slumgullion

What my dad used to make out of leftovers, but he called it this so we wouldn't know we were having leftovers. Tomato base plus noodles plus any damn thing you can get your hands on. Tonight I stewed up some tomatoes + chicken + carrots + celery + onions + kidney beans but not too many cause I'm not that keen on 'em + potatoes + elbow macaroni = something that was pretty good but Dad would have done it better.

A recipe used by (or I should probably say on) American sailors and soldiers in the 19th century. It probably used salt junk (hardened salted beef) and hard-tack as its primary ingredients, but I am unable to find a historical recipe, even in Patrick O'Brian's nautical historical cookbook Lobscouse & Spotted Dog. Slum is an adulturation of "slime" and gullion meant either stomache-ache or cess-pool, depending on your source.

It is referred to in "Two Years Before the Mast" by Richard Henry Dana, which recounts a trading mission from Boston to California and back around 1836.