Earth furnace
Earth ovens are pits in which food is cooked with the help of stones heated in a fire. They enabled gentle, moist cooking even before the invention of pottery - after grilling and roasting, preparing food in the earth oven is one of the oldest cooking techniques in the world and is still practiced in the region today, e.g. B. in New Guinea , New Zealand and North African Bedouins , in the Andes in the form of Watia .
The special importance of cooking in the earth oven and related techniques is that it made it possible for the first time to cook different dry and moist ingredients and spices together and thus to create new flavor combinations. Similar modern methods are the preparation of soups and stews , stews and ragouts , as well as cooking in aluminum foil and in the Roman pot .
To this day, earth ovens are also used as simple ovens ( tandur ): For this purpose, a cylindrical shaft is dug into the earth, lined with clay or clay and a fire is lit on the ground. When it goes out, flatbreads are baked on the walls .
technology
George Catlin observed cooking in open earth pits in the 19th century among the North American Assiniboins :
- “When they had killed an animal, they dug a hole the size of an ordinary pot in the earth, put a piece of the raw skin of the animal over it, pressed it in with the hand so that it was tight at the sides, and filled it with water and put the meat in it, while in a nearby fire great stones were made glowing and held in the water until the meat was cooked. Because of this peculiar usage, the Ochippewas have given them the name 'Assiniboins' or 'Steinkocher'. [...] Now this usage has long been abolished and only occurs at festivities "
Axel Steensberg described a somewhat different, closed method in which the food is steamed or braised rather than boiled in New Guinea in the 1970s:
- “They dug a pit about 50 centimeters in diameter and 20 centimeters deep and lined it with flax fibers and fig leaves. They placed the sweet potatoes and taro bulbs that were to be cooked in the pit, and on top of them a layer of hot stones that they had heated in a fire at the edge of the pit. They covered the hot stones again with flax and aromatic herbs, over them they piled grass, and finally they laid turf on top and pressed them firmly to prevent the steam from escaping. Since only taro and sweet potatoes were cooked, it only took an hour until the meal was ready. "
Larger animals were also prepared whole or portions wrapped in large leaves and placed between the hot stones, a technique that is also known from other parts of the world.
Cultural and historical significance
The use of fire to cook food can be proven on the basis of bone and ash finds back to the Paleolithic . The use of cookware for cooking food, on the other hand, was only developed 9000 to 10,000 years ago and thus a development in the Neolithic Age . The long time it took from cooking directly over an open fire to using cookware is because it wasn't an immediately obvious step. He also required great craftsmanship in the pottery of appropriate vessels, as these had to withstand repeated thermal shocks when they were placed on a hotplate. Accordingly, the development towards cookware took several steps.
In any case, the development of cookware was preceded by the use of hot stones. Many foods can be cooked directly on hot stones that have been taken out of the fire beforehand. The further development of this method was the use of earth ovens. This form of preparation is at least 30,000 years old. It made it possible to eat root and tuber vegetables very early on, which would have been inedible for humans without (prolonged) heating. Various techniques have been developed in the use of earth ovens. Occasionally the stones were heated directly in the oven. If the food to be cooked is wrapped in plant leaves and the pit covered with fur, earth, moss or plants, the food is cooked through steam. Another method was to heat the stones elsewhere and then transport them to the earth oven with wooden tongs. In an earth oven, water can also be brought to a boil by throwing hot stones into the water.
This form of cooking is - if the food allows it - a very efficient preparation. Bee Wilson refers to Polynesians who settled in the Marquesas and abandoned ceramic cookware after they had made them for centuries. Appropriate clay was available on the island. The reason for this change in the preparation method is that the Polynesians in the Marquesas mainly ate sweet potatoes , taro and breadfruit and these starchy vegetables are best prepared with hot stones instead of pots.
literature
- Gert von Paczensky , Anna Dünnebier : Cultural history of eating and drinking . Orbis, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-572-10047-X
- Bee Wilson : Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat . Penguin Books, London 2013, ISBN 978-0-141-04908-3 .
Single receipts
- ↑ Filipe Fernandez-Armesto: Food: A History. Pan Books, London 2002, ISBN 0-330-491-44 X . P. 15 and p. 16
- ^ Bee Wilson: Consider the Fork . P. 23.
- ^ Bee Wilson: Consider the Fork . P. 28.
- ^ Bee Wilson: Consider the Fork . P. 30.
