Most American soldiers didn’t exactly enjoy gourmet food during the Civil War—think hardtack, beans, watery coffee, and the rare rasher of bacon—but during that period in history, they learned a great many life skills. And a chef and a museum chief recently teamed up to give people a taste of what it was like.

“A lot of the problems soldiers had with cooking were because they were men,” says David Price, executive director of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, Maryland. Price, who served as a consultant to the creators of Mercy Street, the PBS Civil War drama centered around an Alexandria, Virginia hospital, says these young men were on their own for the first time, without the first