[I wrote this today for a blog and not for this forum. See no reason why it can't be posted here though. It is still in just a rough draft form and some of the stuff will be thrown out if it can't be abbreviated.]
Pemmican & Hardtack
Both were very durable and effective survival foods 150 -200 years ago or more. Carried by travelers, fur trappers, explorers, mountain men and solders. Pemmican is a nutritious, highly condensed, high calorie food that effectively resist spoilage. Hardtack, sea bread or sea biscuit is even older; a primitive form of bread that was valued for its robustness and resistance to spoilage.
The standard sea biscuit was pretty well standardized by the British Navy before the 17th century. It took about 4 sea biscuits to make a pound; part of a sailors standard daily ration was 1 pound of bread. But it was a salty, wood hard, untasty bread that usually required a soaking in something before it could be eaten. Whereas baked bread would quickly mold and plain flour would go rancid or become bug infested on a long sea trip; the salty, hard, twice or triple baked sea biscuit if stored properly, could last several years before being consumed. Sea cooks when in need of a flour could still crush up sea biscuits with a hammer. “Hardtack” became a popularized term for the same bread about the time of the American Civil War. A traveler, explorer, soldier or pioneer could tie a bag of these to his pack-horse and not worry about them crumbling apart after months' worth of physical abuse.
The recipe for hardtack or sea biscuits is super simple, the detail is in the baking. Whole wheat flour, salt and a little water are the only ingredients. Only enough water to make a stiff dough is necessary. The dough is kneaded a little bit, then separated into balls which are squashed flat to the size of a crumpet or big cookie. It's usually perforated a little on the top with a pointed object, which lets out the gas while cooking. There is no set salt ratio in most recipes but the amount usually seems excessive. Salt has been mankind's first and most effective chemical food preservative. The baking needs to be done slowly, dehydration is the main goal. In the archaic ovens of yesteryear this might have taken all day. Between Latin and Old French languages the word “biscuit” itself means - “twice cooked”. Usually two days then in an earth oven to get that hardtack dry.
* Cavemen were cooking simple unleavened flat breads on flat rocks stacked above fires in neolithic times. The effect of leavening (from yeasts) has been understood since before Moses lead the Jews out of Egypt during the Exodus or before the Romans ventured northward to witnesses Celts skim krausen or barm from the top of ale to make a lighter type of bread.
* The British Admiralty, being more motivated and more progressive than other navies at the time established factories right next to their most important seaports - that worked year round just to provision the navy. Some seaport factories concentrated on producing metal goods like cannon, anchors or nails. Others concentrated on necessities like rope, sails, gunpowder, cask and kegs for storage, and food production. “Dry-tight” cooperage would have been imperative for ship supplies of water, beer or whale oil but perhaps a less expensive, less water tight cask would have been used for salt pork or sea biscuits. The barrel would still need to be fairly tight however to protect from roaches and other bugs.
* “Canning” as a means of food preservation did not come about until relatively late, at the beginning of the 19th century and the Napoleonic Wars. More precisely Napoleon needed a way to feed his army when on the march far from home. Storing boiled soup in wine bottles then became another successful method for preserving and transporting some foods.
Louis L'Amour described “pemmican” a few times in his novels, particularly in his Sackett series. Often called “the ultimate survival food”, pemmican consist of only crushed jerky, animal fat and sometimes - dried berries.
The Métis people (French version of Spanish “mestizo”) or mixed-bloods of French Canadian and Indian origin were famously associated with producing this food. Usually they would follow the buffalo herds around, processing animals daily and selling or trading their popular, airtight packages of dried pemmican at rendezvous or where ever else they could. (There were only 16 authentic/original
rendezvous between 1825 and 1840). Any lean meat can be used for pemmican, so while the Métis predominately used buffalo, others on the frontier might have used deer, elk, moose or what have you. The first step is to cut the meat into thin strips so that it can be dehydrated into jerky. Then the jerky was reduced into smaller bits by cutting and crushing. Tallow or animal fat was reduced to a liquid form by heat and then mixed with the crushed jerky and dried berries if those were available. Any excess tallow was squeezed out before the product was sewn shut inside a rawhide bag. The shelf life or longevity of pemmican can span well over 10 – 30 years.
* One can make jerky in a dehydrator or in an oven but the Indians often built meat racks from poles to suspend the meat for air circulation. Often they maintained a small fire below the meat. The smoke accelerated drying, warded off flies and added preservative chemicals (creosote) to the meat. Saltpetre (mostly sodium nitrate but potassium or magnesium nitrated sometimes also) is a superior meat preservative that would not have been used in authentic pemmican. Nuts, seeds, grains and other things would not be authentic either, but one wonders how some of these might affect the outcome.
* Jerky and botulism poisoning are seldom used in the same sentence because clostridium botulinum despises oxygen (and high cooking temperatures and saltpetre). However this most lethal neurotoxin was first found in poorly prepared sausage and takes its name from the Latin word for sausage - “botulus”. Sausages were made with moist meat and suet stuffed into small-intestine casings (originally), which then like undercooked canned foods could provide dangerous beneficial conditions for anaerobic bacterial growth.
Any chemistry that involves Ammonia and a metal or nitric acid and a metal can produce compounds that can be very unstable. Its one thing to think you could go into a SHTF scenario with the theoretical knowledge to make black powder or percussion caps, but in practice...you would be better off with a homemade bow and arrows than missing fingers or an arm. My Grandfather told me that during the depression anyone who could make "hooch" ever wanted for anything. You want ammo, black powder, percussion caps...hot food, tobacco...anything, we have the know how in this hobby to provide all this and more, by trading for it. Make good booze and barter for the other stuff from someone who knows what they are doing or is willing to risk limbs or life to make the dangerous stuff for us. If you think that there is even a remote possibility that western society could fall on it's face...for any reason, then start putting away a large quantity of cheap sugar wash spirit for barter... just saying...safety first...Kiwi
