a form of hard, preserved meat, used by N. American Indians. The name is derived from the Cree word pemikân, from pimiy, meaning ‘grease’. The meat, from buffalo, deer, or other animals, was air dried in strips until quite hard, then pounded to a powder and mixed with melted fat. It was usual to mix in berries, especially cranberries, but also chokeberries. The resulting stiff paste was packed in skins, inside which it dried to a hard, chewy consistency.
Pemmican made in this way keeps mainly because it is dry (see drying). Salt played no part in the original drying process, though it might be added later for flavour. The berries were probably also added for flavour, but had a useful effect because of their content of benzoic acid, a natural preservative, which represses the growth of micro-organisms. The fat also helps preservation by sealing the meat from the air. The skin wrapping is not a sterile container because the food is not cooked in it—in fact, the only heating is the melting of the fat—but at least keeps the contents clean.
Pemmican was adapted by white explorers to suit their own needs and tastes. In the 1820s the Arctic explorer Sir John Richardson used the malting equipment of a brewery to make pemmican. The meat was dried in the malting kiln and ground in the malt mill. It was mixed with rendered suet, currants, and sugar, and packed in tin canisters. Soon pemmican was being canned in a conventional manner, which safeguarded its preservation and allowed it to be made in a slightly less dry and tough form. It could be chewed as it came, from the can, or made into a primitive stew. Canned pemmican remained a staple food of explorers and mountaineers.
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
