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.

Maconochie

Photographed in the Imperial War Museum, London
Type	Stew
Place of origin	Scotland
Created by	Maconochie Company
Main ingredients	Turnips, carrots, potatoes
Cookbook: Maconochie

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]