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- Title:
- Little Meat
- Date Created:
- 2021-05-20
- Description:
- In the early 18th century, the common native meal remained like the 16th and 17th century meal: rice with some small fish or shell fish that was either cooked, salted,or marinated. Being plentiful, islanders got what river or ocean protein was needed with a “minimum of cost and work”. Rice was flavoured with salt or sawsauan (used by some Spanish as the equivalent of “salsa,” sauce). “With this scanty diet (which is well liked by them) most of them manage to live and even grow fat.” There were also appetisers soaked in vinegar and salt. Fish and meat were dried in the sun or over a fire to make what they called “tapa”. Being preserved, the protein could be eaten little by little as needed. Natives ate little meat, either “because their stomachs prefer fish or they cannot afford it. However they do eat meat in feasts if it is given to them, or if they find it in the fields.” Deer, carabao and wild pig remained abundant. Wild carabao, being domesticated for agricultural use, was “stronger than a strong bull”. Spanish cow had been introduced from stock bred in Mexico during the late 1500s. Natives had acquired a taste for beef even if it was originally loathsome to them. The Philippine food heritage of rice and seafood traces far into precolonial times. Sustainable habitats for a seafood diet is a contemporary concern.
- Subjects:
- Cooking, Philippines Filipinos -- Fishing Filipinos -- Agriculture
- Exhibition:
- J San Antonio
- Source:
- Detail of fish. Jose Lozano. Mid-1800s
- Type:
- Image;Still Image
- Format:
- image/jpeg
Source
- Preferred Citation:
- "Little Meat", Philippine Food History, Felice P. Sta. Maria
- Reference Link:
- felicepstamaria.net/items/coll217.html