Civil War-Era Pumpkin Bread Looked Nothing Like The Seasonal Treat We Love Today

We see a lot of videos on YouTube and TikTok about Depression-era cooking, but Civil War-era cooking is just as interesting and creative. Cooks at that time had to come up with some unique recipes because ingredients were hard to find during the war. One such recipe for pumpkin bread left quite a bit to be desired, especially compared to the sweet-and-spicy pumpkin bread we're used to today.

The South had to adapt recipes because of Union blockades during the war. Ingredients like salt and wheat flour were all but impossible to come by. One Confederate-era recipe for pumpkin bread required the cook to boil a whole pumpkin until it could be passed through a sieve. After that, whatever flour you had was added until it formed a dough. Then that's it. There are no additional ingredients and no further instructions, so presumably you would have to decide how long to bake it yourself based on past experience and knowledge.

Instagram user Cookin' with Congress tried this recipe out, and the results were maybe worse than you think. "If you told me this is yoga mats, I might believe you," he said after taking his first bite. The flat, moist-looking loaf seemed less like bread and more of a way to make meager flour supplies edible by extending them with something that would at least fill your stomach. With so little sugar or salt, there was not much else to do with whatever flour you might have on hand.

What many people don't realize is that during the Civil War, Union blockades were set up between the North and the South. Ingredients that we take for granted had become scarce. Even things that are available throughout the United States today, that were still being produced or imported abundantly at the time, were not available to many in the South. Flour for baking was one of these ingredients. Because it was processed in the North, many in the South couldn't get it. This led to riots in the streets, including the infamous Richmond Bread Riot of 1863. The cost to feed a family during the war rose from $6.65 per week to $68.25 per week over just two years. Adjusted for inflation, that's over $1,400 a week. That led to some novel adaptations, like battlefield substitutions for coffee.

Tasting Table has a recipe for a very simple three-ingredient pumpkin bread, but even this recipe breaks the rules a little. One of the ingredients is a spice cake mix because that blend is an essential element of pumpkin bread, at least in the modern world. Pumpkin spice is something we all know and understand. It is a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and other warming spices, along with sugar. Imagine all of that being stripped away until you're just eating thick, doughy pumpkin puree.

Union soldiers during the Civil War had access to spices like cinnamon and ginger. Sugar was also available, albeit more expensive. Since pumpkins and flour were also accessible, it is likely that the North could make pumpkin bread as we know it, though there were no readily available published Northern recipes from that time.