Dehydration was the earliest form of food curing. Curing can be traced back to antiquity, and was the primary way of preserving meat and fish until the late 19th century.
The salting and smoking of meat was an ancient practice even before the birth of Christ. These early processed meat products were prepared for one purpose, their preservation for use at some future time.
Several sources describe the salting of meat in the ancient Mediterranean world. Diodore of Sicily in his Bibliotheca historica wrote that the Cosséens in the mountains of Persia salted the flesh of carnivorous animals. Strabo indicates that people at Borsippa were catching bats and salting them to eat.
Salt containing nitrates was used in Homer’s time (850 B.C.) to preserve meat. Nitrate was present originally as a natural impurity in the salts used in curing but, unknown to the users, was a key ingredient in the curing process.
The Romans, who learned the art of curing meat with salt from the Greeks, were the first to note the reddening effect now attributed to nitrite.
The ancient Greeks prepared tarichos (τάριχος), which was meat and fish conserved by salt or other means. The Romans called this dish salsamentum – which term later included salted fat, the sauces and spices used for its preparation.
Salt was in common use in ancient Palestine as early as 1600 BC because of its availability from the salt-rich Dead Sea. The technology of sea-salt production was also known by at least 1200 BC by the Chinese, who early made salt from drilled wells.
Preservation by smoking is believed to have been developed inadequately by the primitive tribes. The American Indians preserved meat prior to settlement by Europeans by hanging it in the top of a teepee to maximize contact with campfire smoke.
Around 1608 the Indians taught the people of Jamestown, Virginia their methods of salting, smoking, and aging venison, which were adapted by the colonists to preserve the meat of the then-plentiful razorback hog.
In Ethiopia, according to Pliny, and in Libya according to Saint Jerome, the Acridophages (literally, the locust-eaters) salted and smoked the crickets which arrived at their settlements in the spring in great swarms and which constituted, it was said, their sole food.
Ancient food curing
