Salisbury Steak's Surprising Civil War Origins

Salisbury steak is the type of American comfort food that's ridden a rollercoaster of popularity. Along with other hearty, eminently reheatable entrees like sloppy Joes and meatloaf, Salisbury steak grew in popularity as a staple of the mid-20th-century TV dinner boom. It then went through a period of sad freezer aisle obscurity, until it was welcomed back into the kitchen as a nostalgic, comforting recipe item (now with mushroom sauce!).

But the Salisbury steak predates foil-wrapped TV dinners by nearly a century, and was actually developed by a 19th-century physician as a remedy for health woes during the Civil War.

Originally from New York state, James Salisbury spent most of his prewar career as an early advocate of germ theory, exploring the cause and nature of communicable diseases. He was also intensely interested in the link between diet and health. Embarking on a series of meticulously documented at-home experiments, he recruited volunteers to eat single-food diets for weeks at a time and monitored their health.

In 1856, he invited “six well and hearty men” to live with him on baked beans and coffee. The next year, four men under his supervision ate nothing but oatmeal for a month. Inevitably, the men became wobbly, dizzy and “very flatulent” and needed long walks to distract themselves from their thoughts and rumbles. At the end of the experiment, when given a 10-ounce steak with butter, pepper and salt, "All now began to breathe easier and to feel clearer about the head,” he wrote in The Relation of Alimentation and Disease (1888).

Salisbury carried this research to the Union army when asked to recommend measures to keep servicemembers healthy. Fed on a diet of mostly hardtack biscuits, soldiers were prone to weakness, “locomotor ataxy” and extreme digestive upset. Hardtack was made of flour and water, baked "slow and low" to evaporate moisture. This meant it was extremely long-lasting but also had the general consistency of roof shingles. Soldiers might pair hardtack with a thin ration of pork or butter, or a cup of coffee to soften the meal, but it was not gourmet eating nor did it offer nutritional depth.

Salisbury’s solution was to recommend an elimination diet on which someone suffering from camp diarrhea (or Bright's disease, consumption, diabetes, uterine fibroids or any other number of ills, for that matter) ate mostly meat until they started to feel better. Then they could add other foods for 25 percent of total consumption. Beef was best, and he recommended a specific “muscle pulp of beef” recipe that consisted of chopped lean beef made into hamburger-like cakes and broiled. Seasonings like butter, pepper, salt, Worcestershire sauce or lemon were allowed.

Exploring the connection between diet and health was very common in both medical science and wellness culture in the 19th century. Salisbury’s all-steak plan was part of a larger trend by which "medicinal" or "health" foods became core parts of American diet and culture. Sylvester Graham was sure that his graham flour crackers, in contrast to an indulgent diet, would curb sexual appetite. John Harvey Kellogg, at his Battle Creek Sanitarium, recommended a bland vegetarian diet that included his proprietary corn flake cereal.

In The Relation of Alimentation and Disease, Salisbury expounded on his research and the benefits of his carnivore diet. He argued that meat was better for health than “the best vegetable products under the same conditions.” By way of explanation, he offered: “The reason of this is that the first organ of the digestive apparatus—the stomach—is a meat-digesting organ…Good, fresh beef and mutton stand at the head of all ailments as foods promotive of human health.”

After the Civil War and with the broader publication of Salisbury’s recommendations, his strict regimen spread throughout America and into the United Kingdom, where it became popular as a fad diet for wellness and weight loss. The British had already embraced diet fads, such as undertaker William Banting’s low-carb plan, which allowed for vegetables and the occasional sherry. Elma Stuart’s 1899 testimonial What Must I Do to Get Well? And How Can I Keep So? credited Salisbury’s elimination diet with all manner of personal improvements. Stuart raved: “Two months and a half after I began the strict treatment, I could bend, and put on my own shoes and stockings, and lace and unlace my boots, which I had been unable to do for nearly 10 years.” English physician Archibald Keightley, in a 1900 book on diet, similarly included a chapter on Salisbury’s regimen, calling it one of the "most valuable weapons in fighting ill-health.”

According to food historian Ken Albala, this had a lot to do with a new fixation on macronutrients. After the midcentury illumination of proteins, fats and carbohydrates by figures like chemist Justus von Liebig, “fad diets (then as now) tended to promote one of these as the ideal nutriment. Salisbury was not unique in considering meat the best food for promoting health, but he was alone in suggesting that meat, stripped of all fat, was the easiest food to digest and most easily converted into muscle tissue.”

Into the 20th century, Salisbury steaks became less notable as health food and more valued for their ease of preparation, as well their economic and protein value. The 1945 edition of the Cookbook of the U.S. Navy included a recipe for the dish, presumably because it was hearty and easy to whip up in large quantities (serves 100). The recipe gained further traction during World War I, when the Salisbury name became preferable in public discourse versus the German-sounding “hamburger."

From there, Salisbury’s health food found a new life in TV dinners and even became beloved in Japan and Hawaii. Though he would probably sneer at the level of gravy most of us deem appropriate.