Maconochie

Maconochie was a stew of sliced turnips, carrots and potatoes in a thin broth, named for the Aberdeen Maconochie Company that produced it. It was a widely used food ration for British soldiers in the field during the Boer War[1] and in front-line trenches during World War I. There was also a French version called Maconóochie.

For other uses, see Alexander Maconochie.
Maconochie
Photographed in the Imperial War Museum, London
TypeStew
Place of originScotland
Created byMaconochie Company
Main ingredientsTurnips, carrots, potatoes

Though the stew was tolerable, most soldiers detested it. As one soldier put it, "warmed in the tin, Maconochie was edible; cold, it was a man-killer." Others complained about how the potatoes appeared to be unidentifiable black lumps. A reporter once described the stew as "an inferior grade of garbage".

though we reckoned in the trenches the Maconochie tin of meat and veg was a banquet in its own way, but most of the contractors who fed us should have had their money stuffed into a couple of kit-bags round their necks and chucked into the deepest hole in no-mans land.[2]

See also

Notes and references
  1. Maurice Harold Grant, History of the war in South Africa, 1899-1902., Vol.4. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1910. See for example the table "Summary of Supplies Sent by the Natal District for General French's Force, Garrisons, &c., Despatched from Newcastle and Volksrust for Piet Relief and from De Jager's Drift for Vryheid." pg. 567.
  2. Mankowitz, Wolf (1956). My Old Man's a Dustman. Andre Deutsch. p. 19.


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