Food preservation is the treatment of food to prolong the time for which they can be kept before spoilage. (Found in on line at Wikipedia) There is several ways to preserve food some of the ways are salting, pickling and fermenting, but there are more that the three I mentioned. Let’s take a look at some of the other ways to keep food.Drying In ancient times the sun and wind would have naturally dried foods.
Scientist has discovered that the Middle East and oriental cultures actively dried foods as early as 12,000 B.C. in the hot sun. Vegetables and fruits were also dried from the earliest times.
The Romans were fond of any dried fruit they could make. In the Middle Ages the Romans built “still houses “and were created to dry fruits, vegetables and herbs in areas that did not have enough strong sunlight for drying. A fire was used to create the heat needed to dry foods and in some cases smoking them as well. The still house is one of the first known smoke houses. This type of house was used for cold smoking and hot smoking. FreezingFreezing was an obvious preservation method to the appropriate climates.
Any geographic area that had freezing temperatures for even part of a year made use of the temperature to preserve foods. Less than freezing temperatures were used to prolong storage times. Cellars, caves and cool streams were put to good use for that purpose. In America estates had icehouses built to store ice and food on ice. Soon the “icehouse” became an “icebox”.
In the 1800’s mechanical refrigeration was invented and was quickly put to use. Also in the late 1800’s Clarence Birdseye discovered that quick freezing at very low temperatures made for better tasting meats and vegetables. After some time he perfected his “quick freeze” process and revolutionized this method of food preservation. (Brian A. Nummer, Ph.
D. National Center for Home Food Preservation May 2002).Salt-Preserving In England or Europe during the Tudor days Salt was fairly expensive, and salt was only used on meats high in fat to be preserved. The origins of salt-preserving food can be traced back to at least Ancient Egypt, where they used salt as part of the embalming process, as well as in food preservations. After the spread of Christianity salt-preserving fish became very useful, since fresh fish was the main meal for the 40 days of Lent it was often very difficult to come by for many people. Herring was the most common fish to be salted.
It was essential that the herring be preserved quickly since its high concentration of oil tended to turn rancid within a day after the catch. (http://tudorhistory.org/topics/food/preserve.html).The one thing that I have noticed is no matter the method of preservation it all leads back to Egypt, Rome, and the Asian cultures.
In closing the ancient cultures were responsible for the many variations of the way we cook and keep our foods today.
