole wheat pastry flour and wheat bran to make Loyalist Dave's version of ship's biscuits, which should come much, much closer to the authentic hardtack experience.
Could buy pilot bread at the grocery store years ago, but not anymore, at least here. I can't even find rye-crisp Wasa Brot on the shelves. Pathetic how the grocers have dumbed down their inventories.
The Bob's Red Mill whole wheat pastry flour and wheat bran arrived a day early so I made a batch of 'tack using LD's recipe and I think I have a winner here. They could already be used as air hockey pucks and haven't fully hardened yet.
This threat reminds me of:
2. Surround yourself with 150 people you would not choose to be with: people who chain smoke, fart loudly and often, snore like a steam locomotive on an uphill grade. People who use expletives in speech like children use sugar on cereal are good candidates.
3. Unplug all radios and televisions to cut yourself off completely from the outside world, but have a neighbor bring you last month's issues of Time, Newsweek, The Retired Officer, and Playboy (with all the photos cut out).
4. Monitor all operating home appliances hourly, recording vital parameters (plugged in, light comes on as door is opened, etc.). If not in use, log as "SECURED." Make line drawing of all piping and electrical circuits.
5. Do not flush toilets for the first three days to simulate the smell of forty people using it. After that, flush and overflow once daily. At least every five days, post a sign stating "The Sewage System is Secured Until Further Notice." It is OK to forget to remove this sign. Take a shower using only a gallon of water to simulate underway sea showers.
6. Wear only proper uniform attire or approved coveralls in designated areas. No special T-shirts or other clothing. Once a month, weather not withstanding, clean and press one uniform, go outside, and stand for one half hour, after which you may change back into your proper uniform.
7. Cut your hair weekly, making it shorter each time, until you are bald or you look as though you have tangled with a demented sheepshearer.
8. Work in 18-hour cycles, sleeping only four hours at a time to ensure your body doesn't know or care it it's daytime or night. At random intervals, announce that you will either add or subtract an hour from the apparent time.
9. Listen to your favorite cassette six times a day for two weeks, then play music that causes nausea until you are glad to get back to your "favorite" cassette.
10. Cut a single bed in half lengthwise, and enclose three sides. Add a roof that prevents you from sitting in any position (18" is a good height). Replace the mattress with a steel plate and cover it with three inches of foam to duplicate a shipboard bunk. Place a dead animal under your bed to simulate the smell of your cubemate's sheets.
11. Set your alarm clock to go off at the "snooze" setting interval for the first hour of sleep to simulate the various alarms of watchstanders going off at odd times. Place your bed on a rocking table to ensure that you're tossed from side to side for the remaining three hours.
12. Prepare all food while blindfolded, using all the spices that you can grope for, to simulate shipboard food. Add salt. Remove the blindfold and eat as fast as is humanly possible. Add more salt. If the food does not stick to an inverted plate when served cold, add more lard. Add more salt. If the food contains at least one part per thousand of fiber, dispose of it. Add more salt. Beat you plate enthusiastically against the side of the trash can when disposing of your leftovers.
13. Periodically shut off power at the main breaker and run around screaming "Fire in the engine room! Fire in the engine room!" until you sweat profusely or lose your voice, then restore power.
14. Buy a gas mask and scrub the faceplate with steel wool until you can't see out of it. Wear it for two hours every fifth day.
15. Study the owners manual for all appliances in the dwelling. At regular intervals, take each one apart and put it back together again, then test operate it at the extreme limit of its tolerances.
16. Remove all plants, pictures, and decorations. Paint all furnishings Haze grey. Stencil everything with numbers.
17. To ensure a clean and happy environment, clean every day from top to bottom. Whenever possible, repeat your efforts. when finished, inspect your work, criticizing as much as possible. Never be satisfied with a good, solid effort.
18. Once a day, plug in your TV to watch a movie that you walked out on two years ago. Then watch "That's Incredible" for two hours.
19. Since you have no doctor, stock up on as many antacids, aspirin, Band-Aids, condoms, Robitussin, and suppositories as possible. These will cure any disease known to Mankind.
20. Prepare yourself for an emergency that will force you to leave the dwelling, knowing that if you leave, the biker gang you hired will simulate sharks and cut off your arms and legs. Study "First Aid for bleeding," and the fire extinguisher owner's manual until you can quote them verbatim.
21. Every three weeks or so, go outside directly to the city slums, wearing your best clothes. Enter the raunchiest bar you can find and order their expensive beer. Drink as many as you can pour down in four hours, then hire a cab to return you by the longest route he can find. Tip the driver even though he doubled your fare. Lock yourself back in your dwelling for three more weeks.
22. This simulation must run at least 90 days to be effective. The exact date of the end of the simulation will be changed no fewer than seven times without your knowledge. This is done to keep you guessing as to when you can hope to resume a normal life, and in the hopes that it will screw up any plans you might like to make.
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HOW TO SIMULATE US NAVY SHIPBOARD LIFE IN YOUR HOME
1. When commencing this simulation, remember to lock all friends and family outside, communicating only with letters that your neighbor will hold for a month before delivering, losing one out of every five.2. Surround yourself with 150 people you would not choose to be with: people who chain smoke, fart loudly and often, snore like a steam locomotive on an uphill grade. People who use expletives in speech like children use sugar on cereal are good candidates.
3. Unplug all radios and televisions to cut yourself off completely from the outside world, but have a neighbor bring you last month's issues of Time, Newsweek, The Retired Officer, and Playboy (with all the photos cut out).
4. Monitor all operating home appliances hourly, recording vital parameters (plugged in, light comes on as door is opened, etc.). If not in use, log as "SECURED." Make line drawing of all piping and electrical circuits.
5. Do not flush toilets for the first three days to simulate the smell of forty people using it. After that, flush and overflow once daily. At least every five days, post a sign stating "The Sewage System is Secured Until Further Notice." It is OK to forget to remove this sign. Take a shower using only a gallon of water to simulate underway sea showers.
6. Wear only proper uniform attire or approved coveralls in designated areas. No special T-shirts or other clothing. Once a month, weather not withstanding, clean and press one uniform, go outside, and stand for one half hour, after which you may change back into your proper uniform.
7. Cut your hair weekly, making it shorter each time, until you are bald or you look as though you have tangled with a demented sheepshearer.
8. Work in 18-hour cycles, sleeping only four hours at a time to ensure your body doesn't know or care it it's daytime or night. At random intervals, announce that you will either add or subtract an hour from the apparent time.
9. Listen to your favorite cassette six times a day for two weeks, then play music that causes nausea until you are glad to get back to your "favorite" cassette.
10. Cut a single bed in half lengthwise, and enclose three sides. Add a roof that prevents you from sitting in any position (18" is a good height). Replace the mattress with a steel plate and cover it with three inches of foam to duplicate a shipboard bunk. Place a dead animal under your bed to simulate the smell of your cubemate's sheets.
11. Set your alarm clock to go off at the "snooze" setting interval for the first hour of sleep to simulate the various alarms of watchstanders going off at odd times. Place your bed on a rocking table to ensure that you're tossed from side to side for the remaining three hours.
12. Prepare all food while blindfolded, using all the spices that you can grope for, to simulate shipboard food. Add salt. Remove the blindfold and eat as fast as is humanly possible. Add more salt. If the food does not stick to an inverted plate when served cold, add more lard. Add more salt. If the food contains at least one part per thousand of fiber, dispose of it. Add more salt. Beat you plate enthusiastically against the side of the trash can when disposing of your leftovers.
13. Periodically shut off power at the main breaker and run around screaming "Fire in the engine room! Fire in the engine room!" until you sweat profusely or lose your voice, then restore power.
14. Buy a gas mask and scrub the faceplate with steel wool until you can't see out of it. Wear it for two hours every fifth day.
15. Study the owners manual for all appliances in the dwelling. At regular intervals, take each one apart and put it back together again, then test operate it at the extreme limit of its tolerances.
16. Remove all plants, pictures, and decorations. Paint all furnishings Haze grey. Stencil everything with numbers.
17. To ensure a clean and happy environment, clean every day from top to bottom. Whenever possible, repeat your efforts. when finished, inspect your work, criticizing as much as possible. Never be satisfied with a good, solid effort.
18. Once a day, plug in your TV to watch a movie that you walked out on two years ago. Then watch "That's Incredible" for two hours.
19. Since you have no doctor, stock up on as many antacids, aspirin, Band-Aids, condoms, Robitussin, and suppositories as possible. These will cure any disease known to Mankind.
20. Prepare yourself for an emergency that will force you to leave the dwelling, knowing that if you leave, the biker gang you hired will simulate sharks and cut off your arms and legs. Study "First Aid for bleeding," and the fire extinguisher owner's manual until you can quote them verbatim.
21. Every three weeks or so, go outside directly to the city slums, wearing your best clothes. Enter the raunchiest bar you can find and order their expensive beer. Drink as many as you can pour down in four hours, then hire a cab to return you by the longest route he can find. Tip the driver even though he doubled your fare. Lock yourself back in your dwelling for three more weeks.
22. This simulation must run at least 90 days to be effective. The exact date of the end of the simulation will be changed no fewer than seven times without your knowledge. This is done to keep you guessing as to when you can hope to resume a normal life, and in the hopes that it will screw up any plans you might like to make.
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Well, these have now set up so hard that I might be tempted to feed one to a neighbor's mean dog ... 
I will pass, all i made were cement.
During my re-enactment days in the 1960’s we used to dunk the hardtack in soup or coffee. It was more edible that way but still nothing to brag about. I was shown how to mix it up but was so long ago I couldn’t cite the exact recipe. We baked some near the fire in a warm Dutch oven and wasn’t too bad. Anyway I gave up on eating the stuff years ago. I hope your efforts pay off.
There’s a reason some recipes get lost to time. Hart tack goes well with armadillo stew.
AH but it didn't get lost to time. We here in most of the USA simply don't use it but it still exists. Sometimes it has baking powder or soda or both added, ...
In Canada it is found thus, and folks in the USA up near the Canadian border may have seen this product ...,
Some survival food stores sell it as this.... although they are adding barley syrup to boost the calories and thus add a preservative to offset the sugar source...
And all of the above are "pricey" and I find no real advantage other than saving time, and being Scottish, I like to be frugal so I go the DIY route...
LD
Put some "ship's biscuits" together. Used the recipe from Max Miller's YouTube channel. Not much of a recipe really. Stone ground whole wheat and water. Portioned each biscuit with 6 ounces of dough. Finished product ended up being about 4 ounces which means a daily ration of 4 biscuits. Gave it two 2 bakes. 1st was 300 degrees at 3 hours; Second bake 200 degrees for 2 hours. Color of finished product is due more to the whole wheat rather than the baking time. These things are rock hard. they "ping" when you knock them together. May function as an alternative to steel targets.
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In my humble opinion, I believe hardtack was a way to transport flour. I would rather have a hard "cake" of flour than a bag of powder in my kit
It's not like you can take it backwards and make anything out of it. Once it's in hard tack that's it. Best you can do is wet it with something so it doesn't break your teeth.
Hard tack was literally just the most stable, unrefrigerated, "edible" calories you could carry with you. That and some jerky would keep you alive for quite some time, though not in very good health... The wiki on hard tack has some really interesting facts. I think hard tack is absolutely suitable for Christmas tree ornaments.
If you want a depressing and horrible story read:
Ship-biscuits meant the crew wouldn't starve, but that was before they figured out that ships from the tropics were mostly scurvy free, and scurvy hit just about every vessel out to sea for more than a few months. The descriptions of scurvy are particularly graphic and horrible in this book. Honestly, the only thing I can recommend about this book, other than it is very well written prose, is how incredibly tough these guys were. That they turned complete disaster into triumph in the end is a completely crazy story.
The Vikings ranged as far as any other European explorers and never suffered scurvy because they weren't out to sea for anywhere near that long. Their open, shallow keeled, long boats would sail as fast as the wind making them six or seven times faster than the ships that would come later. Given how fast we know they sailed it's likely they could cross the Atlantic in less than a month, and that's not long enough to come down with scurvy even on a diet of pickled fish...
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My understanding is that one does not eat hardtack as a "cracker" they beat the snot out of it, turned it back into a powdery/crumbly consistency and used it in liquids such as broth (thickening) , coffee etc. and maybe even fried with it. I read where men would fry it in bacon grease. Most of my readings were land based and not so much sea going
I'm not an expert, but I thought they usually soaked it in something to soften it rather than trying to nibble on a rock. I suppose bacon grease would work the same way, but if you can have bacon then why are you eating hard tack? People ate it unprepared for sure. I just assume that after a few weeks of living on it as the only staple you are going to do anything you can to make it less unpleasant.
