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Before the advent of refrigeration, what was the restaurant/hospitality industry like?
I have been watching the BBC series Musketeers a lot, and of course many of the scenes take place in taverns, and lodges. But I am wondering what kind of food did they serve if there was not refrigerator.
Did roadside taverns have an adjacent farm which supplied fresh meat and veggies and fruits? Of course, the ones in the city did not have an adjacent farm, but did they have a contract with a nearby farm to be supplied. Alcohol, obviously was the most popular beverage since you dont need refrigeration.
Or did they only serve beef jerky, or other types of food that did not need refrigeration? what did they do in the winter when no crops were growing?
Before the advent of refrigeration, what was the restaurant/hospitality industry like?
I have been watching the BBC series Musketeers a lot, and of course many of the scenes take place in taverns, and lodges. But I am wondering what kind of food did they serve if there was not refrigerator.
Did roadside taverns have an adjacent farm which supplied fresh meat and veggies and fruits? Of course, the ones in the city did not have an adjacent farm, but did they have a contract with a nearby farm to be supplied. Alcohol, obviously was the most popular beverage since you dont need refrigeration.
Or did they only serve beef jerky, or other types of food that did not need refrigeration? what did they do in the winter when no crops were growing?
Looking at food preparation in the Musketeer era.(in France)
The benefit of slow cooking over an open flame is meat is cooked near the flame but uncooked further from the heat. A large piece of meat can last for several hours on a spit and cooked portions trimmed away as needed for business then the less cooked portions can be exposed to more heat and cook and the process repeats.
Otherwise as mentioned soups,stews where used and can be kept at temperature for hours. Other alternatives are pastries with meat. Of course bread keeps extremely well and when hard is ideal for stews/soups or fried in fat. etc. Trade and New World exposure introduced foodstuffs not seen in Europe-corn, tomatos, potatos,etc
Beverage depends on local usage- water with vinegar, diluted wine, cheap wine, or beer.
Other environments smoked or dry cured extensively due to heat and humidty.(I am sure you know the origin of the word buccaneer) Other areas made sausages which were then dried for use. Other eras would salt extensively. Depends also on what meat we are referring to.-fish, game, domesticated stock.
Of course meat provided by butchers or direct from farms. Vegetables from farmers. etc.etc.
My grand parents were farmers in northern Spain and did not have refrigeration until the 1970s. However they had cellars which were dry and cool and supported long term storage of meat. I visited in 2005 and one of the old timers in their 90s still did not refrigerate but used the cellar. Their food was absolute topnotch in quality. You could say European peasant cuisine has its origins in the pre-refrigeration/ice box period. A great deal of soup/stews/dried meats. Large cooked meat portions are actually a rarity.
But what about prior to the Ice Trade, and wouldnt the ice melt in summer? What did they do in summer when there was no snow?
Then "ice houses" were used; these were well insulated buildings, sometimes similar to "root cellars" and partially underground) where ice (usually cut from fresh-water ponds during the winter) could be cut into blocks about 2 feet square and stored. To prevent a stack of ice blocks from freezing back together, sawdust was used as an insulator.
The railroads made very little use of mechanical refrigeration until after World war II, although refrigerator cars were developed before the turn of the Twentieth Century. These cars made use of "ice bunkers", at the four corners of the car, which could be filled with either block or crushed ice and salted to increase the freezing effect -- simply a large-scale version of the family icebox.
The Pocono Mountains in Northeastern Pennsylvania were at one time a prominent source of ice for the cities of the eastern Seaboard; the ice was shipped in "ice cars" insulated in a manner similar to the "ice houses" cited previously.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 03-25-2015 at 09:05 PM..
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