 A can of Maconochie issued as a military ration, displayed in the Imperial War Museum | |
| Type | Stew |
|---|---|
| Place of origin | Scotland |
| Created by | Maconochie Company |
| Main ingredients | Turnips, carrots, potatoes |
Maconochie was a British stew of sliced turnips, carrots, potatoes, onions, haricot beans, and beef in a thin broth, named after the Aberdeen-based Maconochie Company that produced it. It gained recognition as a widely-issued military ration for British soldiers during the Boer War[1] and World War I. There was also a French version called Maconóochie.
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. The congelation of fat above indistinguishable chunks of meat and vegetables led one reporter to describe it as "an inferior grade of garbage". A soldier named Calcutt claimed "the Maconochie's stew ration gave the troops flatulence of a particularly offensive nature."
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]
Some product versions that contained turnips were said to possess an unpleasant smell when combined with beans. Barbara Buchan from the Fraserburgh Heritage Centre confirmed that their records contain only a single positive response to the product.[3]