One of my favorite food web sites

[Marthe48]

I discovered this site years ago, and it is fascinating.

https://www.foodtimeline.org/index.html

[cilla4progress]

1. Fascinating - thanks!

I'm "trialing" retirement and this is just the sort of thing that helps!

[Marthe48]

2. The article on water

is so full of material about drinking water. It was the first thing I read when I first came across the site.

I read about Buffalo Wings back then. Today, I read about gelatin And Gooey Butter cake. Who knew! lol

[dweller]

4. And I just read about

Mushroom Ketchup
😳

A lot there …

✌🏻

[catbyte]

5. There's a frontier cooking YouTube channel that cooks recipes from around 1800 &

they use it a lot. It's thin and they say tastes like Worcestershire sauce but with a little more umami.

https://www.youtube.com/@EarlyAmerican

[dweller]

6. Makes sense

As ketchup comes from the Chinese ke tsiap which was a pickled fish concoction


✌🏻

[hippywife]

3. That does look pretty cool, Marthe.

I'm sure I'll have lots of fun delving into it as soon as I get a little time. Thank you!

[Warpy]

7. Times are likely way, way off

because people likely ate anything that didn't bite them first (and some that did) but pre pottery cooking methods didn't provide much evidence of their use beyond scuzz on the teeth of the dead, if the dead were available for study.

[Marthe48]

8. I like to speculate about food prep prehistory

Thinking of early humans using fire, realizing the cold, raw leftover carcass tasted better hot.

[Warpy]

9. Studies of H. erectus's teeth show they mostly liked their meat raw and bloody

so I imagine once the softer bits were eaten, they tenderized it between a couple of rocks to make it a little more edible. They might have cooked other things, but critter tartare was the blue plate special every day.

When there were foods that couldn't be held on a stick over the fire to cook, likely a hastily woven framework of twigs with a thin hide inside it would be used, the foods you'd hunted and gathered put in, water poured in, and heated rocks put into it to cook the food.

I've seen pre Columbian bread made, also. The night before, grind up some corn into fine cornmeal and put into water. The next morning, heat a large (16X30) flat rock, mop it off to check the temperature and give it a cleanup, dip your hand into the cornmeal mixture and sweep your hand quickly over the hot stone, staying ahead of the steam flash--this part takes practice. As it cooks, the flat cornmeal "bread" comes up off the stone on its own, carried by the steam. Repeat the process. The bread is softer than tortilla chips, but the flavor is very similar. Broken bits and crumbs are the next morning's cereal.

You can get a hell of a lot of culinary mileage out of rocks and fire.

There used to be a great video of a tribesman somewhere in SE Asia building a slate stove and cleaning and cooking rats en brochette. Some it was pretty revolting but I have to say the final product looked pretty tasty. I think the vid was removed because he was mostly clothing optional, sensible in a rain forest but some bluenose undoubtedly complained.

[Marthe48]

10. Because of tooth structure or leftovers on the teeth?

Last edited Tue Nov 29, 2022, 10:16 PM - Edit history (1)

And by leftovers, I mean fossilized plaque. Amazing that there was anything to examine after all that time. I agreed with your comment that they'd eat anything that didn't bite back, even if I didn't mention that. I was thinking of accidental exposure to heat, and some forward thinking early human saw the possibilities of reheating leftovers.

I think the scientists have examined coprolites to determine food choices, too.

I read about the method of using a hide for a cooking bag (thank you Clan of the Cave Bear )