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"I got your four basic food groups. Beans, bacon, whiskey, and lard!"
Grub's ready, fellers! Get it while it's hot!
Whenever men work in the great outdoors, be they cowboys, miners, lumberjacks or soldiers, they work up a big appetite. And someone's got to feed them. In small outfits, the workers might take turns cooking up the vittles, but above a certain population, it makes sense to have a dedicated Camp Cook. Besides, someone has to drive the chuckwagon.
In fiction, camp cooks tend to be a source of comic relief, with many a gag about their horrible cooking or coffee, and their inability to take criticism on the subject. Many camp cooks are older folks, no longer able to do the main work of the camp, but often an ethnic minority is used instead. (In older works, this frequently is accompanied by truly awful stereotype humor.) Don't be surprised if the cook has a Let's Get Dangerous moment near the end of the story--many are quite deft with their cooking implements.
May have the appropriate nickname of "Cookie".
A classic "bit" for the camp cook is ringing a metal triangle to announce that dinner is ready.
See also Military Moonshiner and Team Chef. Nothing to do with Always Camp. (In which case, he'd likely insist on being called a chef.)
Anime and Manga[]
- Master Swordsman Eishun of Mahou Sensei Negima took this role while travelling with Nagi's Ala Rubra. He is very particular about people wasting the food he prepared.
- Considering how she has a specialty camp stew, Caro of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha seems to have gotten this role in the Frontier Nature Conservation Corps.
Comic Books[]
- Chop-Chop had this as his speciality for the Blackhawks, until modern retcons turned him from the Ethnic Scrappy into a full member of the team.
- "Biscuits" Baker was the camp cook for the Dogiron Crew in the Trail Boss, Matt Savage western comic from DC Comics.
- A recurring character in Lucky Luke, one example being in "The Singing Wire".
- One gives this advice for making coffee: Grind the beans, add water in the mug and set a horseshoe on top. If the horseshoe sinks, add more coffee grounds.
- The Desert Peach has a memorable one.
Film[]
- Jebediah "Cookie" Farnsworth of Atlantis the Lost Empire. A big believer in the power of grease.
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I've got your four basic food groups: beans, bacon, whiskey and lard! |
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- "Charlie" in the original King Kong movie, a particularly painful faux-Chinese performance.
- Gabby, the chef from the 1947 B-movie Queen Of The Amazons. Spends most of his time reciting odd poetry and talking with his pet monkey until he turns out to be the head of an ivory-smuggling operation.
- The character of "Cookie" in City Slickers. Perhaps more memorable for the eulogy he gives at Curly's burial than for his cooking.
- "Cookie" from Forbidden Planet had food so bad it drove Robby the Robot to drink.
- Jebediah Nightlinger from The Cowboys, who also acts as Team Mom. Notably, his food is actually pretty good.
Folklore[]
- Paul Bunyan's camp cook was Sourdough Sam, who specializes in large-scale recipes for the oversized lumberjack and his crew.
- One of folksinger/historian U. Utah Phillip's more famous compositions was a spoken-word piece entitled "Moose Turd Pie", his re-telling of a Shaggy Dog Story concerning a man's attempt to get replaced when he is unwillingly made camp cook of his railroad work crew.
- Cowboy humour claims that any man working on a cattle drive had the right to shoot the cook. However, he had to take over the cook's job if he did.
Literature[]
- Charles "Chow" Winkler from The New Tom Swift Jr. Adventures children's book series. From The Other Wiki's Tom Swift page: "A comic relief character...A roly-poly "former chuck wagon cook" born in Texas, he is an older man, beloved for his gaudy western shirts, cowboy hats, bizarre culinary concoctions (like Armadillo Stew), and for such expressions as "Brand my space biscuits!". He accompanies all Swift expeditions (even in outer space) as the Swifts' executive chef."
- The Phule's Company books by Robert Asprin had Sergeant Escrima, whose grasp of English seemed to vary wildly between books. Short, short-tempered, comedically "foreign", and a skilled cook and escrima fighter. Did we mention short-tempered? For the love of God, don't criticize his cooking.
- A saying from a Known Space short story: "Food will win the war, but how do we get the enemy to eat it?" And then, the main character of the story proceeds to win a battle by hacking the autochef after her ship gets taken.
- Corporal Scallot, the quartermaster in Monstrous Regiment. His specialty is "scubbo", a stew made from whatever's available, but if nothing's available, he can also cook legs. (Although he thinks eating your own legs probably makes you blind.) The role is later taken by Shufti, who turns out to be a lot better at it.
- Greasy Sae of The Hunger Games series becomes the Camp Cook for Area 13. Her specialty is beef stew made from dog meat.
- Zachariah, the African-American ship's cook in The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. Not a comic figure; the mentor role he plays toward young Charlotte skirts Magical Negro territory.
- In Gene Stratton Porter's Freckles, the first person Freckles meets at the camp is the cook, who tells him he won't find a place here.
- In Holmes on the Range, the ranch Big Red and Old Red end up on is served by "the Swede", whose cooking is decent and whose accent is impenetrable.
Live Action TV[]
- Hop Sing of Bonanza.
- George Washington Wishbone of Rawhide.
- Pvt. Igor Straminsky of the 4077th MASH.
- Technically, Igor just serves the food, he doesn't cook it (as he's quick to remind the other characters when they complain). There was an actual cook who appeared in a couple of episodes, however.
- Airman Darren Becker of Stargate Universe. The low quality of his food is usually blamed on the absolutely crap ingredients he has to work with.
- Neelix from Star Trek: Voyager.
- Salty in Huge. He manages to make 'fat camp' diet food actually taste good.
Music[]
- Utah Phillips's song "The Goodnight-Loving Trail" subverts the comic aspects of this trope by taking a sad and sympathetic view of cowboys who are too old to do anything but cook on the drives, despite lyrics like "With your snake oil and herbs and your liniment too/You can do anything that a doctor can do/Except find a cure for your own goddamn stew." The cowboys dub the cook "The Old Woman"; it's bad enough getting old, without being ridiculed too.
- The Australian folk song "Thargomindah Road" is about a cattle drive told from the point of the view of the camp cook.
Newspaper Comics[]
- "Cookie" of the Beetle Bailey Newspaper Comics.
Tabletop Games[]
- Ratlings in Warhammer 40,000 often act as cooks for the regiments they are attached to. However, being essentially Hobbits In Space!!, they are actually pretty good.
Theatre[]
- The opera Paul Bunyan has Sam Sharpey and Ben Benny, who specialize (i.e. overspecialize) in soups and beans, respectively.
Video Games[]
- One of Ford Cruller's alter egos in Psychonauts is the Camp Cook for the Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, where the game takes place, and also runs the camp store. He even has an odd juxtaposition of competency; his food is never done whenever you visit him, but the camp store is always open and stocked with at least Psi Cores and Dream Fluffs, even during a crisis. Guess we know which job he really likes.
- In World of Warcraft, an Alliance expedition stranded on Azuremist Island includes "Cookie" McWeaksauce. Their limited resources have resulted in a somewhat limited menu:
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Admiral Odyseus: Hey, Cookie! What's for dinner tonight? And don't say chicken! |
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Web Comics[]
- The travelling Heterodyne show's cook in Girl Genius. His job is, however, not so much cooking food for eating as making pies that are used for more... ballistic purposes during the shows.
Western Animation[]
- Jonny Quest TOS episode "The Sea Haunt". Charlie, the Chinese cook the Quests find aboard a deserted ship.
- Chef Hatchet from Total Drama Island - At least in the two first seasons, when the campers were in some sort of camp.