"Bromo" > a écrit dans le message de
...
> On 2/8/04 5:18 PM, in article ,
> "Frogleg" > wrote:
>
> >I've always thought of daily shopping as
> > a charming habit of the French, but people lived in hot climates with
> > no refrigeration for most of human history. What are historical
> > foodstuffs that could be preserved for more than a couple of days?
>
> Dried beans, rice, meat. Pickled vegetables, canned foods as well later
on.
Pressure and heat canning was invented by Mr. Nicolas Appert around 1792
IIRC, before then there was no canned food as we know them.
But they had a surprising variety of ways of preserving most anything :
Smoking, Drying, Salting, Pickling in vinegar or brine, cooking with
sugar - honey, fermentation, etc... which can be applied to a surprising
variety of foodstuffs. One need not, evene now, have a refrigerator to live
quite well, when one knows the tricks.
> >Is
> > fresh milk common? How 'bout the current emphasis on fresh veg/fruit?
Yes, at that time man-hours weren't so expensive, and among lots of
'little' occupations you could find people selling goods from door to door,
even such common goods as milk or water.
> > What *can* be kept without refrigeration?
Most everything with the appropriate treatment, Cf. supra
> Good question. I know curry can cover up the taste of "off" meats -
> probably not the primary use, but it still works for this well.
It was most clearly not, you have recipies in the 'ménagier de Paris',
inter alii, to gauge the freshness of a cut and salvage *slightly* off
meat, with a very clear recommendation that in doubt the whole cut should
be tossed away without hesitation.
> The knowledge about a balanced diet is relatively recent, too - people
> pretty much ate what was available.
Absolutely not, the knowledge about a balanced diet is a very old concern
indeed, even the roman have a few theories about the question. They may not
be as scientific nor as efficient as ours, but a cook from roman times on
would have known which spice to add to what item, how to balance foodstuffs
in a meal and so on...
That is not to deny that most everyone ate most whatever was available, and
couldn't be so picky about their diet for lack of income, but to the
learned and the affluent the knowledge was there.
--
Salutations, greetings,
Guiraud Belissen, Chteau du Ciel, Drachenwald
Chris CII, Rennes, France