Why weren't pickled fruits and vegetables part of (European) rations during the Age of Sail?

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You do not need know or understand Vitamin C and scurvy to want to bring along fruits or vegetables with you.

Why would you want to bring them? Vegetables were what you ate when you couldn't get meat. Fruit was a snack. Neither were part of the ideal diet for a working man, back then. What people ideally wanted to eat was meat, as much as you could get. And conveniently, salted meat lasts better than anything else for long voyages at sea. Flour lasts fairly well, so you had a ship's baker to keep you supplied with bread for filling. Apples (if you select the right type) also store well, so they were stocked too. Dried beans would also be a possibility. You wouldn't have a great deal of variation in diet on long journeys though.

You also need to consider the nations involved in long ocean voyages. The major nations in this were the British, French, Spanish and Portugese. Whilst all of them knew about how to pickle vegetables, it's probably fair to say that they don't form a major traditional part of the diet of any of the countries. Pickled vegetables certainly aren't well-loved staples in the way that sauerkraut or kimchi are in their respective countries.

Wanting to eat pickled vegetables on a voyage would have been an extreme dietary oddity, which could only be exercised by a captain. Since most British captains shared the appetites of the day, that meant meat and more meat. Cook was considered an oddball for his experiment with sauerkraut - and of course a genius afterwards.

Upvote:2

My answer to the question "Were shipboard gardens ever typical?" mentions a source discussing the allegedly superior diets of Chinese sailors compared to Western ones:

Avoiding the Dire straits: An Inquiry into Food Provisioning and Scurvy in the Maritime and Military History of China and wider East Asia Mathieu Torck, Pages 132-134, 146, 150

If Chinese sailors did have better anti scurvy diets, the discussion there may explain some of the reasons for the difference in provisioning Chinese and European ships.

Upvote:42

One of the reasons why preserved food was not supplied on ships during the age of sail is that preserved food was more expensive than fresh food.

Economic as well as nutritional factors motivated the navy to find supplies of fresh food for its ships. It is anachronistic to consider preserved food in the eighteenth century cheap compared with a fresh alternative, as it is today. In fact it was considerably more expensive. Before the advent of canning, sterilization and refrigeration, it was costly to salt or cure meat and to dry peas or fruit like raisins. Even now cheese, then a standard ration, is more expensive than milk.

Upvote:54

This is mostly a frame challenge.

When James Cook returned to England after his second trip around the world (1772-1775), he published a paper titled "The Method Taken for Preserving the Health of the Crew of His Majesty's Ship the Resolution during Her Late Voyage Round the World". This short essay aims to explain how Cook's crew was able to sail for three years, often on the open ocean, without a single person dying of scurvy. At the time this was a remarkable feat.

Cook's idea was that diet, particularly the consumption of fresh foods, could promote the health of his sailors. This idea was so novel at the time that the Royal Society awarded Cook the Copley Medal,

For his Paper, giving an account of the method he had taken to preserve the health of the crew of H.M. Ship the Resolution, during her late voyage round the world. Whose communication to the Society was of such importance to the public RoyalSociety

The healthful rations described by Cook include "fresh vegetables" to be boiled with the sailors' pease, "lemons and oranges," and...

Sour Krout, of which we had also a large provision, is not only a wholesome vegetable food, but, in my judgment, highly antiscorbutic, and spoils not by keeping. A pound of it was served to each man, when at sea, twice a week, or oftener when it was thought necessary.

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