A friend of mine whose skill as a herbalist and craftsperson are deserving of their own channel, sent me a gem they discovered online. It is the 1910 manual on bowls and punches for field and exercise use in the German army (Bowlen und Pünsche für den Manöver- und Feldgebrauch der Deutschen Armee). Reading it is absolutely fascinating, and I will share a few choice bits with you to get away from the sombre tone of recent weeks.
It probably needs saying that this is not an official field manual. Most technical literature for the German military were produced by private publishers, and they took the opportunity that association afforded them to also produce books like this. Priced at three marks and sold strictly to officers only, it was intended to raise money for German troops in China and their dependents. Much of it is filled with repurposed filler text and doggerel, but about half the pages contain actual, useful recipes and instructions.
The recipes claim to be designed to combat two common health problems, namely chilblains and cirrhosis of the liver. Against the first, the authors recommend hot punch drinks in winter, against the second, chilled Bowle in summer. These thirst-quenching, refreshing mixed drinks were intended as an option to moderate alcohol intake which, reading what goes into them, is mind-boggling. It is not hard to believe that cirrhosis of the liver was a common health problem in the officer corps.
An example of a Bowle involves strawberries which makes it a seasonal drink:
Strawberry Bowle, second type:
One heaping plate of fresh strawberries (forest strawberries are preferred) are layered in a serving bowl with the requisite amount of pounded sugar and just barely covered with water. After the berries have been left to steep for a few hours, you add five or six bottles of light Rhenish or Moselle wine. Just before serving, one or two bottles of champagne (Sekt) may also be added. Care must be taken that the strawberries are placed in the drinking glasses undamaged so the drink keeps its appetising appearance.
Some of the recipes seem designed more for show than use, though some German troops saw service in the tropics and may actually have done this:
Pineapple Bowle, fifth type, for howitzer batteries
In the colonies or other places where pineapples can be had in sufficient quantity, you take off the top quarter of the fruit with one straight cut, carefully hollow out the fruit with a spoon, and smooth the top edge by removing the spines etc. Then you place a piece of ice inside the hollow, fill it up with cold champagne, and use the previously removed quarter with its green leaves as a lid to cover it. In order for this delicious cup not to fall over, use the empty casing of a field howitzer as a support.
For winter, we get hot, higher-proof mixtures like this:
Favourite Punch of King Wilhelm I of Wurttemberg
(The recipe was obtained from the old king’s table setter)
One orange is peeled and squeezed out, two lemons have their zest rubbed off on sugar, a third is peeled very finely. the sugar, orange juice, and lemon zest are placed in a vessel and the juice of the three lemons squeezed into it. Also add one bottle of good white wine, three Schoppen (about 2.1 litres) of water and further sugar to taste. It is left for several hours in a well-covered bowl, then allowed to boil, but not strongly. Add a little more than one Schoppen (0.7 litres) of rum or arrack, but this must not be allowed to boil.
Along with those, there are a number of traditional mixed drinks, mostly based on wine. The recipes are a melange of the familiar, the weird, and the fashionably exotic, with pineapples being a special favourite. Many are sourced from named military units, some from foreign forces, and in a few cases, specific toasts or customs for drinking them are also recorded. One feels notably modern, an ancestor of the margarita:
Frozen Punch
Cut a pineapple in slices, add a kilogram of sugar moistened with water, pour on two bottles of Rhenish wine cover the terrine and leave it to stand for five to six hours. Then squeeze in the juice of two lemons, strain the liquid, mix it with one bottle of champagne (Champagner), fill the punch into an ice cream maker (Gefrierbüchse) and let it freeze while constantly turning and stirring. Meanwhile, add half a bottle of fine arrack or rum gradually, glass by glass, until the beverage is thick, but liquid.
As an aside, the word used for champagne here – Champagner – means the real thing from the Champagne region of France. In other recipes, the word Sekt can mean any kind of sparkling wine made by the champagne process.
Others are less immediately intuitive to modern drinkers. There is, for example, something for an artilleryman’s stomach:
Howitzer (Haubitze)
(Communicated by Field Artillery Regiment No. 58)
Stir four fresh egg yolks in a large Bowle glass with one (unit of) cognac and one curacao. Continue stirring and add half a bottle of champagne (Sekt) that is not too cold or too dry. Drink, and you will say “C’est une chose!”
And some things were just plain silly:
Pot às feu of the East African colonial troops (Schutztruppe)
(Communicated by the officers’ mess at Dar es Salaam)
In a large glass mug (Becherglas), add one shot glass of yellow chartreuse, a splash of angostura bitter, and one spoonful of crushed ice. After shaking it well, fill it to half full with any champagne (Sekt) you have. The moment you raise the glass to your lips, you add one teaspoon of fine powdered sugar, quickly stir it, and drink up before everything comes foaming out of the glass.
The final chapters are even more interesting. They record a number of recently imported “American Drinks”, namely cobblers, sours, and cocktails. If you are used to thinking of ‘Old Europe’ as a separate world, the opposite of America in every regard, this seems strange, but it really is not. America had a strong hold on the imagination of the German public in the early 1900s, and though it was in many ways considered strange and confusing, people were fascinated by its habits. At the same time, a Prussian officer, far from being seen as a relic of bygone glory, was seen as inhabiting the same pinnacle of modernity as a New York broker. It was perfectly natural to take an interest.
This is their version of Martini:
Martini-Cocktail
(use a large bar glass)
Fill the glass with finely crushed ice, add two or three splashes of sugar syrup, two or three splashes of angostura bitter, one splash of curacao, half a wine glass of Old Tom gin, and half a wine glass of vermouth. Stir it well with a mixing spoon and strain it into a cocktail glass. Press a piece of lemon peel into it and serve.
The main thing that strikes me personally is the extremely liberal use of ice in most summertime recipes – a habit that has sadly fallen out of favour in Germany today. The absence of soft drinks is no surprise, given the focus of the book. It is hard to imagine a teetotal Prussian officer. It means, though, that I am not going to try out any of the recipes. Perhaps someone else would like to.