FOOD PRESERVATION IN THE OLD WEST

 By Caroline Clemmons

When I wrote GENTRY AND THE MAIL ORDER BRIDE, I had the heroine, Heidi Roth, purchase a basket of food from a restaurant to take with her on the stagecoach. The basket included bottles of water and apple cider as well as sandwiches. Someone asked me if there were really bottles of drinks in 1875. The answer is yes!

Stephen Martinelli started a soda water business in a lean-to by his brother Louis’ barn near Watsonville, California in 1862. They produced apple cider beginning in 1868. They’ve won numerous prizes for their products. (In my opinion, Martinelli’s is the best apple juice ever.)

You’ve probably read that there was canned food for soldiers in the Civil War. When we lived in a rural area, I canned what seemed like a gazillion jars of vegetables and jellies and jam and fruit. I loved having home-canned food through the year. Taking a jar or two out of the pantry to serve when the weather was cold was a great feeling. However, I learned that if there is a day when you have too much to do and absolutely can’t spare the time—you think—to process food that day, that’s the day it’s at its peak and must be canned or frozen. 

The absolute champion of home food canning, and someone I hold in awe, is author Peggy L. Henderson. She canned enough for the year. I’ve never canned meat, but she canned chickens she had raised and had to kill, pluck, yada yada. The woman is amazing!

Drying Meat

We’ve probably all read about American Indians drying food over a fire. When I write about ranchers of the Old West, I include a smokehouse. When visiting one of Hero’s distant relatives at the site of a home of the mid 1800’s, we saw a beautiful example of a smoke house. In fact, that was the only structure remaining of the original farm buildings. I would love to have brought it home piece by piece to reassemble it. The wood was hand hewn and beautifully fitted together.

Since then, I’ve seen other smokehouses from that era, which, by the way, if my favorite for writing and reading. Smoking is the process of exposing meats, fish, and cheese to wood smoke, which has been shown to have antimicrobial effects on food, meaning it removes the microbes that cause bacteria to grow. This process was probably discovered by early cavemen burning fires in their caves without chimneys, causing the cave to fill with smoke and thus exposing food to smoke and unknowingly preserving it. Must have been hard on the lungs! Over time, they began pre-treating the food with salt before smoking, making the smoking even more effective. Today, smoking is mainly used to flavor food rather than preserve it. Picture the smoker grill on the patio.

Smokehouse

There was also the salt-dried method. The reason why salt is such an effective preservative is that it draws moisture out of food. Dry foods are less likely to spoil as moisture is a key requirement for organisms that spoil food. Salt has been used as a preservative since ancient times and was, in fact, so valuable in part due to its preservative powers that it became one of the first ever commodities traded and even wars have been fought over salt. Before the days of refrigeration and the modern heat treatments that are used to prolong the shelf life of foods, salt was one of the main methods used to preserve food. Without it people were subject to having to consume food quickly before it would spoil. With salt, civilizations were able to store food and build up reserves that would last in times of scarcity.

Even into the late 20^th century, my uncle salt-cured his pork. The ham was so salty I probably couldn’t eat it now. As a child, I thought it was delicious fried and served with mashed potatoes and red-eye gravy. Yikes, it’s a wonder people survived that diet, but they worked hard. 

Oliver Loving

It was in salt that Charles Goodnight packed Oliver Loving’s body in New Mexico to be bring him back to his family for burial in Weatherford, Texas.

Fermenting

Sauerkraut fermenting

My grandmother used a large 

crock with a lid. 

Supposedly, fermentation was discovered by accident and dates back to 10,000 B.C. It's a unique way of preserving food because it increases the nutritional properties of foods. Fermentation is achieved when natural chemical reactions happen within food, causing it to spoil, but creating a new, edible food that will spoil more slowly than the original ingredients. Cheese, the use of yeast in making bread, and making sauerkraut from cabbage are all examples of fermentation. Sauerkraut was popular for covered wagon travelers.

This is just a brief list of the methods for food preservation in the Old West.

If you’re looking for a book to read, try my two books of the Texas Hill Country Mail Order Brides.

GENTRY AND THE MAIL ORDER BRIDE, book 1, https://www.amazon.com/Gentry-Texas-Country-Order-Brides-ebook/dp/B0B6YN6QHK

JESSE AND THE MAIL ORDER BRIDE, book 2, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BD64JC1D

QUINN AND THE MAIL ORDER BRIDE, book 3, will be released in late November.

 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_preservation

https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/nchfp/factsheets/food_pres_hist.html

https://www.martinellis.com/about/history/

https://preserveandpickle.com/salt-preserve-food/