Without refrigerators and cans, the ancients could also preserve food for a long time

500 years ago, although there were no refrigerators and cans, the ancients also had many methods of storing food, such as placing food in peat swamps to inhibit the growth of bacteria; storing it in cellars to isolate the air; and dehydrating fresh food at low temperatures.

During the Age of Discovery, it was vital to preserve food. 500 years ago, European crews could eat meat, wine and biscuits, but vegetables were difficult to preserve for a long time, which also put the voyagers at risk of scurvy.

It was only after a long time that people discovered that there was a well-preserved food that also contained enough vitamin C – pickled cabbage (sauerkraut in northern China, sauerkraut in Germany). After the use of the Dutch Navy in the early 18th century, and after the trial and recommendation of Captain Cook in the 1770s, pickled cabbage became the norm for navigation, saving the lives of countless sailors and captains.

Although refrigerators and cans were not yet invented, the ancients relied on methods such as salting, vinegar bubbles, sugar staining, and air drying to preserve food for a long time.

Inhibits bacteria

In the summer, when you go to the mountains, you will find that tourists and vendors often soak watermelons and drinks in the mountain stream; the stream water is cold and cold, which can play a role in freezing.

Before the invention of the refrigerator, Westerners used mountain streams for food preservation. Rural families in Europe and the United States often have a "spring house" that is, a small wooden niche is built on the stream to prevent milk, butter and other perishable items from deteriorating. Even on the hottest summer days, the flowing spring water can be cool enough.

Peat bogs, common in northwestern Europe, are also good places to store food for a long time – swamps where peat moss grow, cold and oxygen-starved, are difficult for bacteria to break down organic matter.

Archaeologists in Ireland discovered a bucket of "swamp butter" in 2009, which the ancients probably forgot to take out after storing it. The butter drum is made from a whole trunk, three feet long and one foot wide, with a lid. The barrel was filled with butter, weighing 77 pounds, and the butter had lost its creamy thickness and turned into a white, harder waxy texture. Archaeologists dug out the butter with their bare hands and could still smell it, which also attracted crows. Studies have shown that this piece of butter is 3,000 years old.

Burying food (and many things that need to be preserved, such as corpses) in peat bogs is a common practice. In the swamps of Ireland and Scotland, nearly 500 pieces of ancient butter have been found. In 2013, archaeologists also discovered a 5,000-year-old copy of 100 pounds of butter.

The growth and decomposition of microorganisms is inhibited in acidic, oxygen-starved peat wetlands. We can't be sure whether ancient swamp butter was used for sacrifice or as food preservation, or for fermentation to be more flavorful.

In 2012, food researcher Ben Reid conducted an experiment. Burying the butter in a swamp for 3 months, tasters describe the butter as "game, funky and spicy, like moss, animals or salami". After being buried for a year and a half, Reed thought the butter tasted better – it can be said that the swamp created a lot of benefits for the european ancients.

Isolate the air

Potatoes are a vegetable that can be stored for a long time, but the premise of storage is that one should be cold and the other should not be transparent. In the past, in the northern rural areas of the mainland, potatoes, radishes and cabbage eaten in winter were generally stored in cellars or small-opening caves.

Europeans and Americans also traditionally use cellars to preserve root crops such as potatoes and radishes. People would dig a cellar, fill it with sawdust or straw, put vegetables in it, cover it with sawdust and straw, and seal the cellar with wooden or tin plates. There is also a way to hoard vegetables: dig a ditch next to the cabbage, pull the cabbage up, put it upside down in the ditch, and cover it with loose mud. Over the next few months, the cabbage will turn white in color, but the taste will not change.

As long as there is no contact with the air, food spoilage can be stopped. The ancient Mesopotamians would pour oil into food pantries to keep out the air. The British have canned butter-braised fish or meat, and if the fish or meat is cooked in this jar, then there is no need for refrigeration, no preservatives, and it can be stored for several months. This method is also commonly used in rural China.

By the same token, european medieval people loved to fill every hole in a pie with butter or jelly to prevent the filling from touching the air for storage.

Animals that are not cooked in the water are extremely perishable, especially the very nutritious blood, which will deteriorate rapidly. Therefore, after slaughtering livestock, nomadic people will quickly make internal organs and blood into cooked forms of food, such as blood sausages in the northeast. It is speculated that the earliest sausages were blood sausages.

Southerners mix pig blood with glutinous rice to make a soft and sticky pig's blood cake. Coincidentally, the black pudding that the British like to eat is also made of pig blood mixed with lard and oats.

The famous Scottish haggis also falls into this category. Wherever there are Scots, there is this dish. It uses lamb tripe to pack all kinds of offal, some are sheep lung, lamb liver fragments, some are sheep oil, and oats. People who are used to eating find it very delicious.

Nomadic people often use this animal offal to store food, because there is no waste of food and no container is required. After slaughtering reindeer, the Nenets in Russia will empty the reindeer's stomach, rinse it, and then cut the reindeer meat into thin slices and store it in the stomach. In late autumn, food is stored in this way and can be preserved for up to 8 months.

Removes moisture

Lu Xun once complained that in his hometown, every dish must be eaten dry- "If there is a dish, it will be dried; if there is a fish, it will also be dried; if there is a bean, it will be dried; there are bamboo shoots, and it will not be decent; the diamond horn is characterized by rich water, tender and crisp meat, and it must also be air-dried..."

In fact, it is not only Shaoxing people who love to eat dried vegetables. Medieval Europeans also often skewered vegetables and hung them by fireplaces or in warm, dry places to remove moisture. People also soak vegetables in water for a period of time before drying them. Beans made this way are called "leather pants" because they are extremely tough after drying. Fruits, pumpkins, and other vegetables can all be kept like this for several months.

The Americans 500 years ago mastered an advanced technology - lyophilization. The Incas of the Andes grew potatoes very early. They invented the freeze-dried potato (Chu?). o, the original meaning is "crumpled"), can be stored for 10 years or even decades.

The Incas generally chose a smaller, frost-resistant, bitter potato variety that freeze-dried in June and July, at the beginning of winter. In the mountains, which are more than 3,800 meters above sea level, the temperature drops to minus 5 degrees Celsius at night. The small potatoes are densely laid on a flat ground, frozen at night, dehydrated in the strong sun during the day, and after a few days and nights, the potatoes begin to shrink, rough, and become like stones.

Then, people step on these potatoes, on the one hand, to step out the remaining moisture of the potatoes, and on the other hand, to remove the skin. Then freeze and dry the potatoes for a while. In this process, the toxic sugar alkaloids contained in bitter potatoes are also removed. The texture of the freeze-dried potatoes is soft and the taste itself is very flat, with a slight sour taste. When cooked, it resembles a sponge, thick, chewy, and easy to taste.

This technology is at least 800 years old, and some believe that the rise of the Inca Empire was based on "crumpled" logistics. The Spaniards also quickly realized the importance of this thing, and the mine workers of the Andes, ate it every day.

Today, we can apply the technology of the Incas to all fruits and vegetables. Strawberries, for example, are frozen first, then placed in a drying chamber close to vacuum, and then heated. The ice in strawberries easily sublimates into water vapor. In this way, all the moisture in the strawberry is gone, the cells are not destroyed, and the vitamins, trace elements and fiber are preserved for years or even decades, and are often as fresh as when they were first picked. For hoarders, freeze-dried vegetables are a delicious and nutritious choice.

(Science and Technology Daily)