Maconochie

Common card · No. 493488

Maconochie was a brand of canned stew containing sliced turnips, carrots, potatoes, onions, haricot beans, and beef in a thin broth, named after the Aberdeen-based Maconochie Company that produced it. The stew gained recognition as a widely-issued military ration for British soldiers during the Boer War and World War I. Although the stew was said to be tolerable, most soldiers detested it. As one British soldier put it, "warmed in the tin, Maconochie was edible; cold, it was a man-killer." Others complained that the potatoes appeared to be unidentifiable black lumps. The congelation of fat above indistinguishable chunks of meat and vegetables led one reporter to describe it as "an inferior grade of garbage". A soldier named Calcutt claimed "the Maconochie's stew ration gave the troops flatulence of a particularly offensive nature." Though we reckoned in the trenches the Maconochie tin of meat and veg was a banquet in its own way, but most of the contractors who fed us should have had...

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