Jerky History
Drying is the oldest form of food preservation, and dried meat is the
oldest form of dried food. Used by virtually every ancient culture dried
meat was probably, like many of mankind's most useful discoveries, learnt
by accident.
The next advance the ancients made was the discovery that if they hung
their meat in the smoke of the their fire not only did the meat take on a
pleasant flavour, they didn't have to dry it out as much and also was a
good way to naturally preserve the meat also.
Of course, the next major development was the realisation that salt did
much the same thing only to a greater extent. So, now jerky was looking
pretty similar to what we know today, the salt had enhanced the flavour.
It made an ideal stored food for those long harsh winter months when
hunting was impossible or a lightweight, high protein travelling food for
long hunting trips or migrations.
A later discovery was that sugar also excluded bacteria from the remaining
moisture and so the flavour of the jerky could be varied to suit differing
tastes. One last innovation came when pepper was found to keep birds and
fly's off drying jerky and so many traditional jerky's are quite hot.
We may use better technology in the drying process to ensure consistency
and we might use high tech testing programs to ensure that our jerky is
adequately preserved, but at the end of the day the procedure is the same
as it was 40,000 years ago.