COOLING AND FREEZING

Concluding a review of the methods of food preservation by the early medieval Slavs, it is worth mentioning the use of low temperature in this process, that is, about chilling or freezing. While it was easy to use this technique in winter – it was enough to leave the hunted game outside the hut in the snow and in the cold – it was much more difficult in the summer. However, attempts were made to cope with this problem with the help of specially adapted earth pits and ice accumulated in winter. And if we refer to tradition again, maybe some of us remember the unique taste of milk – sweet or sour – which in former farmhouses the hostess kept in jars immersed in cool water in timbered wells.

Medieval refrigerators.

About that, that low temperature preserves food, I think the Paleolithic hunters already knew. This method was easy to use in winter, but what the Slavs were supposed to do in the warmer seasons? We have refrigerators… It turns out, that in the early Middle Ages they could also be! It was enough to dig a hole in the ground, cover it with lumps of ice obtained in winter, place the meat there and cover it tightly. A more technologically advanced medieval "refrigerator" was discovered in Toruń, in the remains of a 14th-century cellar. A wooden chest was built in the ground pit, and a "cooling chamber" of two vertically positioned stave barrels was placed inside it. The space between the walls of the box was enough to fill with ice and the refrigerator was ready! But just like in refrigerators today – unlike freezers – it could rather be used to store products intended for consumption in the not too distant future.