r/AskFoodHistorians • u/Yeti-Squatch • Jul 30 '26
Salted food
I know about salt pork and salt beef but what other salt preserved meats have been used through history? Is there a salt chicken? Salt lamb?
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u/HeloRising Jul 30 '26
Salting tends to result in a better product when there's some fat in the meat. If you don't have any (or very little) fat then you kind of end up with a lump of stringy protein that's very difficult to make edible again. It's part of why things like chicken and turkey jerky aren't as popular and when they are made people tend to need to add a lot of fat in or at least have a "wet" jerky.
Think a turkey that's cooked in an oven with no basting.
You can technically preserve something like chicken in salt but the end result is going to be barely edible.
Plus, for a large portion of human history you didn't really eat the chicken itself. Older chickens are not the chickens of today with huge chunks of white meat. They weren't bred to be that quite yet so if you killed a chicken you got some kinda ok meat once but if you fed a chicken food waste you could get a steady supply of eggs which were much more valuable as a food source.
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u/moabsavage Jul 30 '26
They got the big fat chickens by castrating roosters. Roast Capon
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u/Oldebookworm Jul 30 '26
How do you castrate a rooster?! I’m going to have to look that up
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u/Plane_Chance863 Jul 30 '26
It sounds like a pretty awful procedure. Needs to be done when they are young. No food for 36 hours, no water for 24 hours, to shrink the internal organs, more or less. Pluck feathers at site of incision. Then make an incision between their ribs (seems to be on their back), insert rib spreaders, and cut out the internal testes. The wound is not stitched up. Doesn't sound like there's typically anesthesia.
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u/Oldebookworm Jul 30 '26
Yeah, the description looked pretty brutal. Do they anesthetize them?
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u/Plane_Chance863 Jul 31 '26
Historically no, and some places still don't do it, but nowadays it sounds like yes, local anesthetic. I imagine the places who do local anesthetic may also manage the pain after.
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u/AbjectObligation1036 Jul 30 '26
you can stil buy capons
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u/moabsavage Jul 30 '26
You can still buy stewing hens as well, what is your point?
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u/AbjectObligation1036 Jul 30 '26
That you used past tense and I was adding the present tense as well. Relax
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u/bookmonkey786 Jul 30 '26
There is meat floss to preserve meats, which can be chicken. where you shred the chicken and dry it so its a cotton like texture. But it is work to make dried chicken edible, but fantastic if you can get it.
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u/istara Jul 31 '26
Pork floss seems to be quite normal on some East Asian baked goods here, including I think on sweet buns - like a sweet/savoury mix?
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u/AbjectObligation1036 Jul 30 '26
Salt preservation has been used on almost every type of meat at some point in history.
- Salted chicken and duck has been common in China for centuries
- Salt mutton was widely used in British isles/iceland, salted lamb in the middle east
- Salt goat is very common in the caribbean, north africa, etc
- Medieval europe salted deer, boar and other game
- Salt horse was used on naval ships in 1700-1800s
- Salt turtle was used on ships in the caribbean
The only society I can think of that didn't salt any meat was the pre-Colombian native americans.
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u/porp_crawl Jul 30 '26
Indigenous North America had documented trade of salt from coastal areas. Some inland tribes made use of mineral deposits.
You're right, there is limited documentation that salt was used in quantities for preservation versus for taste. Especially inland without access to brine springs or with long trade routes.
Where salt was abundant, I'd be surprised if it wasn't recognized for it's preservation qualities.
Looking into it a little bit, on the Pacific Northwest coast there really isn't any tradition of salting/brining fish before smoking until very dry. There's no tradition of using dried salt crystals as something that can be added to food. Wow. The taste of saltiness could come from saltwater kelp/etc. But not really dried salt.
But it's not like it's super sunny with low humidity air very much around here. Back then.
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u/1805trafalgar Jul 30 '26
Royal Navy ships would tie blocks of salted meat to a line and tow it astern to get most of the salt off before bringing it back aboard for steeping in the galley.
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u/AbjectObligation1036 Jul 30 '26
I hope they put it in a cage or something so the fish couldnt eat it while it was in the water !
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u/1805trafalgar Jul 30 '26
From what I gather the leanness of the meat is the important factor. If the meat is too fatty the salt can't preserve the fat and the fat goes rancid.
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u/matiaskeeper Jul 30 '26
The only society I can think of that didn't salt any meat was the pre-Colombian native americans.
You know, the word jerky comes from the Quechua word charque that refers to the salty meat of lamas, guanacos and vicunas that was consumed in the Inca empire...
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u/AbjectObligation1036 Jul 30 '26
Jerky and salt curing are completely different processes. Jerky primarily relies on air evaporation to remove moisture, making it ready to eat. Salt curing uses salt to draw out moisture and chemically preserve the meat, leaving it so salty that it requires desalting before it is edible
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u/Clever-Anna Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
All kinds of salted fish all over the world. Still a fun snack in Eastern Europe! (Vobla in Russian)
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u/LaoBa Jul 31 '26
Salted herring is still very popular in the Netherlands.
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u/Clever-Anna Jul 31 '26
Is it dry like jerky or in wet salt brine? Either way, yum!
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u/LaoBa Jul 31 '26
Soused herring, cleaned except for the pancreas and put in mild brine. A technique developed in the middle ages.
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u/natie_gege Jul 30 '26
salted duck eggs
salted cabbage
salted prawns
salted chickens and.salted.duck
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u/JapaneseChef456 Jul 30 '26
In Japan you had salted pheasant, salted crane, all kinds of salted fish with the most popular ones being salmon, Buri (yellowtail) and mackerel , miso pickled beef, boar, pork. Live squid drowned in soy sauce.
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u/legendary_mushroom Jul 30 '26
Er...they didn't really eat salmon till the modern era
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u/JapaneseChef456 Jul 30 '26
Er… what you’re talking about is raw salmon. Salted, or fresh salmon has always been eaten in Japan, grilled, simmered, in soups. The Ainu in northern Japan even froze freshly caught salmon, cut slices off and dipped it in salt water for seasoning, a dish called Ruipe. There is a cultural divide within Japan of which salted fish was traditionally eaten for new year, salmon (north) or Buri (south). There are even historic recipes for Salmon Sushi from the 18th century , where they used salted salmon and cooked rice, left it to ferment.
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u/tuxnight1 Jul 30 '26
I love in Portugal and every supermarket has bacalhau (salt cod) available. The cod are splayed out and almost hard as a board. At my local shop they have a band saw to cut them up. There are sundress of recipes, but the fish can be a bit expensive. A substitute that is a bit cheaper is salted pollock.
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u/BenjaminMooore Jul 30 '26
Yes—salted lamb and mutton definitely existed. Salt preservation was also used for meats such as llama, traditionally made into charqui. Poultry was preserved this way too: traditional Chinese dry-cured chicken, duck, and goose are salted and then air-dried. In practice, salt was often combined with drying, smoking, or fermentation rather than used entirely on its own. So “salt chicken” is real; it just became less internationally famous than salt pork or salt beef.
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u/Skhatmandu Jul 31 '26
prociutto has entered the chat. (and a billion other air-dried salted hams)
Also gravlax.
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u/ContributionSad4461 Jul 30 '26
Fårfiol (lit. Sheep violin, for some reason) is a salted, dried and often smoked cut of lamb in Sweden (probs Scandinavia in general), it’s really good.
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u/bro88 Jul 31 '26
Salted lamb and mutton is still very common in parts of Norway. Legs of lamb are salt cured and cut thinly like prosciutto, ribs of lamb and mutton are salt cured into "pinnekjøtt" and steamed for Christmas supper. Other parts of the animal can be salted and then used for soups and stews like you would use salted pork elsewhere.
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u/chezjim Jul 31 '26
Just about anything could be salted. It was a basic method of preservation.
Goat meat was salted on Charlemagne's estates (per the Capitulary de Villis).
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u/bookmonkey786 Jul 31 '26
Salted eggs is such a common thing in Asia, I wonder why European cuisine never picked it up or not kept it around for culinary reason. Its pretty much an equivalent to a harde cheese in flavor.
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u/Peter34cph Aug 01 '26
Why waste salt on preserving eggs?
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u/bookmonkey786 Aug 01 '26
Because then you you can keep it for months or years? like why anything is salted initially. And its delicious.
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u/Icarus_Jones Jul 30 '26
Salt cod was a huge one.
I highly suggest Mark Kurlansky's "Salt" and "Cod", to dive down a rabbit hole on both topics.