History Of Food Preservation How To Prepare Foods

While not as effective a long-term method of preservation as packing in dry salt, it served very well to keep food edible through a season or two.

Melissa Snell is a historical researcher and writer specializing in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

She authored the forward for The Complete Idiots Guide to the Crusades.

For centuries before the medieval period, and for centuries afterward, human beings in all parts of the world used a variety of methods to preserve foods for later consumption.

A society that was largely agrarian would be keenly aware of the need to store up provisions against the ominous threats of famine, drought, and warfare.

The possibility of disaster wasnt the only motive for preserving food.

History Of Food Preservation How To Prepare Foods

Dried, smoked, pickled, honeyed, and salted foods had their own particular flavors, and many recipes survive detailing how to prepare foods that have been stored with these methods.

Preserved foods were also much easier for the sailor, soldier, merchant, or pilgrim to transport.

For fruits and vegetables to be enjoyed out of season, they had to be preserved; and in some regions, a particular foodstuff could only be enjoyed in its preserved form, because it didnt grow (or wasnt raised) nearby.

How it was done depended on what type of food it was and whether a particular effect was desired.

Here are some of the methods of food preservation used in medieval Europe.

But it isnt necessary to understand the chemical process involved in order to observe that food that is wet and left in the open will quickly start to smell and attract bugs.

So it should come as no surprise that one of the oldest methods of preserving foods known to man is that of drying it.

Grains like rye and wheat were dried in the sun or air before being stored in a dry place.

Fruits were sun-dried in warmer climes and oven-dried in cooler regions.

In Scandinavia, where temperatures were known to plunge below freezing in the winter, cod (known as stockfish) were left out to dry in the cold air, usually after they were gutted and their heads were removed.

Meat could also be preserved through drying, usually after cutting it into thin strips and lightly salting it.

In warmer regions, it was a simple matter to dry meat under the hot summer sun, but in cooler climates, air drying could be done at most times of the year, either outdoors or in shelters that kept away the elements and flies.

Vegetables might be preserved with dry salt, as well, though pickling was more common.

Salt was also used in conjunction with other methods of preservation, such as drying and smoking.

One method of salting meat involved pressing dry salt into pieces of meat, then layering the pieces in a container (like a keg) with dry salt completely surrounding each piece.

If meat was preserved this way in cold weather, which slowed down the decomposition while the salt had time to take effect, it could last for years.

Vegetables were also preserved by layering them in salt and placing them in a sealable container such as an earthenware crock.

Another way to preserve food with salt was to soak it in a salt brine.