Pemmican

[Billnpatti]

I ran across this and thought it might be worth sharing. https://survivalblog.com/grandpappys_pemmican_recipe_a/

 

[zimmerstutzen]

When I was very young, an uncle made a "loaf" for when out deer hunting. It was like a small corn bread loaf maybe 2x2 x4 in size and it started with sausage, and included the fat from frying the loose sausage. To that was added dried fruit, flour, salt and baking soda and it was baked into a loaf. The sausage was barely detectable and it was a little sweet from the fruit and a little salty and quite moist as I recall. Each of us would have one or two in our hunting jackets to munch on when we were hungry. He claimed he got the recipe from a book by a western author, and claimed it was something from gold rush days.

I also read about a similar Russian bread with finely chopped meat for protein,sun flower seed meal, oil/fat, flour for carbs, cocoa powder and citrus zest, all baked into a kind of travel ration that would keep for several weeks.

As a travel food. pemmican seems almost perfect, but lack carbs the others don't.

 

[Claude Mathis]

pemmican seems almost perfect, but lack carbs the others don't.

Berries = Carbs :wink:

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Do you need the carbs? Inuit on the ice pack aren't dining on 'taters, no? Fat has a lot of calories. Blue berries give you some sugar, AND some vitamin C (good in winter to hold off the Scurvy, right?)

LD

 

[coloradoclyde]

Here's an interesting excerpt from an even more interesting article.
http://discovermagazine.com/2004/oct/inuit-paradox

Four years ago, Cordain reviewed the macronutrient content (protein, carbohydrates, fat) in the diets of 229 hunter-gatherer groups listed in a series of journal articles collectively known as the Ethnographic Atlas. These are some of the oldest surviving human diets. In general, hunter-gatherers tend to eat more animal protein than we do in our standard Western diet, with its reliance on agriculture and carbohydrates derived from grains and starchy plants. Lowest of all in carbohydrate, and highest in combined fat and protein, are the diets of peoples living in the Far North, where they make up for fewer plant foods with extra fish. What’s equally striking, though, says Cordain, is that these meat-and-fish diets also exhibit a natural “protein ceiling.” Protein accounts for no more than 35 to 40 percent of their total calories, which suggests to him that’s all the protein humans can comfortably handle.

This ceiling, Cordain thinks, could be imposed by the way we process protein for energy. The simplest, fastest way to make energy is to convert carbohydrates into glucose, our body’s primary fuel. But if the body is out of carbs, it can burn fat, or if necessary, break down protein. The name given to the convoluted business of making glucose from protein is gluconeogenesis. It takes place in the liver, uses a dizzying slew of enzymes, and creates nitrogen waste that has to be converted into urea and disposed of through the kidneys. On a truly traditional diet, says Draper, recalling his studies in the 1970s, Arctic people had plenty of protein but little carbohydrate, so they often relied on gluconeogenesis. Not only did they have bigger livers to handle the additional work but their urine volumes were also typically larger to get rid of the extra urea. Nonetheless, there appears to be a limit on how much protein the human liver can safely cope with: Too much overwhelms the liver’s waste-disposal system, leading to protein poisoning””nausea, diarrhea, wasting, and death.




Whatever the metabolic reason for this syndrome, says John Speth, an archaeologist at the University of Michigan’s Museum of Anthropology, plenty of evidence shows that hunters through the ages avoided protein excesses, discarding fat-depleted animals even when food was scarce. Early pioneers and trappers in North America encountered what looks like a similar affliction, sometimes referred to as rabbit starvation because rabbit meat is notoriously lean. Forced to subsist on fat-deficient meat, the men would gorge themselves, yet wither away. Protein can’t be the sole source of energy for humans, concludes Cordain. Anyone eating a meaty diet that is low in carbohydrates must have fat as well.

As for vitamin C, the source in the Eskimo diet was long a mystery. Most animals can synthesize their own vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, in their livers, but humans are among the exceptions, along with other primates and oddballs like guinea pigs and bats. If we don’t ingest enough of it, we fall apart from scurvy, a gruesome connective-tissue disease. In the United States today we can get ample supplies from orange juice, citrus fruits, and fresh vegetables. But vitamin C oxidizes with time; getting enough from a ship’s provisions was tricky for early 18th- and 19th-century voyagers to the polar regions. Scurvy””joint pain, rotting gums, leaky blood vessels, physical and mental degeneration””plagued European and U.S. expeditions even in the 20th century. However, Arctic peoples living on fresh fish and meat were free of the disease.

Impressed, the explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson adopted an Eskimo-style diet for five years during the two Arctic expeditions he led between 1908 and 1918. “The thing to do is to find your antiscorbutics where you are,” he wrote. “Pick them up as you go.” In 1928, to convince skeptics, he and a young colleague spent a year on an Americanized version of the diet under medical supervision at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. The pair ate steaks, chops, organ meats like brain and liver, poultry, fish, and fat with gusto. “If you have some fresh meat in your diet every day and don’t overcook it,” Stefansson declared triumphantly, “there will be enough C from that source alone to prevent scurvy.”

 

[kansas_volunteer]

It ain't pemmican, but Logan Bread is in the same category. There are many recipes online. Search out the original one. Some of the recipes you'll find are more like a dessert cake than outdoorsy rations. I've used the bread for a few days at a time, it's not bad. When dry, which it should be so it will keep best, it's pretty tough, but dipped in coffee it makes a great breakfast.

 

[Black Hand]

I ran across this and thought it might be worth sharing. https://survivalblog.com/grandpappys_pemmican_recipe_a/[/quote]
Traditional pemmican is meat & fat. Adding berries can reduce its shelf-life...

 

[Nativearizonan]

I ran across this and thought it might be worth sharing. https://survivalblog.com/grandpappys_pemmican_recipe_a/[/quote]
Traditional pemmican is meat & fat. Adding berries can reduce its shelf-life...

And that would be traditional for whom?

I think you will find there were a lot of different people making pemmican and certainly plenty of references to berries being used in it quite often.

Berries are extremely rich in the nutrients that the meat and fat are short on. Edible berries of some kind are found in all parts of North America and were an important source of food, but they are seasonal, so it is understandable pemmican was made without them at times.

 

[Black Hand]

Indigenous peoples - the original inventors of the product...

This isn't to say berries weren't harvested, preserved and eaten in addition to pemmican to provide nutrients and may have been included on occasion, but the traditional recipe is shredded/pulverized dried meat and marrowfat.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

ONLY if you chose a hunter gatherer culture as your source. Agricultural cultures such as the Anglo culture of contact when the English arrived had potted meat. Nomadic herder cultures of the Middle East have Khlii. The only difference really is that the latter two are cooked at some point, while Pemmican is merely dried, and probably wasn't salted.

LD

 

[Black Hand]

When one hears Pemmican, Amerindian comes to mind first. I should have specified.

It was primarily a survival/travel ration.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Found a nutrition label for fresh blueberries. A serving is a 1/4 pound and is 14% carbs (by weight) in the form of fruit sugars. a 1/4 pound service of blueberries provides 7% of the average daily requirement. Dried berries would be higher ratio by weight. But that s for modern agriculture blue berries.

Mulberries are lower at just under 10% carbs (by weight) for fruit sugars. with a serving being 1/5 pound

A 1/4 pound of saskatoons runs about double the nutrition of blueberries.

a 1/4 pound of elderberries has 87% of the average daily vitamin C and gives 9% of the daily carbs.

 

[Gene L]

Hunter-gatherers also "gathered." The only way they could preserve berries back then was to dry them.

 

[crockett]

Yeah- I suppose a lot of cultures did the same thing but to me pemmican is native American food. On the berries- there is no reason not to pack them along in a separate bag and eat along with pemmican made with just meat and fat. As I understand the original Native American version, berries such as currants were pulverized whole, pit included, dried and then added. It is supposed to shorten shelf life. For Native people- the pemmican was probably eaten within a month or two so no big deal but nowadays we might make a batch and not get around to eating it for a longer time period.
The fat in bones- like butter- makes really good pemmican but sort of pricey.

 

[George]

David Thompson, 1810, at Cumberland House, Saskatchewan:

"On the west side of these alluvials is Cumberland Lake, on the east bank of which is situated Cumberland House in Latitude 53° . 56' . 45" N Longitude 102 . 13 West. This House was the first inland trading post the Hudson's Bay Company made, remarkably well situated for the trade of fine Furrs: it serves as the general Depot for all the dried Provisions made of the meat and fat of the Bison under the name of Pemican, a wholesome, well tasted nutritious food, upon which all persons engaged in the Furr Trade mostly depend for their subsistence during the open season; it is made of the lean and fleshy parts of the Bison dried, smoked, and pounded fine; in this state it is called Beat Meat: the fat of the Bison is of two qualities, called hard and soft; the former is from the inside of the animal, which when melted is called hard fat (properly grease) the latter is made from the large flakes of fat that lie on each side the back bone, covering the ribs, and which is readily separated, and when carefully melted resembles Butter in softness and sweetness. Pimmecan is made up in bags of ninety pounds weight, made of the parchment hide of the Bison with the hair on; the proportion of the Pemmecan when best made for keeping is twenty pounds of soft and the same of hard fat, slowly melted together, and at a low warmth poured on fifty pounds of Beat Meat, well mixed together, and closely packed in a bag of about thirty inches in length, by near twenty inches in breadth, and about four in thickness which makes them flat, the best shape for stowage and carriage. On the great Plains there is a shrub bearing a very sweet berry [saskatoon berry, service berry, june berry, Amelanchier alnifolia (Nutt.)] of a dark blue color, much sought after, great quantities are dried by the Natives; in this state, these berries are as sweet as the best currants, and as much as possible mixed to make Pemmecan; the wood of this shrub, or willow is hard, weighty and flexible, but not elastic, and wherever it can be procured always forms the Arrow of the Indian, the native name is Mis-sars-cut; to which mee-nar is added for the berry; we call it by the native name, but the french who murder every foreign word call the Berry, Poires, and Pim-me-carn; Peemittegar. I have dwelt on the above, as it [is] the staple food of all persons, and affords the most nourishment in the least space and weight, even the gluttonous french Canadian that devours eight pounds of fresh meat every day is contented with one and a half pound per day: it would be admirable provision for the Army and Navy. It is at Cumberland House all the Pimmecan, and dried provisions of all kinds procured from the great Plains are brought down the Saskatchewan and deposited here, and which forms the supply for the furr Traders going to, and coming from, all the trading Posts;"

Spence

 

[Nativearizonan]

It sounds like the "traditional" recipe calls for service berries, unless someone has a more "traditional" recipe from earlier than 1810.

 

[necchi]

Amazing Spence!!

 

[Nativearizonan]

One thing that has amazed me in many of the responses here is using terms such as indigenous peoples, Amerinds, or hunter gatherers, as if to assume all these tribes which spoke hundreds of different languages, and even looked considerable different, had different belief systems and completely different cultures, some how they all made pemmican the same way; traditionally without berries at that.

That is like saying there is only one traditional way to eat grits.

 

[Black Hand]

And yet, there are far more similarities than differences.

You are viewing this through a modern lens with modern preconceptions....

 

[Bo T]

I should note, that although the original recipe was lost, my deep ancestors, the Neanderthal, were the true developers (inventors if you must) of pemmican.
Also, my understanding is that dried meat keeps some of the vitamins (i.e. vitamin C), which in turn will help prevent scurvy and help preserve the pemmican. Although, I cannot attest to the veracity of this statement.