[HN Gopher] The Dinner Party That Served Up 50k-Year-Old Bison S...
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       The Dinner Party That Served Up 50k-Year-Old Bison Stew (2018)
        
       Author : cpach
       Score  : 36 points
       Date   : 2024-06-28 11:52 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
        
       | gampleman wrote:
       | That definitely buys you some serious bragging rights among
       | people trying to eat posh things...
        
       | delichon wrote:
       | Look, it was at the back of the freezer, I thought it was
       | brisket, I said I'm sorry, can't we move past this?
        
       | crazygringo wrote:
       | I'm genuinely curious what kind of flavor deterioration there is
       | after 50K years.
       | 
       | Specifically, is there any difference at all between, say, meat
       | frozen for 5 years vs. 50K years? Volatile flavor compounds
       | degrade even in the freezer, but at a rate measured in months. So
       | I'm genuinely wondering if there are any flavor compounds at all
       | that degrade but take decades or centuries or even millenia to do
       | so. Or textural changes.
       | 
       | > _"Making neck steak didn't sound like a very good idea,"
       | Guthrie recalls. "But you know, what we could do is put a lot of
       | vegetables and spices, and it wouldn't be too bad."_
       | 
       | That kind of makes me sad -- I feel like the whole point should
       | be to see what the meat tastes like by itself, with just salt.
       | 
       | If you cover it in strong spices and cook it in a stew, it might
       | as well be any mystery cut of beef. Seems like it takes away
       | everything unique from the experience at all, in terms of taste
       | or texture.
       | 
       | Instead -- add a little salt, cook it low and slow in a sous
       | vide, then a quick sear on the outside. Then you'll know what the
       | ancient bison _actually_ tastes like, without trying to cover it
       | up. Shouldn 't that be the point?
       | 
       | If you don't like it, then you don't like it, but at least you
       | genuinely tried to taste it. And it might even be fine, not bad
       | at all!
        
         | qingcharles wrote:
         | There are many people who eat mammoth every year, as it is an
         | easily available food source if you are digging for tusks. It
         | is said it tastes like very freezer-burned beef.
        
           | jstanley wrote:
           | Do you have a source for this?
        
             | qingcharles wrote:
             | Here's one article, I've seen several videos of them
             | digging it up and eating it too:
             | 
             | https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/12/permafr
             | o...
        
               | jstanley wrote:
               | It sounds like a tiny number of people _might_ have eaten
               | mammoth in the 20th century, which while surprising in
               | itself is quite far from many people eating it every
               | year.
        
         | boomboomsubban wrote:
         | Would you feel worse about cooking and eating millennia old
         | meat or cooking and throwing it out?
         | 
         | Throwing it out seems somehow worse, to the extent where I'm
         | unsure if they'd tell the story if they threw it out
        
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       (page generated 2024-06-29 23:00 UTC)