After prehistoric humans had to use fire, they began to process the meat in smoke, which was actually an accelerated version of the drying method. The prehistoric humans in Z may treat small pieces of meat by smoke. As long as there is sufficient source of firewood, even if the weather is not dry, they can be smoked. The finished product produced can be the ancestor of the German version of Jinhua ham "Bauernschinken". The traditional method of agricultural ham is to dry the meat first and then smoke it with the wood of juniper trees. Prehistoric humans may also be the same as us. When making smoked meat, they know how to use specific wood with special fragrance. The wind drying process needs to be carried out in a dry environment, and fire and wood are used for smoke. The third way to let the meat drain water is to apply salt. The most important material is of course salt, and a large amount of salt. We are not sure what steps we used to cure wild game for the first time, but it may be very similar to the southern Italian ham recipe recorded by Cato the Elder. In his book De agri culture, Lao Jiazhi lists the steps for making salted ham:
Prepare a large tank or basin, cut off the pig's thighs you bought home, and prepare the required amount of salt. Each leg requires half a bucket (about nine liters) of grinding Roman salt. First lay some salt on the bottom of the prepared container, put the pig legs on the skin-down, and then cover the surface with the salt. Then put the second pig legs on the first pig legs in a skin-down manner, and salt them on the surface. The next pig legs are repeated in the same way to ensure that the salt separates the two pig legs. After putting all the pig legs in the container, cover them with salt again to ensure that the pig meat is completely covered, and then flatten the top salt. After the entire tank of pig legs are buried in the salt for five days, take out the pig legs in the tank and rearrange them. The salts covering the pig legs continue to be left on the pig legs. The pig legs that were originally placed at the top should be placed at the bottom. Then repeat the steps that had previously placed the pig legs and the salt, and then calm them for seven days. After a total of twelve days of the pig's legs being buried in the salt, you can take out the pig's legs, remove the surface salt, and hang the pig's legs in the dry and windy area for two days. On the third day, you can remove the pig legs, scrub with sea matte, apply a mixture of olive oil and vinegar to the surface, and then wrap the pig legs around the place where you usually place the meat. {999 99}Following the old picture, you can create delicious ham full of flavor and rich taste. Because the whole process is equivalent to a long time of fermentation, the plum reaction that occurs in it is the key to deliciousness, but this food consumes not only time, but also a lot of salt. When humans find that using salted meat can cause slow fermentation (which is equivalent to using benign and salt-loving microorganisms such as "salinaceous bacteria" to work), the price of salt bars is higher. In most parts of the world, salting method appears relatively late. The salting method actually makes the food more delicious, but it has only started to be passed down recently and the fees are not paid, only a small number of ethnic groups can use it, but it is as good as Mark. Mark Kurlansky pointed out in his book Salt that salt meat also brought red profits to ships and trade, and thus brought Europe a glorious era in history. There are many popular salted meat products in Europe, such as the well-known Spanish Iberian ham (Jamón ibérico), which is made similar to the long-term fermentation method described in the old drawing, but the period of its static period lasts for several months or even years.
Other types are derived from wet fermentation, that is, prehistoric humans use swamps to preserve their mammary images, and many changes are derived from them. Hydrogen fermentation does not require salt bas, but liquids are required. Related cases are common in coastal areas that are prone to large amounts of gain. At the archaeological site of Norje Sunnansund on the southern coast of Sweden, archaeologist Yadon. Adam Boethius dug out thousands of bones, and it is estimated that it may have come from 60,000 tons of gains. From this we can see that a few thousand years ago when agriculture or animal husbandry had not yet developed, people lived in Noyesannsand for a long time. Except for winter, fish could be caught in other seasons in this place. Some of the harvests are harvested and eaten, and are formed into a daily meal with seal meat, venison, wild peaches, European sour peaches and blackthorn plums; but most of the harvests will be fermented in a set of square, large, special equipment. The pillar points at the site point to the location of the roof columns, and the other marks are the locations of the ground, with the purpose of tying fermented fish meat wrapped in wild bear skin and seal skin. This fermentation system is not easy, but because saltba had not yet been transferred to the Scandinavian Peninsula, this complex fermentation method must adopt the principle of making marsh meat similar to snow. The meat that took months or even years to ferment has a change in chemical properties. It can be said that prehistoric humans used time and microorganisms to "cook" the meat until it was lost.
Although from a modern perspective, the moisture fermentation of meat seems unusual, this is actually a common phenomenon around the world. For many indigenous peoples in the high-end areas of the northern hemisphere, fermented plants, fish and meat are important foods. Take The Yupik as an example. They will put plants into skin bags made of animals' stomachs and make dishes called Kuviikaq. Chukki will put deer blood, liver, deer hooves, roasted deer lips, and sweet plant roots and fermented plants into the stomach. Animal meat and fat can also be stuffed into bags made of walrus skins to make a meat roll called tugtaq.. Even in the current Scandinavian Peninsula, different food cultures have their own unique fermented fish dishes (it seems to be transformed from the fermented fish meat of Noyesannsand). One of the special dishes of modern Swedes is called surströmming (Swedish salt marinated fish), the main content is the fermented fish that is usually eaten with a Swedish traditional bread called tunnebrød. People who dare to eat Swedish salt and fish love it very much, but it will bring an extremely unsuitable odor to our nose sniff, which is so smelly that even those who like to eat it feels smelly, so Swedes have to open this fish jar outdoors. The smell of Swedish salt marinated fish can be said to be a combination of various odors, including stinky chicken egg odor (sulfurized), slurry creamy odor (butyric acid), and acetic acid odor (acetic acid). Looking around the Scandinavian Peninsula, there are still many fish (or meat) fermented dishes that follow the ancient methods. Looking at other parts of the world, the sauce made from fermented fish is actually a daily food. For example, the three countries of Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam alone eat millions of fermented fish every year.
Sea or meat dishes made with moist fermentation are often rich in flavor and multi-layer flavors (the reason why fish sauce is widely used is also the reason), but fermented dishes may bring completely different sensory stimulation to the front and back nose sniffs at the same time. Swedish salted fish is a good example. We may be sniffing the smell it smells in front of the nose, but at the same time, we are immersed in the fragrance and rich taste it brings behind the nose. Another example from Alaska is Mary, a Native American. Mary Tyone shared their tribe's fermented food: "The way we process fish heads is to put them all in a bucket, then bury them underground, and take them out and eat them ten days later." She said "stingfish". When she talked about the smelly fish, she couldn't help but praise: "I love smelly fish very much. Although it sounds a little strange, it is really delicious!" In Chinese, "scent" is not only used to describe the pleasant smell in delicious dishes (sniffing in front of the nose), but also the taste of food (including the aroma you smell after the nose). For example, cooked chicken oil, barbecue, and stir-fried foreign rice are all foods that taste very fragrant. It seems we really need to create an adjective to describe foods like stinky fish that smells in front of the nose and tastes delicious.
There are so many fermented dishes that humans like to eat. This may mostly contain human preference for sour taste. Humans will use microorganisms to decompose meat and fish to produce fermented meat dishes, just as humans use microorganisms to make drinks or vegetables with sour or alcohol flavor. However, if you look at these fermented dishes carefully and skip those that have been processed with salt, smoke or drying, you may find that to learn how to make and like meat or fish, you must first learn how to like their scary taste, just like to like special local spices. To a certain extent, many of the disgusting smells that make people feel from the heart are related to the taste of fermentation of meat. From this we can see that the fermented cooking of meat or fish requires us to enjoy it with our body and facial features, not just one but the facial features. For example, to love saltless fish that follows the ancient method, you need to make your nose love the flavors of the past, to make your tongue love the delicious and sour tastes, and to the brain intentionally integrate multiple sensory stimulations, and to know the flavor of the body and facial features.
The story about fermentation is here. We mentioned fermented fruits, vegetables, meat, and fish. Now we can simply organize the history of fermentation cuisines of prehistoric humans and modern humans. Our prehistoric ancestors learned to make simple fermented foods at some time, first fermenting fruits, and then fermenting the roots of the plant. The inherent taste and smell lead to prehistoric humans to develop more fermented foods. The sour taste produced by fermentation is the green light they judge food safety. Fermented foods may also bring them unexpected enjoyment, such as softer texture, sweeter, sourer or slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly slightly Then, after or before this, our ancestors also began to ferment the meat and gain. Like fermented vegetables, meat and fish become more delicious (producing more flavor) after being quenched in an appropriate way, which produces the aroma on the nose and thus adds flavor and increases the shelf life. This fermentation cooking method has become more important as human hunting and catching techniques have improved, as they are increasingly receiving more than the amount of food they can eat in one meal. We have not yet determined the above time, but prehistoric humans judged the safety of fermented meat based on their taste and sourness. Our tongue is the tool to check fermented foods, and these fermented foods are our humans' original gardens — — a garden belonging to microorganisms.
"‘We have been authorized by Princeton University Press to use this content’ or the equivalent in Chinese complex script The content is authorized by Princeton University Press"※ This article is excerpted from "Evolution on the Tip of the Tongue: How to Pursuit of Food to Promote Human Evolution and Start Human Civilization"."Evolution on the Bite of the Tongue: How to Pursuit of Food to Promote Human Evolution and Start Human Civilization"
Author: Luo Bo. Don En, Monica Sanchez
Translator: Fang Huishu, Yuyipin
Publisher: Shangzhou Publishing
Publication Date: 2022/12/10
Responsible Editor: Gu Zihuan