Below is a condensed and edited synopsis of the first chapter of Canoe and camp cookery: A practical cook book for canoeists, Corinthian sailors, and outers by H. H. Soulè (1885). Full text is available from The Gutenberg Project.
Each canoe cruise will require specific amounts of food supplies and cooking utensils to be brought along. The best way to store and transport these supplies is in a single box or chest because it keeps you organized and is easily portable in case you camp on land for any portion of your trip. The box should contain at least a day’s worth of food even if you replenish the supply from a larger storage area every night.
The material of your box depends on where you plan to store it on your canoe and how high functioning you would like it to be, but as long as the box is water-tight, the choice is up to you. The three most common materials used are wood, tin or galvanized iron. The latter two metals cost more than the wood, but they can withstand more knocking around without damaging. However, building your own custom box out of wood is a good option with a large scope of variation.
Every canoe is different so the size of your box will vary. Also, your design can change if you store the box in the cockpit as opposed to using it as a seat. Here are a few design tips that can help ensure your box functions as best as possible:
To carry the provisions in the box so that they will not mix or spill, several water-tight tins should be used. The Consolidated Fruit Jar Company, 49 Warren Street, New York, makes tin screw-tops for jars and canisters that are perfectly water-tight and will also furnish you with a pint or quart earthen jar with water-tight screw-top, in which butter may be kept sweet for a long time in hot weather, and which may be enveloped in a net and lowered to the bottom of the river or lake without fear of leaking. Catering your tin designs to what they will hold greatly helps with organization:
The alcohol stove and utensils necessary to cook a meal should go in the box, such as coffee pot, cup, fork, knife, spoon, frying pan and plates. Here is a more detailed list of the aforementioned products:
The length of your journey will determine the amount of food you will need to pack. Here is a sample packing list for a week-long journey:
As mentioned before, enough food for three meals should be kept in your box. The surplus supplies of provisions, such as vegetables, extra bread, crackers, flour, meal, pork or bacon, etc., should be carried in waterproof bags and stowed wherever necessary to properly trim the canoe. These bags can also be used for clothing and blankets.
They are made of unbleached muslin, sewn in a lap seam, with a double row of stitches. When sewn they are dipped in water and slightly shaken to remove the drops, and then while wet a mixture of equal parts of boiled oil, raw oil and turpentine is applied to the outside with a brush. This takes about a week to become thoroughly dry, and then another coat is put on without dampening the cloth, and if a little liquid drier is added to the mixture, this coat will dry in four or five days.
Having prepared several bags, the provisions, clothing, blankets, etc., are put in the bag, and its mouth is inserted in that of another bag of the same size, the latter being drawn on like a stocking as far as it will go. If several bags are used instead of one or two large ones, the canoe can be trimmed and packed to better advantage.
A canoeist's portable oven is made of two small basins, one of which has “ears” riveted to its rim, so that when it is placed bottom up on the other the ears will spring over the rim of the second basin, making an oven that allows gases to escape.
The basins should be made of sheet-iron because then their interiors can easily be kept clean and are well suited for soup dishes. Instructions for baking in them will be given later on. These should not go in the provision chest, as they will smut everything with which they come in contact.
There is no perfect canoe stove. The “flamme force” is probably as good as any. It takes up a little more room than the folding “pocket” variety, but it does not give more heat only burns for a longer time.
For cooking in large utensils have three of these flamme forcé alcohol lamps, light them and place them side by side, and you can cook in this way a dozen slapjacks at once on a big griddle, if you like. Danforth, the fluid man, makes a small canoe stove that would be preferable to all others if his fluid were obtainable at all the corners of the earth that canoeists frequent; but unfortunatel, it is not.
Beware of "folding stoves" to use ashore and burn wood in. They are the greatest possible nuisances—smutty, red-hot and cumbersome. Also, don't carry an oil stove. But if you really must, put the nasty thing in a large bucket, and only remove it from this receptacle when absolutely necessary.