Skowk — camp kitchen and cookware | skowk.com
The cookware table with real volumes: the 950 ml canteen cup, the 2 L Essgeschirr, the 1.7 L Kochgeschirr and the billycan.
A mess kit is a collection of silverware and cookware designed for military rations, and the same pieces are used during camping and backpacking. The core item is a metal vessel that can hold water and take heat.
The US Army's standard one-quart canteen takes a stamped cup molded to fit over its bottom. That cup holds 950 ml and can boil water or heat soup, which makes it the smallest complete cooking vessel in the kit.
The German Essgeschirr was designed in 1908 as a modification of a Swiss design from 1882. Its base originally held 2 litres marked into quarter sections, so a group ration could be divided without a measuring cup.
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The 1931 Kochgeschirr 31 was capable of cooking and held 1.7 litres. It sits between the canteen cup and the 2 L base in capacity, and it is the version usually described as cookable rather than just carryable.
A billycan is a lightweight cooking pot in the form of a metal bucket, used for boiling water, making tea or coffee, or cooking over a campfire. The term derives from bouilli can, the empty canisters used for preserving soup.
The earliest known use of billy for kettle is in an 1848 Tasmanian newspaper report. That date places the word and the object in the same preserved-food lineage as the mess kit.
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