Directions for Cooking by Troops, in Camp and Hospital / Prepared for the Army of Virginia, and published by order of the Surgeon General, with essays on "taking food," and "what food."

The manual provides practical, measurement-based directions for preparing large-scale camp and hospital meals, with recipes for soups, stews, broths, puddings, dumplings, and beverages, plus methods for frying, boiling, preserving grease, and stretching rations. Quantities and timings are given for both mass cookery and single-patient preparations, including concentrated beef teas, arrowroot and rice preparations, and lemonades. Accompanying essays discuss feeding the sick, emphasizing that weak patients often require frequent small, easily digested nourishment at suitable times rather than large solid meals, and recommend liquid nutritive preparations and attentive serving to ensure intake.