I guess you were cheating, and using a metal pot. These people I talked
to and watched used ceramic vessels. This observation spawned another
talk with the "resident blacksmith" gave his claim again that in the
iron
age, iron implements in daily life were about as commonplace as titanium
implements in modern kitchens. For non-military purposes, metal seems
to have been either extremely scarce, or otherwise the people had
reached
a degree of recycling unmatched in modern days. If every adult in a 1st
century Juteland household had a (really small) belt knife, you had a
very
wealthy family.
>Roasting is just as fast (and much tastier).
But requires slaughtering some beast. "How do you want your porridge? Roasted???" Same goes for turnips and other usually encountered agricultural produce.
>However, cutting takes no more time. Boiling (if you know how to handle
>the fire) takes no more time. If cutting and boiling take no more time,
>that's most of cooking right there (since simmering is low-boiling, so to
>speak, and frying is high-boiling, so to speak).
>Now, if Joerg has taken 20 hours to make porridge,
Not me, but people guided by experimental archaeologists, using
authentic
replicas of pottery. Which means that the heat gradient must not be as
high
as rapid cooking would require, or you could scrape your porridge out of
the ash. Bon appetit...
>Furthermore, only a fool would
>need to start a new fire daily in a sedentary culture. Banking the coals
>is an important skill.
True. Which is what these people had done. Conserving the fuel also is an important skill, and you don't want a blazing forge in the middle of your living-cum-storage room, with sparks flying all the way to your bedding straw, either.
Pete Nash:
Great stuff about hearth spirits. See, this hair-splitting can be productive...
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