Maybe we could do with a section on natural history.  I don't know where this should have gone.

The television, presumably on the history channel, has been talking of the little ice age and the effect it had on various western civilisations.  The one I took note of most was the effect on France.  The potato had not long been introduced to Europe and other nations were growing it as a substitute or addition to crop farming, but apparently the French peasants/farmers rejected it and continued with their old crops which were very easily affected by the climate changes.  The narrator or researcher said the effect of the starvation from this policy (or lack of policy) was at least indirectly implicated in the French Revolution.  (The programme then went on to talk about the Irish potato famine and the mini ice age's effect on the Spanish armade of 1588.)  But why did other peasants in other countries take to the potato but not the French?  The French do sometimes seem a little set in their ways, but that is probably an unfair analysis, based on not much.

I'm not sure it was just French peasants that were wary of potatoes. Throughout Europe there was a widespread belief that potatoes, while suitable as animal feed, were poisonous to humans. This belief was not completely unfounded since potatoes (and tomatoes, which initially had a similar bad press) are both closely related to the poisonous nightshade family of plants. In 1748 the French parliament had actually banned the growing of potatoes, even as pig feed, on the grounds that they were suspected of causing leprosy.

In France the great promoter of the potato as cheap human food was Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, who had been a French army pharmacist during the Seven Years War. He had been captured by the Prussians and in prison had first-hand experience of living off potatoes. Unlike the French who had banned potatoes King Frederick II of Prussia had encouraged their cultivation, even going so far as to order peasants to grow them under severe penalties if they didn't meet their quotas.

Impressed with his enforced spud diet and realising its potential to offset famine especially in years when wheat crops failed, Parmentier returned to France and began a campaign to promote the potato. He had the support of Louis XVI  - although I suspect the king drew the line at actually eating the things himself - and this might be one reason why the French peasants were reluctant to adopt the potato as it was clearly being promoted as peasant food by the King. And so resistance to potatoes continued. Parmentier therefore began a series of publicity stunts, such as hosting dinners featuring potatoes for every dish, and for which the guests were well-known luminaries such as Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier. He somewhat bizarrely gave bouquets of potato blossoms to the King, Queen and other notables. He also cunningly surrounded his experimental potato patch just outside Paris with armed guards to suggest valuable goods — then instructed them to accept any bribes from civilians and to withdraw at night so the greedy crowd could "steal" the potatoes. 

In 1789 Parmentier published his Treatise on the Culture and Use of the Potato, Sweet Potato, and Jerusalem Artichoke,  "printed by order of the king", but it was the eve of the French Revolution and so it fell to the Republican government to implement most of his recommendations. In 1794 a disciple of Parmentier, Madame Mérigot published La Cuisinière Républicaine (The Republican Cook), a compliation exclusively of potato recipes as cheap, simple food for the common people, and even today many simple everyday potato dishes are named after Parmentier, for example Hachis Parmentier, which is basically Shepherd's Pie. During the siege of the first Paris commune in 1795, sheer practicalities led to the cultivation of potatoes on a vast scale in the public parks and former royal gardens. Despite his association with the royal family, Parmentier survived The Terror, becoming Inspector-General for Health under Napoleon in which post he established the first mandatory smallpox vaccination campaign (1805). His tomb in the Père Lachaise Cemetry of Paris always has a summer border of potato plants around it.


PS : I note also that there is even today some prejudice in southern Belgium and France against parsnips which are still often dismissed, derogatively, as pig food!

Thank you Meles meles for this interesting piece of history. Enjoyed it to read.

"PS : I note also that there is even today some prejudice in southern Belgium and France against parsnips which are still often dismissed, derogatively, as pig food!"


In Dutch it is "pastinaak" and I am from the North of Belgium, but give me potatoes any time...
No don't like all those anis flavours. I don't like ginger either or it has to be in very small doses...and ginger beer if we have in Belgium all those excellent beers...

Kind regards from an interested Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

In Dutch it is "pastinaak" ...

In Russian a parsnip is a pasternak (Пастерна́к) ..... and accordingly I always find it difficult to accept that the author of
'Doctor Zhivago' was literally Mr Bob Parsnip!

Grootjes, Meles

Cobbett fulminated against the potato as a staple food in his "Cottage Economy". Pity it fell on deaf ears in some quarters!

Quote :

I note also that there is even today some prejudice in southern Belgium and France against parsnips which are still often dismissed, derogatively as "pig food".

Here in NZ we find the British prejudice against people eating pumpkins very odd.  It would be hard to find a cafe here in winter which didn't serve pumpkin soup, and it is a staple in every household.  So are roast pumpkins, and various other ways of serving them as savoury food.  Not many pumpkin pies here though.  But the British seem to think of them just as stock food or as a prop for Halloween.  And I don't think they're all that keen on swede outside Scotland either.  (Though North Island NZers don't eat swede much either - it needs the winter chill to sweeten and taste good.)

Sidesways from this: my grandson, 4 1/2,  is having a sleepover, and I said I was about to have a coffee - what would he like?  "Brie."  Huh - we didn't even know brie existed until we were about 50.  He had to make do with camembert, which name he didn't seem to know. I don't think is any real difference. Place of origin, perhaps - is that all.

I'm not a great lover of potatoes but I will eat them as a filler.  Actually I still like to "for mash get smash".  It's probably been touched on before but it's my understanding green potatoes are bad for the health.  My late mother was a teacher in a primary school where the school meals were delivered from another school.  One day the boiled potatoes were green - and my mother was on "dinner duty" - shows how long ago it was.  Mum told the children not to eat the green potatoes and raised the subject (I think she kept some green "taters" as evidence) with the woman in charge of the meals from the other school.  "Oh, you're right duck - I'd 'ave mashed 'em if I'd known" the lady said.  Mum was absolutely shocked that the lady would have still used the potatoes knowing them to be off but history does not record what - if anything - Mum said.  She might have been so amazed she was temporarily struck dumb.

Potatoes (and tomatoes) are members of the nightshade family which includes the common poisonous plant deady nightshade. All members of the group produce a toxic alkaloid, solanine, in their stems and leaves to ward off insects and grazing animals. Normally the tubers of the potato plant do not contain any solanine (the skin contains tiny amounts) since the tuber develops underground and so is usually protected from attack. But if potatoes are exposed to sunlight either by the soil cover being removed or obviously after harvesting, their natural response is to produce the toxin as protection against being eaten.

The amount of toxin is reduced a bit by cooking but is certainly not removed or destroyed. A potato that's starting to go a little bit green probably isn't very toxic and the flesh would likely taste unpleasantly bitter if the level of solanine was dangerously high. Accordingly poisoning from green potatoes is generally rare, although by no means unknown. Interestingly, considering the incident you described, there was a case in the 1970s in a South London school where green potatoes were inadvertantly served in the school dinner. 78 boys were poisoned, the symptoms being abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhoea, hallucinations, and with several boys becoming comatose with convulsive twitching. Fortunately with prompt medical treatment they all eventually recovered, but solanine poisoning can prove fatal.

British Medical Journal: 2 (603), Dec 1979 pp 1458–1459.

Meles meles wrote:

Potatoes (and tomatoes) are members of the nightshade family which includes the common poisonous plant deady nightshade. All members of the group produce a toxic alkaloid, solanine, in their stems and leaves to ward off insects and grazing animals. Normally the tubers of the potato plant do not contain any solanine (the skin contains tiny amounts) since the tuber develops underground and so is usually protected from attack. But if potatoes are exposed to sunlight either by the soil cover being removed or obviously after harvesting, their natural response is to produce the toxin as protection against being eaten.

The amount of toxin is reduced a bit by cooking but is certainly not removed or destroyed. A potato that's starting to go a little bit green probably isn't very toxic and the flesh would likely taste unpleasantly bitter if the level of solanine was dangerously high. Accordingly poisoning from green potatoes is generally rare, although by no means unknown. Interestingly, considering the incident you described, there was a case in the 1970s in a South London school where green potatoes were inadvertantly served in the school dinner. 78 boys were poisoned, the symptoms being abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhoea, hallucinations, and with several boys becoming comatose with convulsive twitching. Fortunately with prompt medical treatment they all eventually recovered, but solanine poisoning can prove fatal.

British Medical Journal: 2 (603), Dec 1979 pp 1458–1459.

 Meles meles, unbelivable what you all knows...thanks for that story....
And yes, "new" potatoes have in our region a custom to cook them twice, even if they are not green (and a green potato comes out of the group because he is "hard" after cooking?) potatoes to evacuate the supposed poison...

Kind regards, Paul.

Caro wrote:

North Island NZers don't eat swede much either - it needs the winter chill to sweeten and taste good.

There is also lack of consensus in the various dialects of the English language as to what exactly a swede is and what a turnip is. And parsnips are called swedes by some. Then there is the term 'sweet turnip' which can easily be misheard as 'swede turnip'. A sweet turnip is sometimes called a yam. Yams themselves are sometimes referred to as sweet potatoes but they are quite distinct. And early British sailors in the Pacific would use the word 'yams' for taro - again 2 different species. In other words the taxonomy of tubers is starchy to say the least.

The introduction of potatoes was often a top-down affair in Europe. In the 18th century Frederick the Great of Prussia was famously known as the 'der kartoffelkönig' (the potato king) for his promotion of the spud. Pomerania, for example, rivalled Ireland as a potato-producing and even potato-dependent region. While at the same time Denmark's Frederick V invited German settlers to cultivate potatoes on the heathlands of Jutland. They became known as the 'kartoffeltyskere' or 'kartoffeldeutsche' - the 'potato Germans'. Neither would it necessarily take a mini ice age to cause a crop failure. The wet autumn of 1916, for example, resulted in a blight of the German potato crop which in turn led to the bleak 'turnip winter' of 1916-7 from which the country never really recovered until the end of the war.

Meles meles wrote:

PaulRyckier wrote:

In Dutch [a parsnip] is "pastinaak" ...

In Russian a parsnip is a pasternak (Пастерна́к) ..... and accordingly I always find it difficult to accept that the author of 'Doctor Zhivago' was literally Mr Bob Parsnip!

As I was under the impression that pasternak was a Russian name, I was quite surprised recently to find that in the late 14th century cookbook "Forme of Cury", which is written entirely in Middle English, parsnips were called pasternaks ... although given what Paul had said I really shouldn't have been surprised at all, what with Middle English and Flemish having many similarities and links. When "Forme of Cury" was written parsnips were not usually distinguished from carrots, which were then also mostly white or yellowish ... I don't think the modern cultivated orange- or purple-coloured carrot appeared in England until it was introduced by the Dutch in the 16th century but bearing the French name carotte. A similar confusion also existed between parsnips and skirrets (or skirwhits), which were then another frequently-grown, long, thin, white/pale root vegetable.

PS

My dad, who was originally from Tyneside, even after years of living in Sussex occasionally still called turnips and swedes alike, 'snadgers' ... so I guess that as well as there being confusion over the well-known names, there is also a wealth of dialect names for all these common, well-known root vegetables.

Meles meles wrote:

Meles meles wrote:

PaulRyckier wrote:

In Dutch [a parsnip] is "pastinaak" ...

In Russian a parsnip is a pasternak (Пастерна́к) ..... and accordingly I always find it difficult to accept that the author of 'Doctor Zhivago' was literally Mr Bob Parsnip!

As I was under the impression that pasternak was a Russian name, I was quite surprised recently to find that in the late 14th century cookbook "Forme of Cury", which is written entirely in Middle English, parsnips were called pasternaks ... although given what Paul had said I really shouldn't have been surprised at all, what with Middle English and Flemish having many similarities and links. When "Forme of Cury" was written parsnips were not usually distinguished from carrots, which were then also mostly white or yellowish ... I don't think the modern cultivated orange- or purple-coloured carrot appeared in England until it was introduced by the Dutch in the 16th century but bearing the French name carotte. A similar confusion also existed between parsnips and skirrets (or skirwhits), which were then another frequently-grown, long, thin, white/pale root vegetable.

PS

My dad, who was originally from Tyneside, even after years of living in Sussex occasionally still called turnips and swedes alike, 'snadgers' ... so I guess that as well as there being confusion over the well-known names, there is also a wealth of dialect names for all these common, well-known root vegetables.

Meles meles,

"As I was under the impression that pasternak was a Russian name, I was quite surprised recently to find that in the late 14th century cookbook "Forme of Cury", which is written entirely in Middle English, parsnips were called pasternaks ..."

Yes the Russians have many Dutch, English, German words. For instance the German "Butterbrot" (Dutch: Boterham (slice of bread buttered or not)) in Russian: in cyrrilic the same pronunciated as the German "Butterbrot", another that first springs to mind: jabloko (I guess from "apple, Dutch appel, German Apfel") And then, I guess through Peter the Great, a lot of naval terms taken directly from Dutch as the Dutch: "stuurboord" pravi-e (right) bord, in French it is even nearer with "tribord" ("stuur" in Dutch is old for "right side" and "bakboord" again in French close with "bâbord" in Russian: levi-e (left) bord) I can't present it in the right pronunciation as I don't know phonetics and when I write it in Dutch Latin letters the English will make quite another thing from it, as the French...for instance "stuur" (right): pravije and "links" ljevije...
BTW what is it in English?

Kind regards from Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

..... a lot of naval terms taken directly from Dutch as the Dutch: "stuurboord" pravi-e (right) bord, in French it is even nearer with "tribord" ("stuur" in Dutch is old for "right side" and "bakboord" again in French close with "bâbord" in Russian: levi-e (left) bord). ... BTW what is it in English?

In English the right side of a ship (looking forward towards the prow) is called "starboard" while the left side is called "port", or sometimes "larboard" but that is an older term and not often used these days. So overall very similar to the Dutch and French.

When ships used a steering oar over the side rather than a rudder attached to a central post at the stern, this steering oar was usually over the right-hand side because most helmsmen were right-handed, and so the right-side was the steering side or steerboard, hence "starboard". With its steering oar on the right-side the vessel would then usually moor with its left side against the harbour quay  ... hence the "portside" was the left-hand side. The term "larboard" is from the Middle-English "ladeboard" from laden meaning to load or be loaded and so again it meant the side against the quay by which the ship was loaded.

Meles meles wrote:

PaulRyckier wrote:

..... a lot of naval terms taken directly from Dutch as the Dutch: "stuurboord" pravi-e (right) bord, in French it is even nearer with "tribord" ("stuur" in Dutch is old for "right side" and "bakboord" again in French close with "bâbord" in Russian: levi-e (left) bord). ... BTW what is it in English?

In English the right side of a ship (looking forward towards the prow) is called "starboard" while the left side is called "port", or sometimes "larboard" but that is an older term and not often used these days. So overall very similar to the Dutch and French.

When ships used a steering oar over the side rather than a rudder attached to a central post at the stern, this steering oar was usually over the right-hand side because most helmsmen were right-handed, and so the right-side was the steering side or steerboard, hence "starboard". With its steering oar on the right-side the vessel would then usually moor with its left side against the harbour quay  ... hence the "portside" was the left-hand side. The term "larboard" is from the Middle-English "ladeboard" from laden meaning to load or be loaded and so again it meant the side against the quay by which the ship was loaded.

 Meles meles,

thank you so much for this to the point and complete (even more ) résumé about the English "stuurboord" and "bakboord".

Kind regards from  your friend Paul.

Meles meles wrote:

As I was under the impression that pasternak was a Russian name, I was quite surprised recently to find that in the late 14th century cookbook "Forme of Cury", which is written entirely in Middle English, parsnips were called pasternaks ... although given what Paul had said I really shouldn't have been surprised at all, what with Middle English and Flemish having many similarities and links. When "Forme of Cury" was written parsnips were not usually distinguished from carrots, which were then also mostly white or yellowish ... I don't think the modern cultivated orange- or purple-coloured carrot appeared in England until it was introduced by the Dutch in the 16th century but bearing the French name carotte. A similar confusion also existed between parsnips and skirrets (or skirwhits), which were then another frequently-grown, long, thin, white/pale root vegetable.

I think that The Skirrets sounds like the name of a rural skiffle band along with, say, The Beets or The Wurzels etc. The skirret tuber, however, is certainly due a revival as a foodstuff. As winter vegetables, tubers and beets are very old go-to sources of nutrition during the lean months. Along with pickles and beer they would have been a mainstay of the diet of the mediaeval peasant. Pickled cabbage, for instance, is a food type common across a whole swathe of countries in the Northern Hemisphere from Korea (kimchi) westwards to Germany (sauerkraut). For some reason, however, that style of food seems to come to a stop around the North Sea and the Rhine.

Whatever the method of food preparation and preservation, surviving a mediaeval winter was certainly a challenge to health. By springtime there would have been many cases of scurvy as a result of vitamin deficiency. Beer, mead and wine would have been good sources of vitamins during the winter months and fermented drinks were also an important source of calories. In England, wine would have been mainly imported and so was chiefly the preserve of the rich. It's interesting to note that while the Germans, the Czechs and the Poles etc consumed sauerkraut and drank bottom-fermented lager - the English (who didn't eat sauerkraut) would drink top-fermented ale. Top-fermented ales tend to have a higher vitamin content than lagers although lagers do also contain a good deal of vitamins.

With tubers being available throughout the winter, pickling tubers would seem to be a case of over doing it although pickled beetroot is an obvious exception. Yet pickled turnips (lift mukhallal) is a very old recipe from the Near East mentioned in the 10th century Arabic cookbook Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Dishes) written by Syrian courtier Sayyar al-Warraq. 'Khall' is the Arabic word for vinegar while 'lift' is the word for turnips. Today jars of pink pickled turnips and beetroot (kabees el lift) are particularly popular in the Lebanon.

I'd never heard of "The Beets", Vizzer though I looked them up online and indeed there was such a band.  I'd heard of Adge Cutler and The Wurzels of course and there was (is?) a group called The Potato 5 which I suppose comes from the children's rhyme "One potater, two potater, three potater, four, five potater, six potater, seven potater, more".  It's true we tend to have more pickled onions etc than pickled root vegetables in my neck of the wood though I did buy some pickled olives recently.  I've not become a 'prepper' by any manner of means but I'm trying to have a few items put aside in case the threat of power cuts comes to fruition.

You raise some interesting points Viz.

Pickling is the preservation of foods by impregnating them with acid which discourages the growth of most microbes. There are two basic techniques: simply adding acid, usually in the form of vinegar; and brining, also known as fermenting, in which acid-producing bacteria are encouraged to grow in a mildly salty solution.

The first method is quite straightforward. The vegetable is cooked to a soft consistency or put in brine for a short while to draw out excess moisture before being immersed in vinegar (acetic acid), often with spices to add flavour and sometimes sugar to counter the sourness of the vinegar. This is the method used for centuries to produce typically British pickles, chutneys and sweet-sour relishes such as piccallili, but also to simply preserve a range of ordinary vegetables, from onions, beetroots and cauliflowers, to walnuts, mushrooms, gherkins and nasturtium buds (used in the past as mock capers). Bacteria in these products are usually almost entirely inactive (particularly as the vegetables are usually blanched in boiling water before hand) but moulds and yeasts can still grow under these low pH (ie acidic) conditions and contaminate the surface if it is not covered and air mostly excuded.

The process of making fermented pickles - such as sauerkraut and kimichi - is more complicated. The vegetable is put into a brine solution strong enough to prevent the growth of undesirable bacteria, but weak enough to allow the growth and predominance of several species that produce lactic acid. For example sauerkraut is made by first salting shredded fresh cabbage then the liquid that is drawn out of the plant tissues by osmosis is supplemented by added water so as to completely cover the vegetable. A salinity of about 2% is the goal which may require extra salt to be added. At a temperature of about 20°C the bacteria Leuconostoc mesenteroides grows and produces lactic acid as it does so. When the lactic acid reaches about 1% the growth of the bacteria declines and it is over-taken as the major bacterial population by Lactobacillus plantarum, which then continues to jack up the lactic acid content further, finally reaching a level of nearly 2% after two or three weeks of fermentation. Both these bacteria occur naturally in the air and so do not need to be specifically introduced and as well as developing the acidity to suppress all other undesirable bacteria they also add to the product's flavour whilst avoiding the rawness of a pickle solution based entirely on vinegar (acetic acid). However fermented pickles are tricker to make than those simply put in vinegar; the wrong temperature or salt concentration can result in the wrong bacterial population, soft or mushy pickles and off flavours.

I'm unsure why there is a greater reliance on sauerkraut and similar fermented products in northern and eastern Europe, when compared to western and southern Europe where the preference still seems to be for simple sharp vinegar pickles. The geographic difference however seems to be a long established one, at least in Britain. During the 17th and 18th centuries a huge number of cookbooks and other self-help manuals were published in England giving 'Goode Huswifes' thorough advice on all aspects of preserving foodstuffs, whether by drying, bottling, candying, salting, smoking or pickling, but on the whole fermentation (other than in producing beer and cheese) was not particularly common. For example most old English recipes for making preserved pickled cabbage simply rely on using wine- or cider-vinegar to get the necessary acidity.

What is perhaps all the more surprising for an island nation that prided itself on its overseas trade and command of the seas, is how slowly sauerkraut was recognised as being effective against the scurvy that blighted long-distance sea voyages. Whilst one would think that it should have been more familiar and readily available to Europeans then some of the exotic fruits that were then being tried, sauerkraut was slow to gain acceptance as useful in preventing scurvy. Certainly sauerkraut doesn't contain quite as much vitamin C as lemons or limes but it was still a perfectly effective dietary supplement, whilst being considerably cheaper and long-lasting. The fact that it was 'acidic' like lemon juice certainly seems to have prompted some 18th century physicians to think sauerkraut would be as effective as fresh fruit, and James Cook had carried sauerkraut on his voyages even before the relationship of fresh food to scurvy was fully established, but in tackling scurvy sauerkraut always remained secondary to the juice of citrus fruits. Was the aversion to sauerkraut due to some long-standing aspect of the British climate that weighed against fermentation as a form of food preservation, or was it just simply from accustomed habits tinged perhaps with some good old prejudice?

PS - regarding beer:

I'm fairly sure that nearly all the beer/ale brewed across medieval Europe was of the top-fermented type using 'natural' yeasts, femented at ambient temperature and usually drunk flat and of necessity at room temperature. Cold-brewed, bottom-fermented, lager-type beers only appeared in the 15th century, exclusively in southern Bavaria where they had ready access to the natural limestone caves in the Alps which retained steady year-round temperatures of just a few degrees above freezing. This brewing technique was likely developed primarily as a way of maintaining a supply of beer throughout the summer when the heat would interfere with a clean fermentation and produce brews that went sour rapidly once opened and would not store for long in the cask even when heavily treated with preservative herbs and spices. For these lager beers the brewing itself took place only over winter and spring, with the beer then being stored in the cold caves until needed (the German lagern is to store, ein läger is a storeroom). The resulting beer's clarity, clean flavour and refreshing sparkle were just happy side effects of the long cool fermentation and cold storage. As a style of beer, lager remained largely a Bavarian speciality until as late as the mid-19th century; for example it only became widely brewed in Bohemia (principally around Plzeň, hence the pilsner-type of lager) as late as the 1860s. In purely practical terms it was probably only possible to brew lager-style beer in Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, the US and elsewhere, once steam-powered refrigeration methods had been developed, which also allowed brewing to be continued year round thus further adding to its popularity.

The practice of storing newly-brewed beer in cold caves and underground cellars in order to protect it from summer heat understandably predates the development of specific bottom-fermenting yeast strains. What is interesting however is that I have seen it suggested (from genetic analysis) that the principal bottom-fermenting bacteria responsible for most lager-style beers, Saccharomyces eubayanus, emerged through hybridization with the more usual strain of brewer's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and that further it might not be native to Europe but rather came originally from South America. It is tempting to speculate whether in the 1490s, following their contact with Spanish troops during the Italian wars, it was returning German mercenaries that inadvertantly carried the new yeast strain north of the Alps ... alongside their transport of the rather less welcome syphilis bacterium.

Some very illuminating facts there Meles regarding the history and techniques of brewing and fermenting. It is astonishing how long it took for the lager-style of beer to move out of Bavaria. Over the last 150 years it has taken the world by storm and has become the favourite type of beer in all corners of the globe. And yet it quietly ticked over in Bavaria for 400 years. I remember in the 1990s when Czech lagers were all the rage and Budvar was touted by aficionados as being the real deal as opposed to America’s Budweiser which was derided as being secondary. The reality, however, is that the Anheuser-Busch brewery in St Louis, Missouri predates the Budejovicky brewery in Bohemia by over 40 years.  

The question as to why fermented cabbage (sauerkraut) never really took off in Britain when, as you suggest, the maritime imperative would have almost insisted upon it, is indeed puzzling. It’s an almost similar story in the Far East. Korean kimchi is also popular in Japan but this development has been relatively recent. As with Britain, Japan’s tradition and original preference was for pickled as opposed to fermented preserves. Kimchi itself is a work in progress. Originally Koreans would have eaten fermented cabbage almost identical to sauerkraut. But with the addition of garlic and/or ginger and/or chilli, kimchi is now rapidly becoming to pickles what lager is to beer.

When the 1970s powercuts occurred I was living in 'digs' so didn't have a lot of storage room.  Going from memory (and admittedly it is nigh on 50 years ago) I made 'winter salads' with raw cabbage (can't remember which variety) and what salad vegetables I had managed to accumulate that didn't perish too easily.  I might have used hard cheeses too.  I wasn't vegetarian in those days.

Nothing to do with potatoes or other root veges, but in reply to LIR's post, when I was at university in a flat with just $3 per person for food for the week, we lived for quite a while mostly on apples, a sack of which the uncle of one of the girls had given us. 

Mention of pumpkins, which are mostly used as food here but not for some reason in Britain, reminded me that my British parents-in-law who come to NZ/Aotearoa in adulthood did cook and eat pumpkins. But my son who lived for ages in Nottingham still thinks of them as important at Halloween, which was never celebrated here when I was a child, but has become a thing in recent years. My husband objects to it on the grounds that it is American but I remind him that originally it was a Scottish tradition. Anyway he always has a bag of lollies for any kids who knock on the door. We only had one lot this year, but my son living only about a km from us had 30! He had put a pumpkin on his letter-box. He brought it in after that, as he had run out of lollies. I sometimes wonder what would happen if you said 'trick'. We weren't even sure who was supposed to do the trick, but I feel that it would be the trick or treaters people on the doorstep. We did hear of one who just told a joke.

Thank you Caro for giving me the perfect opportunity to show off my pumpkin harvest for this year:



The big one at the back/right is 42cm in diameter. And while I/she sadly failed to win the competition for biggest pumpkin in the village Sant-Marti fête on 11 November - yet again - I'm still very proud of my 'big girl' courge.

As usual I had no-one trick-or-treating on Halloween, but then I (plus my neighbour) are the only two houses down the 3km winding forested lane from the village. I thought pumpkin carving - and it was turnips before pumpkins arrived from the Americas - was originally Irish in origin and a hang-over from the gaelic festival of Samhain. I also thought that originally the trick or treat usually comprised a song, poem, funny story, short playlet, clever acrobatics or a juggling trick, performed for the amusement of the householder who then duly rewarded the performers with a cup of ale or ginger beer, sweetmeats, cakes or some parkin - it never involved any malicious trickery.

I'm not overly keen on pumpkin but they do store well and so provide a 'fresh' vegetable all through winter until about March. Last year to avoid having the things taking up space all over the house I baked them and then froze the reduced flesh down. However this year when I saw my rising electricty bills I decided I needed to drastically cut my electricity usage so have turned off my biggest chest freezer, made much more use of the microwave, and still haven't put the heating on despite it now being just 8°C in the house at night. Deep freezers are so convenient for storing summer gluts of  vegetables or taking advantage of special offers in the shops, but they are a bit of an indulgence. Now, faced with limited space in my two remaining freezers, I've left the pumpkins whole and have been doing a lot more drying, bottling and pickling to preserve other foodstuffs - which is all very apt given the way this thread has progressed.

Also regarding the preservation of food, way back in March or so when the Ukrainian war was just getting started, I saw an article in the Guardian newspaper saying that, while the British when faced with potential shortages in the shops went out and panic-bought tins of beans, disposable nappies and toilet paper, the Latvians and Lithuanians stocked up on salt, pork fat and preserving jars. Taking my cue from the Baltic nations I too stock-piled sacks of salt, blocks of vegetable lard and numerous 'Le Parfait' spring-top, rubber-sealed, glass jars. So if we do get long power cuts beyond what my emergency generator can deal with, I can at least salt-down and bottle some of the contents of my remaining freezers. Which all makes me sound rather like a 'prepper' but to be fair in the past when we had several winters with lots of snow, we were twice without electricty for more than 24 hours at a go, which was still just about OK for the freezers as they were in an unheated cellar, but I was reduced to cooking on an old 'emergency' wood-fired stove.

I love pumpkin either roasted or in soup but it does seem to be a New Zealand/Aotearoa thing. I still have and use exclusively a freezer that we bought with $200 NZ from my grandfather who died on our honeymoon. We will have been married 50 years next December. It has never broken down and it may contribute to our power bills, but I refuse to have the house less than about 15 degrees. Being in a wheelchair and not moving very much on my legs I do feel the cold - and I don't put up with discomfort, even for the sake of money-saving.

Meles meles wrote:

The practice of storing newly-brewed beer in cold caves and underground cellars in order to protect it from summer heat understandably predates the development of specific bottom-fermenting yeast strains. What is interesting however is that I have seen it suggested (from genetic analysis) that the principal bottom-fermenting bacteria responsible for most lager-style beers, Saccharomyces eubayanus, emerged through hybridization with the more usual strain of brewer's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and that further it might not be native to Europe but rather came originally from South America. It is tempting to speculate whether in the 1490s, following their contact with Spanish troops during the Italian wars, it was returning German mercenaries that inadvertantly carried the new yeast strain north of the Alps ... alongside their transport of the rather less welcome syphilis bacterium.

About that specific bottom-fermenting yeast ... I was quoting from a 2007 article however I now see that a very recent study (published 7 December 2022) by researchers at the University of Dublin has found the same yeast occurring naturally in woodland in Ireland: FEMS Yeast Research, Volume 22, Issue 1, 2022: Identification of European isolates of the lager yeast parent Saccharomyces eubayanus.

Abstract: Lager brewing first occurred in Bavaria in the 15th century, associated with restrictions of brewing to colder months. The lager yeast, Saccharomyces pastorianus, is cold tolerant. It is a hybrid between Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomyces eubayanus, and has been found only in industrial settings. Natural isolates of S. eubayanus were first discovered in Patagonia 11 years ago. They have since been isolated from China, Tibet, New Zealand, and North America, but not from Europe. Here, we describe the first European strains UCD646 and UCD650, isolated from a wooded area on a university campus in Dublin, Ireland. We generated complete chromosome level assemblies of both genomes using long- and short-read sequencing. The UCD isolates belong to the Holarctic clade. Genome analysis shows that isolates similar to the Irish strains contributed to the S. eubayanus component of S. pastorianus, but isolates from Tibet made a larger contribution.

...

And my flippant comment about Imperial Landsknechts accidentally transporting the lager yeast parent, Saccharomyces eubayanus, from South America via Spain and Italy to north of the Alps on their beer-strained jerkins, while at the same time also inadvertantly carrying the bacterium Treponema pallidum in their codpieces and elsewhere about their persons, was said in jest. Syphilis may, or may not, have been already present in Europe since antiquity, while Columbus's crew may, or may not, have introduced a new virulent strain of the disease from the Americas to Europe in the late 1490s. However it now seems that the specific yeast that co-parented all lager beer yeasts has naturally been living in Europe long before it accidentally, but fortuitously, hybridyzed to create the distinctive strain that some time in the fifteenth century enabled all modern lager-type beers.

Meles meles wrote:

I'm unsure why there is a greater reliance on sauerkraut and similar fermented products in northern and eastern Europe, when compared to western and southern Europe where the preference still seems to be for simple sharp vinegar pickles. The geographic difference however seems to be a long established one, at least in Britain. During the 17th and 18th centuries a huge number of cookbooks and other self-help manuals were published in England giving 'Goode Huswifes' thorough advice on all aspects of preserving foodstuffs, whether by drying, bottling, candying, salting, smoking or pickling, but on the whole fermentation (other than in producing beer and cheese) was not particularly common. For example most old English recipes for making preserved pickled cabbage simply rely on using wine- or cider-vinegar to get the necessary acidity.

I'm just speculating again but I wonder if this geographic difference is due to a residual influence of the Roman Empire over western and southern Europe, compared to the influence of migratory peoples coming from Asia - the Huns, Alans, Tartars, Mongols etc - on eastern Europe. Obviously after two millenia the distinctions have become blurred and many more cultural and climatic factures have come into play, nevertheless is it still perhaps possible to trace an echo in food preferences that is fundamentally due to very old historical and cultural divisions? The Romans' fondness for wine encouraged their use of vinegar (acetic acid) in food preservation, with vinegar being made both from wine itself and also from other fermented fruit juices, such as apple, pear and even quince-cider vinegar. Where the practice of using vinegar as a preservative was established it continued to be used even when grape-wine production fell out of regular practice, hence in pre-conquest Saxon England, alegar, ie acetic acid made from beer/ale, was often used instead of wine vinegar (and hence, perhaps, the continuing popularity of 'malt vinegar' on British fish-n-chips).

Preserving food by fermenting salted vegetables, to form lactic acid as the preserving agent, originated in eastern China and Korea. Culturally and taste-wise I can see that lactic acid preserved food, such as kimichi, might have been more readily acceptable to nomadic pasuralists of the central steppes, who already consumed much of their daily produce as yoghurt, curd cheese and kumiss (that is as mildly-fermented milk products that are all high in lactic acid through direct fermentation of the lactose in milk) however with shelf-lives that are not much longer than the fresh milk itself, although that was always readily available directly from the nomads' herds. The Mongols (and other central Asiatic invasions) likely account for how the making of fermented foods like sauerkraut first came to Europe. I suspect they also account for the generally more widespread use of products like soured cream in existing Baltic, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian and East-Balkan cuisine, when compared to the cuisines of western and southern Europe, with their greater emphasis on dairy produce preserved as long-lived cheeses.

Making hard/semi-hard, aged, long-keeping cheese is, just like gowing vines and wine-making, more suited to a settled agrarian existence than a nomadic pastralist one. Moreover cheese, wine and vinegar production are all encouraged where there are nearby urban areas that can serve as market places to sell and centres to produce, as opposed to where towns are treated as resources simply to be plundered. I can't find my copy of his book but if I recall correctly, Bruce Charwin in 'Songlines' quoted an old Mongol proverb: "raids are our agriculture": an attitude that would not be particularly conducive to developing long-term food preservation techniques nor a culture that appreciated fine vintage wines and carefully matured cheeses.

That's mostly largely speculation on my part backed only by some rather sweeping statements and assumptions - but might there not be some truth in it?