# World-Building: FOOD



## Staff Deployment (Aug 28, 2012)

I have a question. It is food-related.

The setting of my work-in-progress is an island. It is very large, and very isolated. Population: 20,000.

Their main source of food is grain, vegetables, small livestock (pigs, chickens, turkeys), and fish. They do not have cows, and they do not have candy. Their most complicated piece of technology, engineering-wise, is a crossbow.

A significant section of the plot relies on one character revitalizing the economy through setting up highways between the cities and the farms to make for a more consistent and reliable distribution of food, with communication between the municipal governments and the rural farmers as an important focus. There are back-ups of fish, bread, and meat for emergencies, but the problem is, food goes bad very quickly if left unchecked, and the supply routes are very long.

My original plan was that the government serendipitously finds a huge salt reserve, but not only is that _stupid_, salt is also not the most effective preservative, especially over extended periods of time.

One method I was considering was a 'Hessian Box.'
You pack the meat away in a box (usually with a bit of preservative salt), soak a hessian cloth in water, drape the cloth over the box, and then leave the box in a warm place in the house so that the water evaporates, and hence draws heat away from the meat, keeping it cool and protecting against the growth of bacteria.

Two problems with the Hessian Box: First, it attracts a lot of flies. They can't get in, because the meat's in a box, but I imagine it would get pretty annoying to wade through a swarm every time you wanted to eat a ham sandwich. Second, you have to keep the hessian cloth continually soaked, therefore it requires constant maintenance.

*Are there any other effective historical methods of preserving food?*

EDIT: Patskywriter raised up some legitimate concerns:



patskywriter said:


> I'm getting mixed messages here. You're saying that the food consists of locally grown vegetables and grains and that their sole "high-tech" device is a crossbow. Then you talk about bridging cities and farms with highways. Usually, when folks are subsisting off the land and not technologically advanced, they're not ready for cities. There's no need for cities because the concept of "creating jobs" and "going to work" has yet to be developed.



I didn't get into that because I figured this post would get very long.

But here we go!

They live in communities of 1000-1500 in small, walled-off townships connected by underground tunnels. There's a heavy focus on civil engineering, e.g. building walls and defenses around themselves. The reason is this: in the surrounding forests, there are tens of thousands of bloodthirsty monsters, who do not tire and do not die. The population was 50000 before the introduction of these monsters. Most of the deaths came in the initial six-month period, before a bunch of plot-related stuff happened to cut down the tide.

What this means is that until they developed their supply systems, there were thousands of people understandably unwilling to venture out of their cosy cities... and hence mass starvations, as there was no clear method of obtaining food.

They used to have a more agriculture-based economy with clear socio-economic classes, but the monsters threw the whole system into a temporary anarchy. The people now live in an environment where the economy supports a completely different way of life than people are actually living. This is why the new government is making all of these economic reforms.

Patskywriter also raised another point that's a little bit easier to address:



patskywriter said:


> as for preserving meat—if there's no commercial reason for doing so, they're not likely to preserve meat on a large scale.



The commercial reason is that the food will go bad while being transported. This would result in a quality of life almost comparable to Petrograd circa 1917, where the entire transport system broke down, leaving millions of pounds of food rotting off the sides of the train tracks in broken down train cars. A lot of people starved to death in the streets.


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## patskywriter (Aug 28, 2012)

I'm getting mixed messages here. You're saying that the food consists of locally grown vegetables and grains and that their sole "high-tech" device is a crossbow. Then you talk about bridging cities and farms with highways. Usually, when folks are subsisting off the land and not technologically advanced, they're not ready for cities. There's no need for cities because the concept of "creating jobs" and "going to work" has yet to be developed. And as for preserving meat—if there's no commercial reason for doing so, they're not likely to preserve meat on a large scale.


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## Deleted member 49710 (Aug 28, 2012)

For meats, you should look at books on charcuterie. My SO has one by Paul Bertolli that he likes; Michael Ruhlman has a book on the topic, too, which might be somewhat more accessible (haven't read it, I'm guessing based on his other work). Both are, I think, titled something like "Charcuterie."

There's confiture or potting (preserving in a container, in fat - if you google "rillettes" or "confit" you'll probably find tons of recipes). This can be used for pork, duck, dark-meat chicken - anything fatty. 

There's also dry-aging - lots of Spanish and Italian hams, dried sausages, etc. are dry-aged. These are mostly made with pork. If you're looking online I'd search prosciutto, sopressata (sp?), things like that. I think this does take a good amount of salt.

For fish, I'd look at Scandinavian cookbooks. I want to say smoking and salting are the more common preservation methods for fish, but I don't know a lot about this.


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## Deleted member 49710 (Aug 28, 2012)

One other thought: "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder gives some simple but accurate descriptions of ways that the author's parents preserved food in the 1860s or so. They were in a colder climate, but it still might help somewhat.


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## Staff Deployment (Aug 29, 2012)

lasm said:


> For meats, you should look at books on charcuterie. My SO has one by Paul Bertolli that he likes; Michael Ruhlman has a book on the topic, too, which might be somewhat more accessible (haven't read it, I'm guessing based on his other work). Both are, I think, titled something like "Charcuterie."
> 
> There's confiture or potting (preserving in a container, in fat - if you google "rillettes" or "confit" you'll probably find tons of recipes). This can be used for pork, duck, dark-meat chicken - anything fatty.
> 
> ...



This is absolutely brilliant. I'll check all of these things out, and even a quick googling of some of the terms you mentioned has given me ideas on how to improve the system.
Thank you kindly.



patskywriter said:


> I'm getting mixed messages here. You're saying that the food consists of locally grown vegetables and grains and that their sole "high-tech" device is a crossbow. Then you talk about bridging cities and farms with highways. Usually, when folks are subsisting off the land and not technologically advanced, they're not ready for cities. There's no need for cities because the concept of "creating jobs" and "going to work" has yet to be developed. And as for preserving meat—if there's no commercial reason for doing so, they're not likely to preserve meat on a large scale.



Way too much to talk about here, but I added an addendum to the main post. These are some legitimate concerns that I should answer.


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## Cran (Aug 29, 2012)

What's the climate of your island? How savvy are your chemists or alchemists?

The Coolgardie Cooler or Coolgardie Safe (hessian box) was used in isolated parts of Australia up to the mid twentieth century. If it's located in a house, even one susceptible to the Aussie bush fly, then it's usually stored inside a fully internal room or closet - don't have a door? Use overlapping curtains (usually more hessian) to reduce the heat exchange with the rest of the house, and keep the flies out. 

However, ice making and storage was common long before mechanical refrigeration, even in Mediterranean regions (Rome, Persia, Egypt). Long before its use in gunpowder, saltpeter (potassium nitrate) was known as an endothermic catalyst - add it to water, and the reaction will draw heat from its environment; use enough water and saltpeter, and it can freeze things, including more tubs of water placed around it or below it. 

Allow the solution to evaporate - another endothermic reaction - and you can collect the salt residue and reuse it. 

Another way is to depressurise a pressurised container - in Egypt, freshly boiled water was sealed into earthenware pots and placed outside overnight; in the morning the frozen pots were placed wherever cool seemed like a good idea.

In pre-industrial cities (most of which were trading centres), cooling and storage were high maintenance tasks, as were many aspects of life. Those cultures which didn't endorse slavery, still developed a feudal style of hierarchy with menials to do the hard or monotonous work.


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## Morkonan (Oct 15, 2012)

Staff Deployment said:


> I have a question. It is food-related.
> 
> The setting of my work-in-progress is an island. It is very large, and very isolated. Population: 20,000.
> 
> ...



I think you may be over-thinking things, a bit.

Now, please understand, if you can work this into your story in such a way as to entertain the reader, and plenty of readers could be entertained by learning of archaic practices in food storage, then it's a "plus." But, if you go on and on about it and focus on it too much, you're going to detract from your story. Unless, of course, your story is all about survival skills and primitive food storage contrivances.

Pick a "neat" idea that's somewhat strange, but historically accurate. There are several here, in this thread. Incorporate that idea as one of the methods they discover to preserve foodstuffs. Any focus on "neat stuff" you want to put on something in this line of thought should be there. For the rest, work on immediately recognizable ideas that are easily translated. Expand on a few of these in order to satisfy the reader's curiosity and to make them feel like they've learned something...  But, don't put too many of these instances in - Leave whatever focus you want in regard to food storage on that one "neat idea" and a few ancillaries that compliment it.

For general storage/transport, nothing beats smoked or dried meats. It's easy to do, requires little in the way of specialized apparatus and has excellent results. Read this and the "See Also" followup links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curing_(food_preservation) Pickling is also possible and I don't think there's any shortage of brine in your setting. (You're on an island, surrounded by the world's largest salt deposit... No need to go digging.) For vegetables and the like, pickling those is a start. Thankfully, many vegetables are still alive and kicking as they're shipped, so their tough outer layers are still proving effective against bacteria. Don't worry about grains, unless you want to introduce some complications that have to be overcome. (See: The Microbiology of Cereals and Cereal Products :: Article - Food Quality )

Transportation networks to ensure food safety are all about speed versus corruption. The faster you can get something from the field to the table, the less chance it will spoil, yes? So, if necessary, work with that. Roads are a good start. But, even roads break down and they require constant maintenance. Also, travel is an issue in your scenario, I would imagine. The same is true in many parts of the world. People starve amidst plentiful supplies of food, simply because conflict arises and roads and bridges are commandeered by warfighters, guerrillas, rebels, whatever... So, if "monsters" threaten a strategic position in your food distribution chain, things could get dicey pretty quick. In that case, a system that helped keep the monsters from causing problems along the route would be just as effective as modern refrigeration techniques, in some areas. When confronted with a problem, not only think through it, but think around it if you can.

Your story sounds pretty interesting and I like the setting a lot! An excerpt would be most welcome!


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