4 ms·

> They observed that pickled vegetables preserved the veggies for months. Kind of a tautology. Why would they think to pickle something in the first place?

pasquinelli 1mo ago
i've pickled by accident before. first time it happens by accident and you're brave enough to try it and you're fine, it becomes something you'll try with anything.
falsemyrmidon 1mo ago
You can ask this about a lot of foods, but probably won't get many satisfying answers. For example cheese goes back many thousands of years, and it's theorized that it was invented accidentally due to storing milk in sheep stomachs or similar. Probably something similar for pickling. Someone noticed that salted foods last a long time, and vinegar never seems to go bad, so why not try combining them?
- rolisz 1mo ago
  What about hakarl? "Rotten" icelandic shark meat. It stinks to high heaven. Yet somebody thought "let's eat this". I can't imagine how hungry they must have been. And, if it doesn't decompose for 6 weeks under sand, it's toxic, so you die if you eat it. I'm sure they knew that. Yet they still tried it... Must've been a helluva famine.
  - steveBK123 1mo ago
    > Yet they still tried it... Must've been a helluva famine. Humans have lived at subsistence level, one bad harvest away from famine for most of history. Our modern abundance is very recent (1-3 generations) thing depending on where you were born. So I think a tremendous amount of food discovery was a combination of food accidents didn't want food to go to waste, and desperation level eating anything to delay death from starvation.
- maxerickson 1mo ago
  The acidity in many traditional pickling methods is lactic acid produced by fermentation. No vinegar involved. Looking it up, ocean water has the right salt content to facilitate this...
- _whiteCaps_ 1mo ago
  "Pickling" things in vinegar is a relatively modern invention.
RobRivera 1mo ago
That is not a tautology.
fsckboy 29d ago
they anticipated liking the taste?

pasquinelli 1mo ago

i've pickled by accident before. first time it happens by accident and you're brave enough to try it and you're fine, it becomes something you'll try with anything.

falsemyrmidon 1mo ago

You can ask this about a lot of foods, but probably won't get many satisfying answers. For example cheese goes back many thousands of years, and it's theorized that it was invented accidentally due to storing milk in sheep stomachs or similar. Probably something similar for pickling. Someone noticed that salted foods last a long time, and vinegar never seems to go bad, so why not try combining them?

rolisz 1mo ago
What about hakarl? "Rotten" icelandic shark meat. It stinks to high heaven. Yet somebody thought "let's eat this". I can't imagine how hungry they must have been. And, if it doesn't decompose for 6 weeks under sand, it's toxic, so you die if you eat it. I'm sure they knew that. Yet they still tried it... Must've been a helluva famine.
- steveBK123 1mo ago
  > Yet they still tried it... Must've been a helluva famine. Humans have lived at subsistence level, one bad harvest away from famine for most of history. Our modern abundance is very recent (1-3 generations) thing depending on where you were born. So I think a tremendous amount of food discovery was a combination of food accidents didn't want food to go to waste, and desperation level eating anything to delay death from starvation.
maxerickson 1mo ago
The acidity in many traditional pickling methods is lactic acid produced by fermentation. No vinegar involved. Looking it up, ocean water has the right salt content to facilitate this...
_whiteCaps_ 1mo ago
"Pickling" things in vinegar is a relatively modern invention.

RobRivera 1mo ago

That is not a tautology.

fsckboy 29d ago

they anticipated liking the taste?