Energy Foods of the Long Ago Past..What did explorers and Vikings and Romans eat?

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Rod Paradise

Full Member
Oct 16, 2008
725
1
54
Upper Nithsdale, Dumfriesshire
Wasn't saying their own cattle, what I read was that travellers in the highlands were allowed to take some blood from the cattle from herds as they passed through someone else's land. An extension of the rule of hospitality that the Campbells killed off in Glencoe ;-)
 

presterjohn

Settler
Apr 13, 2011
727
2
United Kingdom
Up until quite recently (turn of the last century) farm labourers and many manual workers in general used to have huge quantities of butter as part of the daily diet. Bread and butter was a real staple part of a workers diet but you would also get blobs of butter put in almost everything.

Dairy stuff in general such as milk and cheese were all heavily consumed too.
 

boatman

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Feb 20, 2007
2,444
4
78
Cornwall
Vikings, Scots and Scraelings by Myrtle Simpson is a terrific book about a crossing of Greenland and a stay with Eskimos. One passage relates the stirring in of a slab of butter into their reconstituted stew or Hooch (Hoosh?), a necessity on the ice while sledge hauling.
 

Gasparo

Tenderfoot
Jan 13, 2013
60
0
Cardiff
In the early to mid 1600s there were a substantial number of Scottish soldiers (as many as fifty thousand) fighting in the lands we now know as Germany and Central Europe. I remember reading a letter where a Swedish general commented on the need to keep the Scottish troops well fed, he listed a weekly ration of several pounds of butter and a great deal of beef and mutton (half a cow a week) as being important to ensure that Scots performed at their best.

:)

That is brilliant...
please don't leave us Scotland, s'all I'm saying.
Also, thanks to The Ratcatcher, I'm getting me a copy of that book.
 

boatman

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Feb 20, 2007
2,444
4
78
Cornwall
Jacqui Wood, Prehistoric Cooking published by Tempus is another good one if you want to explore ancient foods and there is a series sold by the National Trust of food at different periods.
 

santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
16,909
1,114
67
Florida
but don't the maasai bleed their cattle all the time and regually drink the blood ? so there must be some good in it ? me myself i like fried pigs blood with the sunday fry up numnumnum ! lol

If I remember correctly they mix it with the milk.
 

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