Tabasco Sauce

[Bajansailor]

I thought Angostura had gone now?

The Angostura distillery in Trinidad is very much alive and well - they produce a wide variety of alcoholic stuff, and even soft drinks.
HOME - ANGOSTURA

 

[Frogmogman]

Barbados pepper sauce is much better than Tabasco any day (but I may be a bit biased).
And you can even buy it by the gallon here if required.
Or you can make it at home -
Barbados Recipes: Bajan Pepper Sauce

Do I dare add Fray Bentos pies to your list? Or hard tack biscuits?

A thumbs up for the Barbados sauce, though I view this as a complement to the Tabasco rather than an alternative. We’ve been reasonably successful at making our own. The one I remember as particularly blowing our socks off in Barbados was Dina’s “one spot” pepper sauce at her bar at Bathsheba. One spot was truly all that was required.

 

[R.Ems]

“Like onions, no ship should be without Tabasco sauce. It gives a relish to the plainest fare, and is probably a powerful germicide.”
-H.W. Tilman, “Triumph and Tribulation”, Nautical Publishing Company, 1977.

Is there anyone who puts to sea without onions and Tabasco sauce?

No, but today I prefer the nationalised, or should I say regionalised, sauces and pastes, such aas Patak's Indian curry, lots of sweet and sour varieties etc. mainly propogated by immigrant food and spice shopss and sspread by the supermarmets.

( Didn't Tillman claiim to reduce vitling costs by offering crew fare which tasted vile and was slow and difficult to prepare? Hopefuly tongue in cheek but you never knw for sure...

 

[Frogmogman]

No, but today I prefer the nationalised, or should I say regionalised, sauces and pastes, such aas Patak's Indian curry, lots of sweet and sour varieties etc. mainly propogated by immigrant food and spice shopss and sspread by the supermarmets.

( Didn't Tillman claiim to reduce vitling costs by offering crew fare which tasted vile and was slow and difficult to prepare? Hopefuly tongue in cheek but you never knw for sure...

Sir RKJ is on record as saying the one thing without which he’d never sail offshore is lime pickle.

 

[Porthandbuoy]

I sail with a chap who does a lot of outside catering. He always brings aboard his spice box containing:-
Tabasco
Garam Masala
5 spice
A variety of curry powders
Garlic cloves (whole, dried, salt and lazy)
Dried mushrooms
Dried onions
Onion salt
Various dried herbs
Parmesan
Other bottles, jars & tubes I haven’t identified.

He makes the most mundane dish delicious.

 

[Kukri]

No, but today I prefer the nationalised, or should I say regionalised, sauces and pastes, such aas Patak's Indian curry, lots of sweet and sour varieties etc. mainly propogated by immigrant food and spice shopss and sspread by the supermarmets.

( Didn't Tillman claiim to reduce vitling costs by offering crew fare which tasted vile and was slow and difficult to prepare? Hopefuly tongue in cheek but you never knw for sure...

I know for sure:




For five men for four months. Supplemented with some Russian bread and an Army ration pack and ten boxes of Lifeboat Biscuits swapped for dried egg, flour and potatoes.

Opinions may vary, but I thought that was fine.
(The reason for the one dozen toilet rolls was that there were plenty left over from the year before).

 

[Habebty]

I know for sure:


(The reason for the one dozen toilet rolls was that there were plenty left over from the year before).

I am surprised, what with 2lbs of curry powder on the list! ?

 

[dansaskip]

Onions - yes essential, Tabasco sauce - yes and Angostura bitters. I have always reserved the tabasco for food and the Angostura for drinks particularly Rum punch. Intrigued that some have suggested it's use in food I have just read the label (for the first time!) and indeed the makers suggest its use in all sorts of food - perhaps I haven't been experimental enough in my cooking.

 

[burgundyben]

In 2009 there was a shortage of Angostura bitters; the company reported that the primary problem was a shortage of bottles. There were incorrect rumours of a product recall, or that production of the bitters had stopped at the plant in Trinidad. The shortage of bitters was the subject of many news articles and blogs, particularly in the cocktail industry.

 

[R.Ems]

I know for sure:


View attachment 142423View attachment 142424View attachment 142425

For five men for four months. Supplemented with some Russian bread and an Army ration pack and ten boxes of Lifeboat Biscuits swapped for dried egg, flour and potatoes.

Opinions may vary, but I thought that was fine.
(The reason for the one dozen toilet rolls was that there were plenty left over from the year before).

Thanks, what an amazing list to have in front of you.
Thick stodge to keep going in cold conditions, I get it.
While doing hard physical sailing in cold temps. (I hope the temps were under 5-ish with those raw sausages rammed in lockers...)

IMO Tilman could have had more compassionate feelings for his fellow man, you can achieve great tasks without being a hard-driving bar steward to the crew.
Look at Scott, a humourless loner who saw himself as cut from different cloth from the standard seaman, compared to Shackleton , an open man within the constraints of the contemporary culture and class system, who discussed all their plans and problems with the lads and was always open to suggestions.
Anyway I am way off the thread, drifting away on an ice floe, but I get excited about ways and means to run a happy ship.
It's going to be a tough trip so why on earth make it worse?

 

[Zing]

I know for sure:

For five men for four months. Supplemented with some Russian bread and an Army ration pack and ten boxes of Lifeboat Biscuits swapped for dried egg, flour and potatoes.

Opinions may vary, but I thought that was fine.
(The reason for the one dozen toilet rolls was that there were plenty left over from the year before).

I make it to be:
235 lbs sugar or sugar equivalent, 230 lbs meat/animal protein equivalent, 110 lbs veg, 240 lbs carbs, 105 lbs fat.

It is a typical unhealthy British diet from the 1970s and an example of why we are all now so ill. A truly dreadful amount of sugar, inadequate veg, too many carbs and most of the fat is in ‘cooking oil’ i.e. unhealthy seed oil.

Not that it is that it was wonderful either in earlier times, bad in different ways, particularly with alcohol; 200 years ago in Navy rations there would have been hardly any sugar, no seed oil, lots and lots of alcohol and relatively more meat and far more calories in total. Not much veg of course, hence scurvy.

 

[Kukri]

Thanks, what an amazing list to have in front of you.
Thick stodge to keep going in cold conditions, I get it.
While doing hard physical sailing in cold temps. (I hope the temps were under 5-ish with those raw sausages rammed in lockers...)

IMO Tilman could have had more compassionate feelings for his fellow man, you can achieve great tasks without being a hard-driving bar steward to the crew.
Look at Scott, a humourless loner who saw himself as cut from different cloth from the standard seaman, compared to Shackleton , an open man within the constraints of the contemporary culture and class system, who discussed all their plans and problems with the lads and was always open to suggestions.
Anyway I am way off the thread, drifting away on an ice floe, but I get excited about ways and means to run a happy ship.
It's going to be a tough trip so why on earth make it worse?

The sausages were tinned. One item that I didn’t record was twice baked bread, in polythene bags. This was a standard item for long distance sailing at the time. Basically rusks and not at all interesting to eat. Ryvita is much better, and perhaps a little less bulky.

She was a happy ship.

 

[R.Ems]

I make it to be:
235 lbs sugar or sugar equivalent, 230 meat/animal protein equivalent, 110 lbs veg, 240 lbs carbs, 105 lbs fat.

It is a typical unhealthy British diet from the 1970s and an example of why we are all now so ill. A truly dreadful amount of sugar, inadequate veg, too many carbs and most of the fat is in ‘cooking oil’ i.e. unhealthy seed oil.

Not that it is that it was wonderful either in earlier times, bad in different ways, particularly with alcohol; 200 years ago in Navy rations there would have been hardly any sugar, no seed oil, lots and lots of alcohol and relatively more meat and far more calories in total. Not much veg of course, hence scurvy.

The need for a continous supplies of animal fat when working hard, in freezing conditions, or marching with loads of kit, is well established.
A quick question, not arguing, but how does the health of someone in the 1970's make my health bad? ('so ill' in your parlance).
I don't eat their diet of 50 years ago, where is the connection?

 

[Kukri]

I make it to be:
235 lbs sugar or sugar equivalent, 230 meat/animal protein equivalent, 110 lbs veg, 240 lbs carbs, 105 lbs fat.

It is a typical unhealthy British diet from the 1970s and an example of why we are all now so ill. A truly dreadful amount of sugar, inadequate veg, too many carbs and most of the fat is in ‘cooking oil’ i.e. unhealthy seed oil.

Not that it is that it was wonderful either in earlier times, bad in different ways, particularly with alcohol; 200 years ago in Navy rations there would have been hardly any sugar, no seed oil, lots and lots of alcohol and relatively more meat and far more calories in total. Not much veg of course, hence scurvy.

Thanks for the calculation. Difficult to increase the vegetables - because this was a cold weather trip the onions, potatoes and hard white cabbage kept quite well in a deck locker, picked over weekly, but they would not have kept in warmer conditions.

The provisions arrived in a Southampton ship chandler’s van.

I suspect that this was a stores list that Tilman had settled on back in the Fifties. I wonder if anyone else has an old stores list, perhaps from a Whitbread leg, to compare it with? I’m sure that the Clipper fleet have a standard list but that’s commercially sensitive.

One thing that you can’t get at all in the UK now is tinned butter. Not sure if you can get dried egg, either.

 

[Neeves]

Thanks for the advice and for the recipe. Fray Bentos pies and a few tins of corned beef, of course, but getting good hard tack biscuits is extremely difficult in this nook shotten isle of Albion, and getting tinned butter is impossible. Here, and very oddly, every Asian supermarket stocks tinned butter, from New Zealand (Three Feathers), Jonathan

 

[R.Ems]

The sausages were tinned. One item that I didn’t record was twice baked bread, in polythene bags. This was a standard item for long distance sailing at the time. Basically rusks and not at all interesting to eat. Ryvita is much better, and perhaps a little less bulky.

She was a happy ship.

Ok thanks, I have definitely acquired the wrong wnd of the stick over the years!

 

[Kukri]

Here, and very oddly, every Asian supermarket stocks tinned butter, from New Zealand (Three Feathers),

Thanks Neeves. Excellent stuff. Anchor used to sell their tinned butter here but some years ago they stopped exporting butter to the UK from NZ and instead they sell UK butter under their label (it seems to taste the same!)

I wish Three Feathers would send some this way!

 

[Neeves]

I'll see if I can get a post right this time

Home - Red Feather

Fill out the enquiry form and they might divulge a source in the UK.

Sadly tinned cheese seems to have disappeared completely. Bega cheese used to tin cheese (and I think still do if you buy in bulk).

Yogurt powder is useful Easi-Yo - if you like yogurt and was available in the UK.

As you will know - Chinese dried mushrooms are useful and in the winter months or cold weather sailing Wombok cabbage keep well (in an outside locker)

Jonathan

 

[Zing]

The need for a continous supplies of animal fat when working hard, in freezing conditions, or marching with loads of kit, is well established.
A quick question, not arguing, but how does the health of someone in the 1970's make my health bad? ('so ill' in your parlance).
I don't eat their diet of 50 years ago, where is the connection?

You misunderstood. To put it another way, lots of people who are sick or dying or dead currently grew up in the 50s, 60s and 70s were fed on this sort of diet most of their lives and many still are fed this way. We now know it is bad for you and is to a large degree why such a high proportion of people in that age group are suffering heart disease, stroke cancer and diabetes than in similar age cohorts many decades earlier.

 

[Kukri]

You misunderstood. To put it another way, lots of people who are sick or dying or dead currently grew up in the 50s, 60s and 70s were fed on this sort of diet most of their lives and many still are fed this way. We now know it is bad for you and is to a large degree why such a high proportion of people in that age group are suffering heart disease, stroke cancer and diabetes than in similar age cohorts many decades earlier.

The items listed were for four months, two of them on passage, two of them in the Arctic, with no expectation of being able to buy anything, in a boat with no refrigeration and no expert cook. Tilman brewed his own beer and baked his own bread when at home.