Rocketman
10-28-2008, 11:59
World's Oldest Cooked Cereal Was Instant
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Bulgar: It's What's For Breakfast
Oct. 24, 2008 -- European diners around 8,000 years ago could enjoy a bowl of instant wheat cereal that, aside from uneven cooking and maybe a few extra lumps, wasn't very different from hot wheat cereals served today, suggests a new study that describes the world's oldest known cooked cereal.
Dating from between 5920 to 5730 B.C., the ancient cereal consisted of parboiled bulgur wheat that Early Neolithic Bulgarians could refresh in minutes with hot water.
"People boiled the grain, dried it, removed the bran and ground it into coarse particles," lead author Soultana-Maria Valamoti told Discovery News.
"In this form, the cereal grain can be stored throughout the year and consumed easily, even without boiling, by merely soaking in hot water," added Valamoti, an assistant professor of archaeology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece.
She and her colleagues studied the Bulgarian grain, excavated at a site called Kapitan Dimitrievo, as well as 4,000-year-old grains of barley and wheat from northern Greece. Very high magnification by microscope revealed precise details about the individual cereal grains, including their composition.
The findings are published in the latest issue of the journal Vegetation History and Archaeobotany.
The analysis showed that starch within the Bulgarian grains was swollen, twisted and, at times, fused together. Such starch modifications were more extreme toward the outer layers of the bulgur, consistent with grains that had been penetrated by boiling water.
More at http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/10/24/cereal-neolithic.html
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In the first edition of "On Food and Cooking: the science and lore of the kitchen" by Harold McGee he discusses the use of dehydrated milk by the Tartans.
The Tartans were lightweight fast raiders. Upon occasion, they would bite off more than they could chew and had to flee from superior forces. They could run (ride) faster and further than these forces because they used dehydrated milk to prepare no-cook meals on the run. The story is reported to originated from Marco Polo.
Dehydrated food was a tool of war, then.
Don't get an old GI from WWII to talk to you about dehydrated scrambled eggs.
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Bulgar: It's What's For Breakfast
Oct. 24, 2008 -- European diners around 8,000 years ago could enjoy a bowl of instant wheat cereal that, aside from uneven cooking and maybe a few extra lumps, wasn't very different from hot wheat cereals served today, suggests a new study that describes the world's oldest known cooked cereal.
Dating from between 5920 to 5730 B.C., the ancient cereal consisted of parboiled bulgur wheat that Early Neolithic Bulgarians could refresh in minutes with hot water.
"People boiled the grain, dried it, removed the bran and ground it into coarse particles," lead author Soultana-Maria Valamoti told Discovery News.
"In this form, the cereal grain can be stored throughout the year and consumed easily, even without boiling, by merely soaking in hot water," added Valamoti, an assistant professor of archaeology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece.
She and her colleagues studied the Bulgarian grain, excavated at a site called Kapitan Dimitrievo, as well as 4,000-year-old grains of barley and wheat from northern Greece. Very high magnification by microscope revealed precise details about the individual cereal grains, including their composition.
The findings are published in the latest issue of the journal Vegetation History and Archaeobotany.
The analysis showed that starch within the Bulgarian grains was swollen, twisted and, at times, fused together. Such starch modifications were more extreme toward the outer layers of the bulgur, consistent with grains that had been penetrated by boiling water.
More at http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/10/24/cereal-neolithic.html
============================================
In the first edition of "On Food and Cooking: the science and lore of the kitchen" by Harold McGee he discusses the use of dehydrated milk by the Tartans.
The Tartans were lightweight fast raiders. Upon occasion, they would bite off more than they could chew and had to flee from superior forces. They could run (ride) faster and further than these forces because they used dehydrated milk to prepare no-cook meals on the run. The story is reported to originated from Marco Polo.
Dehydrated food was a tool of war, then.
Don't get an old GI from WWII to talk to you about dehydrated scrambled eggs.