…however, the original K2 ration biscuits would have been a bit / a lot harder to bite into than the ones in Dylan’s video, whose texture reminds me of a cross between shortbread and gingerbread. I suspect there’s a missing step involving several more hours in a very low oven until the biscuits were drier and more, um, resilient.
Here’s the thing: soft biscuits are likely to go mouldy faster, and while Wikipedia says that a K-ration box was three meals for one man for one day, there’s no telling how long that box would have been in storage between manufacture, issue and eating.
(If I’m wrong about this, tell me - with citations, please.)
Genuine hardtack biscuits were a part of WWI British Army rations - here’s one held by the Imperial War Museum; link is to the museum record.
Tolkien may have been remembering them when he referred to the waybread “cram” in “The Hobbit” as “a chewing exercise”, and even then Army biscuits could only be chewed after lengthy soaking in something like tea, soup or just water, otherwise they could and would crack teeth.Â
“As hard as wood” was an accurate description, and soldiers sometimes treated their biscuits that way.
“Lembas” may have been 2nd-Lieutenant Tolkien’s daydream of what ration biscuits could have been like had they actually been nice, and here’s a recipe for lembas from waaay back - coming up on 11 years ago, so it’s one of my earliest foodie reblogs.
There are many recipes for lembas on-line, including one with fragrance (lavender) and one with greenery (pesto), so this pic of “standard lembas” is one of many…
…but there are a lot fewer for cram, probably because (a) it didn’t feature in the films and (b) its description in the books was less than appealing.Â
I could only find two cram recipes (A and B), and though YMMV about it, IMO both are making flattering and inaccurate improvements on the necessity-is-seldom-nice Real Thing.
