Episode
What did Revolutionary War soldiers eat? Colonals, Loyalists, and Allies on Both Sides?
- Podcast
- Family Tree Food Stories
- Published
- Jul 2, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2220
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Summary
What did Revolutionary War soldiers eat? Broken supply chains, buggy fire cake, boiled shoe leather, and the allies who ate far better. Episode 93. On paper, Congress promised each man a pound of meat, a pound of bread, peas, beans, milk, and beer or cider every day. In practice, a broken supply chain meant that Continental soldiers often went without, surviving on bug-infested “fire cake,” and at Valley Forge , they were even known to boil shoe leather to make soup! Meanwhile, the French, Spanish, Hessian, and even British forces ate very differently, and quite deliciously too. Join Nancy May and Sylvia France here in the Family Tree Food & Stories podcast, as they kick off a four-part celebration of America's 250th birthday. Just to start, you'll learn what soldiers on every side of the Revolutionary War actually ate, including a real diary entry from a real Continental soldier who called a handful of pumpkin seeds fished out of a horse trough “the most delicious feast” he’d had in months. Congress’s official daily ration sounds generous on paper, but a broken supply chain, impassable roads, corrupt contractors, and the “Forage War,” where armies raided each other for hay, cattle, and grain. The results? What they really ate was bug-infested and disgusting. Some soldiers recorded boiling shoe leather and tree bark just to survive. Can you imagine? The real killer, though, wasn’t the British enemy; it was malnutrition and disease as a result of very few veggies in their diet. There were some pretty heroic Natives who came to the rescue when they could and taught our guys how to make spruce beer, which is very high in vitamin C. Nancy tasted it too. Really. The French might have been our first colonial food critics, too. While in the south, Spain’s Bernardo de Gálv…