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Why were pickled fruits and vegetables not part of sailors' rations during the Age of Sail? This question is an extension of Cooking.SE:How is sauerkraut rich in vitamin C?

You do not need know or understand Vitamin C and scurvy to want to bring along fruits or vegetables with you. And, as established in the link above, it is possible to pickle produce without destroying the Vitamin C within. Yet, reading around about what sailors' rations consisted of, pickled produce is never among them. So it is moot whether or not the pickling methods employed at the time destroyed Vitamin C.

What was it about pickled produce that prevented it from being taken along?

Vikki
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DKNguyen
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    English sailors, at any rate, had a strong preference for meat and fish rations - and at sea you keep the crew happy. – Pieter Geerkens Jan 28 '21 at 19:52
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    Related: Why wasn't sauerkraut used to combat scurvy? – KillingTime Jan 28 '21 at 20:40
  • @KillingTime Related yes, but sauerkraut is just one food and also culturally specific, so unless sauerkraut was one of only a few pickled produce at the time that retianed its Vitamin C, it would only answer why scurvy was rampant even when pickled produce was brought along. Except that pickled produce wasn't brought along. – DKNguyen Jan 28 '21 at 20:56
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    @KillingTime The answer in that thread does seem to imply that a causal link between health and produce was not realized at the time...which seems a bit weird since the navy knew that there was a causal link between health and diet Were fruits and vegetables just considered to be something that you only ate to fill your stomach because meat and grain was too expensive? – DKNguyen Jan 28 '21 at 20:58
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    Nothing is cheaper than grains, and they are tough to beat for storage volume too. If I'm stocking provisions, and trying to turn a profit, anything non-grain would have to be justified for some reason to be worth the extra expense and storage. – T.E.D. Jan 28 '21 at 21:03
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    Please provide evidence for 3 assertions: that pickles were not among the rations, 'in the age of sail' , that the methods used had preserved vitC, and 'that the navy knew'. I ask for that because I doubt all three of them are not only sweepingly wide, but actually not true? – LаngLаngС Jan 28 '21 at 21:04
  • @LаngLаngС Fair questions. First, I simply cannot find any evidence that pickled produce was ever brought along. Rations from various sources also listed listed very similar foods and others even make it a point to state that rations were very consistent from ship to ship. – DKNguyen Jan 28 '21 at 21:07
  • Second. I cannot find any information on the pickling methods at the time, however whether pickling methods preserved or destroyed Vitamin C. However, you miss my real point there which is that although I can't find evidence either way, it is pointless if such foods were never brought along (which seems rather strongly supported from every article I can find about what rations actually were. The only vegetables ever listed are peas and lentils). – DKNguyen Jan 28 '21 at 21:09
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    Third, as for how the navy "knew", this seemed to be the case when the navy was designing sailor rations to a whopping 5000 calories a day. That level of calories is not something you just do by accident. If you don't eat, you get tired and can do no work. Evidence either way for the first two points would be great but I can't find anything. – DKNguyen Jan 28 '21 at 21:11
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    Do note that they did bring fresh fruits and vegetables along, but ate those first since those went bad first. However, I've never found any listings of pickled produce. – DKNguyen Jan 28 '21 at 21:34
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    Were picked fruits and vegetables a regular part of the normal diet of any of the ocean going nations during the Age of Sail? Was anyone producing these pickled products on the industrial scale that would be required to supply the naval and merchant fleets of the time? If they weren't available in the dockside markets then they wouldn't be going on board the ships. – Steve Bird Jan 28 '21 at 21:36
  • @SteveBird If fresh produce was available en route they would eat that because who wouldn't? But evidently this was not normal and could not be relied upon since so many suffered from scurvy. I am unsure about industrial-scale pickling but perhaps that is the answer. – DKNguyen Jan 28 '21 at 21:48
  • One possibility to consider is that pickled food contains a lot of salt. Water supplies are tricky enough without making your sailors thirsty. – Mary Jan 29 '21 at 02:25
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    Food nutrition was still not well understood well into the 20th Century. Most vitamins were discovery in the early to mid 20th Century. The south eastern US had a Pellegra epidemic in the early 20th Century because people didn't know about niacin (vitamin B3). – Fred Jan 29 '21 at 02:52
  • As with the comment by @Mary, about salt in preservatives, pickling of vegetables usually requires the use of vinegar & some people don't like the taste of vinegar or sour tastes in general. – Fred Jan 29 '21 at 02:58
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    @Mary The salt might have merit for us spoiled landlocked civilians, but the fact that salted meat they ate was already so salty that it could not be eaten until after it was soaked repeatedly in exchanged baths of fresh water to get rid of the salt indicates they dealt with much bigger salt and freshwater issues (somehow, I don't know what they did the the rinse water after it was used to rinse the meat). – DKNguyen Jan 29 '21 at 05:05
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    @Fred Not to mention a lot of the food they brought with them still tasted terrible anyways, being so heavily salted or dried. – DKNguyen Jan 29 '21 at 05:06
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    @DKNguyen I read somewhere that in the age of sail Chinese crews did not suffer as much from scurvy as European crews, because Chinese sailors and land people ate a more varied and healthier diet than Europeans. And possibly any reasons why Chinese took more anti scurvey food along than Eurpeans might explain why Europeans didn't take along as much healthy food. – MAGolding Jan 29 '21 at 21:52
  • @MAGolding Yes, I read that too. When I refer to the "Age of Sail" I am implicitly referring to Europeans only. I certainly get the impression that the Chinese were just not as meat-crazy as the Europeans? I think they also had some produce with them that contained Vitamin C. Roots in particular. – DKNguyen Jan 29 '21 at 22:02
  • Poor people doing hard work generally try to eat something with a lot of cheap calories and some protein (ie grain, fat, and if can, meat). All the other is fluff or substitute. Also, pickling is using a crapload of salt - even nowadays, eating too much is not recommended. No one wants to eat some more salty on the sea. About health benefits: 1) you have to eat a relatively big volume of vegetables/fruit to make a difference, which was especially in countries where veggies and fruits were less common. 2) basic dietary science didn't exist until the 20th century, either in the West or the East – Greg Jan 30 '21 at 05:02
  • @PieterGeerkens: Healthy sailors tend to be happier than ill sailors, though. – Vikki Jan 30 '21 at 21:41
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    @Sean What you do not know about cannot be blamed for your unhappiness, I guess. – DKNguyen Jan 30 '21 at 21:42
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    @Sean: Prior to Cook - no-one was aware of the connection - so no-one made it. least of all sailors. – Pieter Geerkens Jan 30 '21 at 21:50
  • I don't know, but maybe pickled vegetables cause thirst (due to high concentration of salt) and fresh water at open sea is not freely available. Contrary to the salted meat pickles can't be rinsed in water to remove salt. – user1876484 Jan 31 '21 at 16:42
  • @user1876484 My understanding is that meat was rinsed to remove salt just to get it to the point of not being inedibly salty. Not that you can actually rinse the meat to the point where it is no longer salty (which I don't think is possible). – DKNguyen Jan 31 '21 at 19:24
  • @DKNguyen: you can quite dilute the salt, almost to zero, if you cook the meat with a lot of water. – user1876484 Feb 01 '21 at 20:29

4 Answers4

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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.

MCW
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Juhasz
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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.

Graham
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    I see. So I suppose the view was that stuff that meat was real food and everything else (i.e. that grew out of the ground) was just filler to sate your hunger because meat was too expensive to fill up on entirely. That explanation only leaves a minor hole in that wealthy people who could eat nothing but meat didn't have scurvey, but they probably snacked on fruit because sugar still tastes good and it doesn't take much. I wonder if wealthy people ever touched a vegetable or root. – DKNguyen Jan 29 '21 at 14:27
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    @DKNguyen they also had no other reason to take it. Basic nutritional facts like humans needing vitamins (from vegetables) were unknown back then (for a while at least as @Juhasz), so they had no reason to go the extra mile (and maybe even upset the crew) over nothing – Hobbamok Jan 29 '21 at 14:30
  • @Hobbamok Don't our bodies get cravings for certain foods when it is lacking? Or does that only apply to sugar, salt, oils, and fats in the absence of knowledge? – DKNguyen Jan 29 '21 at 14:32
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    @DKNguyen Nope, not at all. We get cravings for sugar, fat, and generally feeling full, but our bodies aren't at all good at working out what nutrients they actually need. – Graham Jan 29 '21 at 16:54
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    Regarding the minor hole you still see: gout may have been the top chronic condition of the English gentry and upper classes. See pretty much all of Austen's and similar period writings - all gentlemen of a certain age seem to suffer from it. And gout does have a strong dietary component, associated with high consumption of meat (and alcohol). – Stephan Kolassa Jan 29 '21 at 17:03
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    @Graham As an unhealthy bachelor living largely on sugar, salt, and fat, I do actually sometimes get inexplicable cravings for fresh fruit. I like to think it's my body telling me that if I don't eat that apple, I will pretty soon die. – pipe Jan 30 '21 at 03:04
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    If people roughly stuck to meat heavy diets without fruits or vegetables wouldn't they be getting scurvy too on land whether sailor or not? – mega_creamery Jan 30 '21 at 12:04
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    @mega_creamery Yes, scurvy is caused by the prolonged lack of vitamin C in the diet, it's doesn't require being at sea. Even today cases occur in the malnourished and homeless. It was simply more common at sea because lack of access to fresh fruit and vegetables was common on long oceanic voyages. – Steve Bird Jan 30 '21 at 14:47
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    @mega_creamery Meat contains some vitamin C. (Preserved meat, probably less so.) People who ate a meat-heavy diet on land would probably have also eaten a few vegetables or snacked on fresh fruit from time to time, enough to prevent malnutrition. But soldiers sometimes suffered from scurvy for similar reasons to sailors. – user3153372 Jan 30 '21 at 17:59
  • @mega_creamery Not if you eat organ meat which is full of vitamins. But Westerners tend to only eat muscle. Though sailors ate all of the live animals they brought aboard. – DKNguyen Jan 30 '21 at 21:48
  • @pipe I get the same way about exercise. I like to think of it as running like your life depends on it, or running from death. – DKNguyen Jan 30 '21 at 21:49
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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.

Fred
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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.

Glorfindel
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