How our ancestors made processed foods

Today the foods we consider to be processed are things like cheeseburgers and pizza, but back in a time when you’d be living off a handful of different vegetables all your life eating something processed would be considered a luxury, or a necessity. Our ancestors were smarter than people think and possessed a whole range of skills that have long since been forgotten by modern humans, and when your life depends on your farming and hunting abilities it is nice to be able to eat something with a little more flavor. Here are a few of the most commonly eaten goods and how our ancestors made processed foods.

Cheese

A common and readily available favorite of the northern hemisphere, cheese is one of the oldest processed foods known to man. Today the process involves mixing milk with particular bacteria cultures to help it age and something called rennet to make it set into a curd, but how was it made during an age when no one knew what bacteria was and rennet couldn’t just be ordered as it is?

The process starts with taking a calf as soon as it’s born and killing it before cutting out the first of its stomachs. Rennet is found naturally in very high concentrations within the first stomach of calves since its purpose is to set milk into a curd, this is how calves can live on nothing but milk as their first stomach effectively turns it into a solid where it passes on to the other stomachs as if they had eaten a solid in the first place.

The stomach is cut out and dried before being cut into tiny strips. When a fresh batch of milk has been gathered one of these stomach strips would be mixed in and all the rennet would seep out and set the milk into curds which would then be put into a mold and left to set.

Mead

Mead is wine made from honey which was the sweetest thing that anyone had during the Iron Age in Europe. The process for making mead would have been nothing more than watering it down to the right consistency so the natural yeast wouldn’t be choked by the high sugar concentration. After the mixture had stopped bubbling the clear top layer would be skimmed off to leave all the thick leftover sediment in the container.

Ale

Iron Age Ale would have been quite unpleasant for anyone used to today’s brews, but for our ancestors, it wasn’t just something to get drunk on but also a guarantee they’ll have something to drink if their water supply goes bad. The grain, which would have been either barley or rye would be put into a container with some water and heated up to start the breakdown of the grain. The mixture would then simply be left for a week or so until the frothing had stopped. The whole mixture would presumably then be poured through some kind of cloth to remove the bits before being drank. Sometimes the ale would be flavoured with hops or various other herbs but the basic method is nothing more than to leave some grain mash for a while.

Pemmican

This is considered the ultimate survival food and was one of the main trade items of the native Americans with European settlers. The reason this food is considered to be the best survival food around is because if it’s properly made it can last for years, provides a huge amount of calories, and is also quite nice to eat. The ingredients of pemmican are nothing more than fat and meat which was usually taken from some kind of dark red meat-bearing animal like a bison.

To make pemmican take a joint of meat and cut off all fat, then cut the meat into strips and leave it on a rack to dry in the sun. When the meat is dry, grind it into a powder and mix it in a 50/50 ratio with some rendered fat from the same animal. After the meat and fat are well mixed, form into small bars and allow them to cool before placing into an airtight container. The native Americans would make huge batches of pemmican and sow it up in a bag made from the skin of the animal it came from.

Stock fish

Stockfish is just dried fish that’s had every last drop of moisture removed from it. The drying process can sometimes take weeks but if done properly would produce a fish that would be safe to eat for several years after. The only problem was that you can’t eat it until you’ve soaked it in water for at least a few hours, but this method provided a way for people who lived away from the sea to have fish all year round. Fishing camps would be built next to the shore where people from a tribe would live for a few weeks and make as much stock fish as possible to last their people through the winter.