before we were cutting blocks of ice from lakes and delivering them
to peoples homes to shove into an ice-box, the origional fridge.....
you had to buy meat cook it and eat it...
or you had a root cellar that was fairly cold...40 degrees or so
prior to that..... meat and fish was either cut in
long thin strips (jerked beef/ beef jerky) (or it was packed
into barrels of salt....) and then it was hung up on drying racks
to preserve it... everything else was heated and canned or dried in the sun...
the use of preservatives was unknown....