The Book Club Cookbook

Michael Shaara

………

MCKAY, 1974

(available in paperback from Ballantine, 1987)

IN EXPLAINING his inspiration for The Killer Angels, a dramatic novel of the Civil War, Michael Shaara referred to Stephen Crane, author of another Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage. “Reading the cold history was not enough [for Crane],” wrote Shaara. “He wanted to know what it was like to be there, what the weather was like, what men’s faces looked like. This book was written for much the same reason.”

The Killer Angels re-creates the Battle of Gettysburg from the perspective of the soldiers and their officers. Union and Confederate troops arrived at the battlefield with dreams, fears, longings, and vulnerabilities, details most often left out of history books. As rendered by Shaara, General Robert E. Lee was dignified, respected, and loved by his troops, but beset with worries about his heart condition, advancing age, and his fateful decision to invade Pennsylvania. Lee’s right-hand man, James Longstreet, offered key strategic advice while he mourned the deaths of his three children.

A Union colonel, Joshua Chamberlain, his regiment on Little Round Top hopelessly outnumbered and out of ammunition, miraculously repelled the rebel attack. Chamberlain wondered what he would tell his mother—and whether he would feel responsible if something happened to his younger brother, Thomas, a soldier under his command.

The line soldiers’ hunger, discomfort, and longing for home, and their loyalty, fear, and humor all emerge in The Killer Angels. From an epic event in American history, Shaara has woven a human story focused on people with mortal strengths and failings.

As might be expected during war, the soldiers’ rations were simple. At times the men enjoyed fresh meat and chicken, but more often they ate dried beef, bread, coffee, and corn dodgers, elongated baked cornmeal cakes. Deprivation led the soldiers to fantasize about hearty meals. After being wounded in battle, Chamberlain’s thoughts drifted to his wife and children: “Owe her a letter. Soon. Kids be playing now. Sitting down to lunch. Eating—cold, cold milk, thick white bread, cheese and cream, ah.”

In the summer of 1863, as Confederate and Union troops edged toward their bloody clash in Gettysburg, the cherry trees were laden with ripe fruit. “Cherries are ripening over all Pennsylvania, and the men gorge as they march,” wrote Shaara in the foreword to The Killer Angels. General Lee was offered flapjacks with “ripe cherries” for breakfast; Confederate Brigadier General Lewis Armistead wondered aloud several times whether he could grow such lovely cherry trees back home in the South.

Despite their popularity, cherries also accounted for one of the soldiers’ deadliest afflictions. During the Civil War, disease—measles, smallpox, malaria, and pneumonia—posed a greater threat to soldiers than enemy bullets. Dysentery alone killed more soldiers than wounds suffered in battle. When General Lee asked about Longstreet’s health, pointing out that “the Old Soldier’s illness is going around,” Longstreet replied, “It’s the damned cherries … too many raw cherries.” The Old Soldier’s illness was likely dysentery, contracted from eating excessive amounts of fruit, particularly decomposing fruit. Soldiers on their way to Gettysberg undoubtedly ate plenty of the readily available ripe cherries, and they suffered the consequences. The condition was widespread. In The Killer Angels, it afflicted not just Longstreet, but also fellow soldiers Garnett and Fremantle, the latter who, after feeling his stomach rumble, thought, “Oh God, not the soldier’s disease. Those damned cherries.”

CIVIL WAR CHERRY-APPLE COBBLER WITH SWEET VANILLA CUSTARD

Fortunately, clean, ripe cherries cooked into this cobbler are unlikely to cause any condition other than delight.

During the early and middle 1800s, cherries were frequently cooked into pies and sometimes into cobblers, deep-dish baked fruit desserts covered with a layer of crust or cake. Cobblers first appeared in Lettice Bryan’s The Kentucky Housewife in 1839, and since then their toppings have taken many forms, from thick spoonfuls of biscuit dough to dough that is rolled and fitted atop the fruit.

It is said that the term cobbler originated in “to cobble up,” meaning to put something together roughly, or in a hurry. These easy-to-throw-together desserts were perfectly suited for wartime. In Civil War Cooking: The Union—Exploring History Through Simple Recipes (Blue Earth, 2000), Susan Dosier suggests that Civil War soldiers might have baked cherry cobblers after successfully foraging in the countryside for fruits and berries. Although the crusts of these desserts, baked hurriedly in pots over a bed of coals, were often tough, according to Dosier, soldiers still considered cherry cobblers a rare treat.

We have added apples to our cobbler and, true to the era, topped it with sweet vanilla custard. Serve the custard warm as a sauce or let it chill into a pudding consistency. Either way, you’ll find this dessert is a cause worth fighting for.

For the filling

1 15½-ounce can unsweetened cherries, drained

5 cups peeled and thinly sliced Cortland apples or other cooking apples

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

cup all-purpose flour

4 tablespoons black cherry preserves

¼ teaspoon almond extract

Juice of 1 lemon (about 3 tablespoons)

2 cups Sweet Vanilla Custard (see below)

For the crust

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small pieces

¼ cup milk

1 egg, beaten

Coarse sugar for sprinkling

Yield: 10 to 12 servings

SWEET VANILLA CUSTARD

cup sugar

¼ cup all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon salt

2 cups milk

4 egg yolks

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon butter

In a medium-size heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the sugar, flour, and salt with a fork. Stir in the milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring with a wire whisk, about 5–7 minutes, until thickened (mixture should coat the edge of the pan). Remove from heat.
Beat the egg yolks lightly in a heat-resistant glass measuring cup or bowl. While whisking yolks constantly to prevent curdling, pour in roughly ½ cup of the hot milk mixture. When completely combined, pour the eggs into the saucepan with the remaining milk mixture and whisk to combine. Continue cooking 2 more minutes. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla and butter.

Yield: About 2 cups

For Dawn Epping, joining the twenty-member Dallas Gourmet Book Club has yielded two significant rewards: making new friends and “widening horizons” through books she probably would not have read on her own. Epping was also drawn to the club by the opportunity to try new recipes each month with a group of women as committed to good food as to good books. “It’s not a cooking competition, but a chance to make and try new dishes,” says Epping. The hostess is responsible for serving a light meal, which often features dishes mentioned in the book or from the relevant period.

Each month a member presents three books, and the group votes to choose the next reading selection. This is how Epping came to read The Killer Angels—the first title she read with the Dallas Gourmet Book Club, and a favorite from among the more than one hundred books the club has read. “Since I’m not a history buff, the thought of a Civil War book was not enticing,” says Epping, “but I loved this book. I was raised in the North, but living in the South I have a different perspective on the war. I appreciated the evenhanded nature of his book, how Shaara covered both sides of the war and offered more than one viewpoint. It was an excellent fictionalization of the soldiers who fought at Gettysburg, including Generals Longstreet and Chamberlain. I felt a personal tie to each character.”

More Food for Thought

Farrel Hobbs of the Colorado-based Denver Read and Feed book club did some “Southern cookin’” for his book club’s discussion of The Killer Angels. His meal of smoked brisket, cornbread, and black-eyed peas prompted discussion of wartime diets. “We spent quite a bit of time discussing the kinds of rotting, weevily things that Civil War soldiers really ate,” says member Barb Warden. “We were grateful to Farrel for sparing us any spark of realism in that regard.”