Traveller's food old style

[boatman]

At the South-West Reenactment Market, Stretcholt, near Bridgewater today I tried the sort of food our ancestors ate. The rosemary custard tart and the appl pie were great but what will be the basis of my marching rations was exceptional. Prepared by Piero Gallico The Traveller's Pack was simple but delicious. Air dried ham cut off the bone, cheddar cheese and pickled white cabbage with a choice of roll, I chose spot.

Filling and the constituents wold last for a very long time. I would spend a day or days with more or less just bread and cheese but this is a new level, the key is the pickled cabbage. And authentic if any want to recreate marches or basic living. Pickled cabbage was also thought good against the scurvy. Open tomorrow if you are nereby and some historical gear or scoff.

I have no connection with any of the traders or the market organisers,

 

[beezer]

how about you take a look at this play list. might be of interest to you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFFxPVfJNXQ&list=PL4e4wpjna1vzO1NC7azcfQj4gv-3rLX26

 

[Janne]

All sorts of lactic acid fermented veggies were the staple of old. Together with dried pulses ( peas, beans and mainly lentils)
Old fashined grains, brined and smoked meats.

Mum was a food historian, so I am a walking Petri dish!

Beezer, Pumpkins ate a recent addition to Europe, introduced from north America less than 500 years go.
So are potatoes, tomatoes, peppers of all sorts, sweet potatoes, arichokes, corn-maize, squash, peanuts, avocados, and most of "exotic fruits"

Rice was unheard of until maybe 150-200 years ago.

 

[Robson Valley]

boatman: did you get a look at the ovens used for baking?

Pickled white cabbage. Might be known as sauerkraut?
And that's not the wine sauerkraut garbage, either.
The Inca still freeze dry potatoes.

Janne: don't forget the rotted, decomposed and dried orchid pods = vanilla.
Jicima and chayote squash (merliton) = new world?

 

[Janne]

boatman: did you get a look at the ovens used for baking?

Pickled white cabbage. Might be known as sauerkraut?
And that's not the wine sauerkraut garbage, either.
The Inca still freeze dry potatoes.

Janne: don't forget the rotted, decomposed and dried orchid pods = vanilla.
Jicima and chayote squash (merliton) = new world?

Yes, today we only have sauerkraut. But according to my mum, they fermented everything. Carrots, onions, leeks, the lot.
My dad (RIP) told me ( I told him I mixed in other veggies with the cabbage for fermenting, like kimchi) a couple of months ago that his grandmother used to mix in carrots, long green beans and onions in her Sauerkraut.
He told me the name but I forgot.

We do not have jicama in Europe, ate it for the first time here.
Yes, we have the Americas to thank for a huge improvement in our diet! And the rest of the world too!

 

[Robson Valley]

Another question. Boatman? If you were travelling any distance, where would you stop for food. Pub/alehouse?
Would you be expected to carry your needs for a few days?


My partner makes sauerkraut, she likes to put shredded carrot in with the cabbage. Polish thing, apparently.
Interesting lactate fermentation in seral stages that we've mentioned before.
I tried 3 times, have beautiful nested set of kraut crocks. Never worked = black & moldy, so I quit.
I had even rinsed the crocks with alcohol.

You all would like chayote squash. Not a cucurbit squash at all.
Imagine a pale green avocado, but hard, sweet, wet and crunchy inside.

 

[Janne]

Aha, Christophene! Gently steamed in butter!

 

[boatman]

Pilgrims relied on charity and specialised hostels. Later ones stopped at the best establishments when pilgrimages became fashionable holidays. Ordinary travelers might well have preserved foods in their scrips and coin for inns.

Here is a puzzle from prehistory. We have evidence of long distance travel in say the Bronze Age but no idea how long it took, for example, the Amesbury Archer to travel from Switzerland to Salisbury Plain. You couldn't carry enough food for the journey, no letters of credit and no coin either. Possibly it was a duty to host the traveller and maybe the news and intellectual property they carried might have been enough for a period of lodgings. The Amesbury Archer might have been an early metallurgist, indicating deposits of ore. Techniques of smelting etc.

Trade being vital perhaps the inhospitable village was bypassed and died through stagnation or not knowing that stone axe wielding charioteers were ravaging in the next valley.

 

[mrcharly]

Rice was unheard of until maybe 150-200 years ago.

I think you are wrong there. Rice was grown in parts of Europe back in Roman times (Greece certainly). Italy was growing rice by the 1400s.

 

[Janne]

I think you are wrong there. Rice was grown in parts of Europe back in Roman times (Greece certainly). Italy was growing rice by the 1400s.

I stand corrected. I should have written that rice was was unheard of in Scandinavia then. Hardly used in the cuisine up until the 1950's.
Sweden had a huge food shortage during WW2, but rice was never rationed, as people only ate it for X-mas.
I read they had so much rice that was spoiling they ground it into flour and diluted the scarse wheat.

Central Europe did not eat much rice either. Still do not do, if I look of the distant / extended family.

 

[Jared]

Aye, sauerkraut is pretty rich in Vitamin C. 100g has like 25% of the RDA.

 

[Robson Valley]

Barter. There's a dense spider web of trade routes all over North America. That web was uncovered by doing trace element analysis of
copper metal, obsidian volcanic glass and flint cores. The traders didn`t carry finished flint but instead, very good stone which good flint knappers would recognize.
I`ll bet those kind of things were traded for food. Coin of the day.

 

[Janne]

They also swapped women. Even quite recently it was frowned upon if a boy chose a girl from the same village.
I guess they knew what a bit inbreeding could do.

 

[Janne]

I am of the belief that trade was far more common as far back as the early settled tribes. I brlieve that trans Oceanic trips were done thousands of years BC.
I recall them finding traces of cocaine in Egyptian mummies and Nicotine too.

Travel by water was far safer and faster than travelling over land, up until the foundation of railways.

Humans develop cultures because of laziness. If a foreign crop is easier to cultivate and bring bigger yields they took it on.

Crafting or buying a metal tool is less work ( manufacturing it and using it) than a stone tool.

 

[Robson Valley]

Look at a map of the simple concept of the Trade Winds and the Westerlies.
It applies equally to both the Atlantic and the Pacific. You can sail to any place you like.
Not too hard to understand why the "Trade Winds" got that name.

For us, look at the Pacific ocean currents. You can get here from Asia, bobbing about on an inner tube.

Sea levels have risen 200 - 300 feet since the last Ice Age. Evidence has drowned.
But by the time of the earliest european smallpox explorers, most PacNW First Nation coastal people
had iron-tipped tools.
a) trade across Beringia
b) rubbish in the Japan Current
Trace element isotopic analysis makes both of those facts.

Cultures based on laziness is rubbish and simplistic.
What you will find is that they found multipurpose plants, over and over again, some were trees.
The sheer economic value gave them time to explore the other values that we prize, even in today's societies.

Read some of the recorded evidence from Franz Boas regarding the cultural habits and activities of the Haida.
Their activities put them on about the same level as Inca and Aztec for human sacrifice.
But we must not reveal their edited character. It's there for all to read.

 

[Janne]

I do not know, RV if that theory is rubbish.
Easier to get the calories by farming seeds than walking sround the countryside and gathering. Easier to have penned in animals than chasing and killing wild ones, miles and miles away from the family group, then having to carry the meat home.
We tend to take the easy option. Buying and having the pizza delivered instead of making it!

 

[Robson Valley]

Janne, you're missing some steps.
The nuts & berries hunting/gathering thing takes about 15 km^2 per person for caloric necessity.
The first step in the artificial selection of genetic value is to dig up valuable plants and bring them home.
Culture, protection and harvest.
Where ever and whatever "home" is. Kitchen gardens started this way.

What might you conclude if you found (perennial) wild onions growing in long rows on rich, well drained slopes?

In North America, bison kills were done by the dozens if not the hundreds. There were millions of bison. Nobody argues otherwise.
"Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump" in Alberta was one of the most diabolical food gathering mechanisms for more than 10,000 years.
Wanuskewin (SK) had their own! Just a mile or so upstream on the river. Maybe 6K - 8k continuous village occupation.

Here, we have and had pemmican. What did european traders and travellers have?
Boatman struck on an archaic diet that I'd like to learn more about = what did they eat?

 

[Janne]

I am jumping some steps to simplify.
I am not aware of any major protein source in Europe like the Buffalo, not in that abundance. There are places where they believe large animals were driven to and slaughtered but not in the same extent as in N. America. Maybe that is the reason the North Americans never domesticated any major animals? They cultivated corn and other veggies, but had no animal husbandry?

Europe has had dedicated travelling routes/roads since well before Roman times, plus associated inns where food could be bartered or paid for. We have had a largely monetary society for over two millenia. The money less peasants did not venture far outside the villages, maybe to the closest town where they could barter. They did not travel. The European population was largely settled. Some culture changing invasions/ intrusions from the East but those were in fairly small numbers.
Of course, the Norse did civilize the British Isles but again, small number of invaders.

No food similar to Pemmican in Europe. Indeed the European Arctic explorers did use pemmican, or recreated pemmican using European ingredients.
The closest I can think of is lightly brined and dried and or smoked pork fat. Speck. Still used in several countries.
Heavy salting needs a lot of salt, and salt was very expensive.

Of course cheese can be seen as a pemmican analog. Can be stored for months, high in fat ( easy energy) and is a good source if protein.
But pemmican has more vitamins, including the essential C which cheese is lacking.

The only cultures in Euroasia that are closest in time to the hunter gatherer society are the Siberian peoples but as they have been in trading contact with southeners for over a century and half and they live is a cold climate I can not compare their travelling food with what was available in Europe.

15 square kilometers per person is a lot of area to cover if you consider not every family member can actively participate in the gathering. You do not need more than a couple of acres to feed a family.

Do they not claim the man made creation of maize made the development of South American cultures possible?

Interesting discussion!

 

[Robson Valley]

The land base diminishes as cultivation begins = productivity /unit area. The earliest step is transplantation. Common here.
People drive out into the country side and select the best berry bushes in the roadside ditches. Bring them home for garden plantings.

Out west on Haida Gwaii, some of that transplantation consists of clams and oysters.

By the time of European contact, there were 5 different kinds of maize in native cultivation. All the way north into the New England states.
Flint corn, flour corn, dent corn, sweet corn and pop corn.

These demonstrate the value of cultivation and cooperation. Summer and winter camps, harvest camps, all take advantage of seasonal yield and environmental conditions.
Wanuskewin in Saskatchewan was occupied for some 6,000 years of more. Large site even with it's own buffalo jump. Those are commonly defined
by the signature stone piles which define the driving lane to the actual jump.

Watch them for a while. Only a fool would try to walk up to one and stab it in the guts with a sharp rock on the end of a stick. I have never eaten so well.

 

[Janne]

Interesting! There are not many wild berries and other wild fruits in Europe.
Bilberry - difficult to transplant, easier to go to the forest
Lingonberry - same
The european version of the american blueberry. Transplantable but pointless as the bilberry is so much nicer.
Cloudberry in Scandinavis, not transplantable I think.
Wild strawberry - easily transplantable but you need many plants for a handful of fruit so pointless.
Raspberry - easy
Blackberry

Some fruit trees like damson and wild apples. Crabapples. Hawthorn. Sloes. Elder fruit.
Plus that coastal yellow acidic fruit, do not know the english name.

Most of the tree fruit, apart from damson and wild apples are hardly worth transplanting or even picking imho.

Pop corn? You mean the Injuns popped corn?

Is there a thread about wild fruit and veg on this forum?