Maconochie

For other uses, see Alexander Maconochie.

Maconochie was a canned 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 and World War I. There was also a French version called Maconóochie.

Maconochie

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

Although 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.

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.

See also

• List of stews
• Bully beef
• Potted meat food product

External links

• Trench Food
• Glossary of Australian military jargon of World War I
• Replicas of World War I artifacts, including cans of Maconochie