Rations during the Civil War included salt beef and pork, as well as flour, water, salt, sugar, coffee, and vinegar. Meat wasn't always available, especially in the South where barricades often prevented provisions from arriving. One of the substitutes for meat was a mixture of rice and molasses. Sometimes cooks and soldiers added cornmeal, too.
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Molasses itself was an acquired taste, used as a sweetner by Confederate troops once sugar ran out. A nice mixture of rye and cereal with molasses was "enough to produce deadly illness in any one who swallowed it, not excepting a Rebel soldier," according to one soldier. But they "learned to love it."
Coffee was something both Union and Confederate soldiers consumed a lot of, but it wasn't always available. To make coffee-like consumables, soldiers resorted to using substitutions. This meant brewing peanuts, chicory, grains like rye, peas, and even apples. Other options included acorns, dandelion roots, and sweet potatoes. According to General J.E.B. Stuart:
Potatoes were peeled and cut into "chunks" about the size of coffee berries. The pieces were spread out in the sun to dry, then parched until brown, after which they were ground. The grounds were mixed with a little water until a paste resulted, after which hot water was added. When the grounds settled to the bottom of the coffee pot, the beverage could be poured and drunk...
Actual coffee beans were hot commodities during this time period and, in Atlanta, at least one jeweler used them instead of diamonds in decorative breastpins. When coffee was brewed on fields, it was still something noncombatants "probably wouldn't recognize... boiled in an open kettle, and about the color of a brownstone front."