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hardtack (HAHRD-tak) - n., a large, hard biscuit or cracker made from unleavened flour and water, formerly used as a long-term staple food, for example aboard ships.
Thanks, WikiMedia!
Used not only aboard ships (often called ship's biscuit) but as military rations, and still used today in Alaska and Hawaii as a staple with a long shelf-life. Roman legionnaires ate bucellatum, which was basically the same thing only using different grained. What we'd recognize as wheat-flour hardtack is at least as old as the Crusades. This particular name interestingly doesn't show up until around 1830 (which is why you won't see it in Napoleonic sea-tales (unless the author's being sloppy)), naming tack, in the nautical/military slang sense of food generally, that is hard.
---L.
Thanks, WikiMedia!
Used not only aboard ships (often called ship's biscuit) but as military rations, and still used today in Alaska and Hawaii as a staple with a long shelf-life. Roman legionnaires ate bucellatum, which was basically the same thing only using different grained. What we'd recognize as wheat-flour hardtack is at least as old as the Crusades. This particular name interestingly doesn't show up until around 1830 (which is why you won't see it in Napoleonic sea-tales (unless the author's being sloppy)), naming tack, in the nautical/military slang sense of food generally, that is hard.
---L.
