In the summer of 1862, Union troops were advancing through Kentucky and Tennessee in pursuit of enemy forces led by Confederate General Braxton Bragg. Both armies were living off the land, and food was scarce at times. Private William W. Day of the 10th Wisconsin Infantry recalls how his regiment came up with an inventive way to cook flour they had along the march.

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10th Wisconsin Regiment Recruiting Poster

Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. View the original source document: WHI 2978

From Original Text: "From Nashville to Louisville we had drawn our supplies from the country through which we marched, and it was poor picking after Bragg's army. At Nolansville we captured a quantity of flour, this was issued to us raw, and we cooked it in this way.

We wet it up with cold water into a thick dough, stuck this on our ramrods and held it in the fire until partly baked, partly burned, and wholly smoked; we then had the famous "dough god" of the army.

Ladies if you don't want your husbands to desert you; girls, if you don't want your sweethearts to wander off into the cold mountains of the bachelordom, don't make for them any biscuits after this recipe. I wouldn't live with the best woman in America if she fed me such stuff as I cooked for myself forty years ago."