The good folks at Task & Purpose bring us this great moment in US Navy gastronomic history:
On July 1, 1914, the U.S. Navy implemented the cruelest and most unusual punishment in its venerable history: a ban on alcohol.
Under General Order 99, drinking “alcoholic liquors on board any naval vessel, or within any navy yard or station,” became prohibited, with commanding officers “held directly responsible for the enforcement of this order,” according to a U.S. Naval Institute reflection on the 100th anniversary of the ban in 2014. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels delivered the order; described as a “teetotaler,” Daniels was ridiculed in the press for the decision for years, only for the U.S. to constitutionally establish national Prohibition just six years later.
The Navy’s Prohibition pregame is memorable not just for its ridiculousness but also for giving American sailors (and eventually everyone else) an insatiable appetite for ice cream. Sure, ice cream’s been an American tradition since George Washington spent $200 on the treat in a single summer, but Prohibition created national cravings that persisted across military and civilian worlds even after alcohol was legalized again in 1933. If there’s nothing as American as apple pie, that apple pie tastes a billion times more patriotic with a scoop of ice cream.
With the ban on alcohol aboard ships in 1914, the US Navy sought to offset the loss of alcohol at sea and found that ice cream was popular among the sailors. It was so popular that the Navy borrowed a refrigerated concrete barge from the Army Transportation Corps in 1945 to serve as a floating ice cream parlor. At a cost of $1 million, the barge was towed around the Pacific to provide ice cream to ships smaller than a destroyer that lacked ice cream making facilities. The Navy proudly announced that the vessel could manufacture 10 gallons of ice cream every seven minutes and had storage capacity of 2000 gallons.
Back to Task & Purpose for a second scoop:
To that end, the Navy in 1945 borrowed a concrete barge from the Army Transportation Corps that, retrofitted with heavy-duty refrigeration units, functioned as a floating ice cream parlor for smaller vessels in the Pacific Ocean. Officially called a “BRL” (Barge, Refrigerated, Large, which sounds like a bureaucracy’s take on a Bond martini), the Navy’s beloved “ice cream ship” was basically a 265-foot-long ice cream factory, capable of churning out 500 gallons of the sweet stuff a day (USNI pegs output at 10 gallons every 7 minutes) and stashing another 500 in its cavernous freezers — on top of some 1,500 tons of meat and 500 tons of vegetables.
The BRL wasn’t even the wackiest ice cream scheme that service members devised during those years at war. “By 1943, American heavy-bomber crews figured out they could make ice cream over enemy territory by strapping buckets of mix to the rear gunner’s compartment before missions,” writes Siegel. “By the time they landed, the custard would have frozen at altitude and been churned smooth by engine vibrations and turbulence—if not machine-gun fire and midair explosions. Soldiers on the ground reportedmixing snow and melted chocolate bars in helmets to improvise a chocolate sorbet.”
I’ll take a chocolate dipped soft serve swirl in a waffle cone with sprinkles please!
Stay frosty!
(what?)
Omnes Omnibus
I’ll never really understand the Navy.
Yarrow
Ice cream! Yum!
I think the Royal Navy still gets to drink alcohol on board their naval vessels.
TaMara (HFG)
Gelato. Always gelato. Yum.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
Those faces in those old ads looked so realistic to the point of being a little creepy, especially the dude in the green cap.
What’s the connection between alcohol and ice cream?
Mike J
@Yarrow: Flight surgeons long had “medicinal dosages” that would be provided to officers after air missions.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Apparently they have really good chow.
dmsilev
You can make some very tasty ice creams using various alcoholic add-ins.
Adam L Silverman
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: When they banned alcohol on US naval vessels they replaced it with ice cream. The unwritten subtext here is the ice cream replacement was done to keep the crew from causing problems.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Sprinkles are for winnners.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: They wanted them fat and happy?
Mnemosyne
In case Batten Down the Hatches shows up for this naval thread, they had to pull the Bill of Rights out of the tall ships festival we’re going to, so they rebooked us onto the Californian. The phone message I got was something something Coast Guard, so it’s probably for the best.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: They just wanted them not to mutiny.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
But American troops are always winners! Why do you hate America?
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Huh?
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
It will make sense to the commenter I referred to.
(Attempted short version: that commenter suggested that specific ship when s/he saw which tall ships festival we were going to.)
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Adam L Silverman:
I don’t think ice cream would be enough for me
efgoldman
Maybe Herman Wouk should have written the story with ice cream instead of strawberries.
sharl
@Adam L Silverman: To this day, a major cause of bitching among ship-deployed Navy junior officers (and I assume the Chiefs as well) are orders from on high banning shore leave, and the resulting stress build-up among ships’ forces. Of course such bans are often the results of unfortunate incidents that occur during earlier shore leaves. Sometimes a case can be made that senior command and/or civilian leadership overreacted, but the whole situation with [shore leave + alcohol (+ unleashed horniness/aggression)] is a frequent headache for someone, one way or the other.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: My uncle did five months of pancakes only on the Bainbridge to prove that a nuke force could circumnavigate the world without re-supplying. They did. He couldn’t eat pancakes for about 20 years.
Yarrow
That ad for Safe-T Cones does not make me want to get those cones.
Adam L Silverman
@sharl: It is an issue.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: They’ve passed all the stringent DOD safety checks!
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: They seem to have, yes. In fact the ad says they’re “rigidly inspected.”
different-church-lady
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
If you have to ask, you’ll never know…
stibbert
At Vancouver in 1945, the Royal Navy was converting two 7500-ton minelayers into ‘amenities ships’ for planned service with the British Pacific Fleet. HMS Agamemnon & HMS Menestheus would have featured breweries along with their theaters & canteens. They weren’t completed due to the war’s end.
different-church-lady
At least it wasn’t eating borscht made from maggoty meat…
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@different-church-lady:
I’m sure anachronistic communist officers weren’t a thing in that film
Batten Down the Hatches
@Mnemosyne: how could I possibly miss a thread involving boats and ice cream?
Bummer to hear that about Bill! Navigating the Coast Guard requirements for taking paying passengers on sails can be… a frustrating challenge, especially on an older ship like Bill. (Having said that, I rather superstitiously feel the need to add: god bless the coasties. When you need them they come through.)
The Californian is an amazing boat though. Faat as hell and super steady. Tremendous fun to sail on and I hope she treats you to a great evening.
Mnemosyne
@Batten Down the Hatches:
Ruckus is coming with me since I know virtually nothing about sailing ships, and he picked the Californian as the best backup option. From the website, it looks like a couple of the other ships also had to drop out, so I’m glad the Californian was still available.
I’ve done most of my boating on lakes (including Lake Michigan) but I’ve never been on a sailboat, so I hope I like it! ⛵️
NotMax
In the northeast U.S., sprinkles were (still are?) called jimmies during my youth.
Great Britain calls them hundreds-and-thousands, which is indeed a mouthful.
Mike J
@NotMax: They made the, out of ground up cancer patients, but it was expensive. Hence the jimmy fund.
NotMax
@NotMax
And none of that too sweet Hershey’s chocolate goo. For discriminating ice cream and soda fountain habitues it was U-bet or nothing.
sharl
I was hoping to find a genuine active DoD milspec for ice cream, but could only find this* Commercial Item of Interest (CID).
….*(clicking on the Adobe Acrobat icon at the bottom of the window – to the left of “Base Document” – will open up the .pdf in a separate window.)
If it hasn’t already been done by someone, one of the umpty-thousand people who post recipes online might be interested in going through government and military specifications for foodstuffs and write some reviews. Where a specific recipe is provided (e.g., fruitcake), they might find it fun to try duplicating it and seeing how it turns out.
NotMax
@sharl
U.S. submarine bakers decorate some of their cakes with deck gray colored icing. The exact recipe was a double hush-hush, ultra top secret and AFAIK still is.
Batten Down the Hatches
@Mnemosyne: when you return from this fabulous, boat-themed BJ meet up please give the jackals here a full report!
sharl
@NotMax: Hahaha; being Navy I would usually assume it’s specifically Haze Gray, but since the underwater folks so often go their own way, I won’t even bother to venture a guess. That’s a fun factoid though; certainly one I’ve never heard before.
Origuy
@Yarrow:
I think they got rid of the lash, though.Not sure about the sodomy.
oatler.
@Adam L Silverman: Frozen strawberries can lead to mutiny.
Sloane Ranger
I used to know a former British Army squaddie who used to sneer that the average US serviceperson thought living rough meant only having a choice between 3 ice cream flavours.
He did acknowledge that the SEALS were almost as good as the SAS, however!
@Origuy: Unfortunately they abolished the rum ration many years ago but you can still get a drink and sodomy is OK button not on active service.
Sloane Ranger
Can’t edit previous comment but button = but. Damn autospell.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
If you buy the really good chow bit, I’ve got a bridge I’ll let you have for a bargain. Several available actually, you get your pick.
Ruckus
@sharl:
The recipes aren’t really the problem. Getting someone to follow them is/was. I had good chow for about 2 months on a ship I was on for 2 yrs. But then the chief cook retired (30 yrs in) and it was back to eating crap for every meal. At one point we almost had an honest mutiny over the food. People talking about breaking into the gun locker and taking over the ship. Now that was 45 yrs ago so things might have changed. But I’m not convinced that any improvement is universal. At that time the food budget was $1.50/sailor/day. That’s for 3 hot meals. Bet it’s not a lot more now. And that 2 months was by far the highlight of my culinary experience in the navy.
TenguPhule
@Ruckus:
Compared to the stuff the Army gets, it is.
I’ve sampled both back in 2000 & later worked for one of their food contractors. No contest. Navy eats better then they do.
TenguPhule
@sharl:
Subcontracted out to civilian suppliers. Most of the ice cream the Navy orders in Hawaii is Breyers, btw.
Mart
Best friend for life when I was in the eighth grade, his dad noticed we smoked pot. He let us know that the WWII sailors (he was one) could not get alcohol on board, so they dumped tobacco out of their cigarettes and filled them with refer. He wanted us to get seeds so he could grow him some of that. We obliged and routinely snipped his leaves and dried them in the oven to smoke and get a mild buzz. No killer buds, just leaves. My how times have changed.
raven
Another thread I would have loved to have been here for.
bystander
@efgoldman: Actually Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein wrote a musical partially set on a WWI-era troop transport. No ice cream but one of the theater’s most beautiful male chorus numbers takes place on deck in the Pacific.
jonas
“Safe-T” cones? Did non-standard civilian cones have some sort of dangerous defect back then?
Miss Bianca
@raven: IKR? I always seem to miss some really fun ones when I retire early…
Boatboy_srq
@Adam L Silverman: CAVEAT: the recipes used work on the quantities necessary to feed an entire ship. Scaled down they taste terrible. For whatever reason the ingredient ratios change at the larger quantities. Dad would often talk about how the USN cookbook wasn’t useful for dinner parties smaller than 300.
Rebecca L Marks
My Dad was in the Navy in WWII in the Pacific and he once told me that when they would meet another allied ship (e.g. Australian) for a “gam” (visit) on the high seas, they would exchange ice cream for booze – LOL – not quite the intention when they banned alcohol, but I guess it was great for diplomacy!
CorgiMum
@NotMax: In NJ we always called them sprinkles. In Philly suburbs where I am now they call them jimmies (although there are some who reserve that term only for the chocolate ones, but call the rainbow colored ones sprinkles).
Stan
I can’t believe no one picked up on Josephus Daniels’ other great legacy: Since he banned alcohol, the navy guys started calling coffee “a cup of joe”. We (well,a lot of older folks) still call coffee “joe”.
TomatoQueen
According to my uncle’s copy of The Cook Book of the United States Navy, revised 1944, ” Coffee is a delicate and perishable product and requires careful handling. Navy coffee has been expertly blended and roasted. If a few simple rules are followed, a rich and enjoyable brew may be expected.” Recipes follow, in ratio of 6 and a quarter gallons of freshly drawn cold water to 3 pounds regular Navy grind coffee, or fine grind if we’re brewing with a Navy dripolator. The cook book is out of print.
sharl
@TomatoQueen: I’m glad I checked back in here; thanks for the input!
I found something with a title matching your reference online, though it’s in modern format, i.e., not a scan of an original hard copy, but rather transcribed and posted online with current style/font/formatting. I couldn’t access the later sections/chapters (I got ‘error’ pages).
Here’s the following year’s version – The Cookbook of the United States Navy, NAVSANDA Publication 7, 1945. This one DOES have scans of individual pages, accessible by scrolling down to the list of clickable links to individual sections.
I think that’s a lovely family heirloom you have (I love books).