To save valuable food (especially meat) it was often flooded with products that do not or hardly spoil: honey (Celts), alcohol, vinegar, oil, grease, wood ash.
Also, turn off as many harmful bacteria (acid, sugar, heat, salts ) and sealing from air (and insects) helps (smoking, see previous tips).
 
From: ‘The right hand of the house wife, the indispensable book with more than a thousand counsels in the area of ​​family, household and so on.... ‘. The first 52 household tips from before 1950 are mainly about preserving food.
  
1. Food should not be stored in copper pots and pans, because copper oxidizes.
2. Leftovers from lunch are best kept in glass tableware, as other utensils easily takes the taste.
 
3. Young vegetables are quite long well in a stone bowl, which one they cover with a damp cloth.
4. Lettuce and vegetables stay fresh, when they are wrapped in damp paper.
 
5. Tomatoes may not be exposed to frost. Possibly still green fruit ripen in the room.
6. Tomatoes can save quite a long time, when they are wrapped in paper in a cool cellar.
 
7. Onions, which have become wet and are about to rot, keep good, when one takes them to a smokehouse for about 15-20 minutes in smoke or take any other way to let them have quite some smoke.
 
8. Lemons remain good, when wrapped each one in paper and laid so in dry sand that they do not touch each other.
9. Open sliced ​​lemons stay fresh when you put them with the cut side on a saucer, on which is poured some vinegar.
10. Lemons continue for several months, when stored in peat.
 
11. Nuts can be kept well to retain them in dry sand.
12. Shriveled nuts become fresh again by pour hot salt water on them. Is water cooled, they can be rid of the skin.
 
13. Honey examines one, by stirring a small spoon well in spirits. Natural honey dissolves. When a precipitate forms, or when the solution becomes cloudy, the honey is distorted.
 
14. Good and bad flour stands, if one compresses a handful. Well flour packed, bad does not.
15. Bread stays fresh when it is done in a stone pot and covered it with a damp cloth.
 
16. Meat and sausage stay fresh in the summer, when put in the oven (stove).
17. Raw meat stays fresh, when rubbing it with vinegar, thereby the meat also becomes softer.
18. Meat remains good, when some salt and sugar is in a little vinegar dissolved and gets boiled for a few minutes and the meat covered with this substance.
19. Meat stays fresh, when the meat lays in a pot so that there is beneath the meat vinegar, without the meat itself comes into contact with the vinegar.
20. Smoked meat ham and one protects against flesh flies and maggots, when firmly rubbed it with liquefied sheep and ox fat and store in a cool airy place.
 
21. Meat will remain fresh for several days, when it is borne in boiling water for a few seconds.
22. Sliced ​​meat, sausages etc remain fresh for several days, when one does it in a pot and cover it with a damp cloth. Meat must not come into contact with the damp cloth.
23. Ham can save about 2 years, when the flesh side is covered with a hefty loam crust so that it gives an absolutely dense crust when drying. The bone particularly smear thick. The ham may only be covered if it is dry.
24. Mold on ham and sausages remove it, with a paste of salt and water. The fungus disappears immediately.
 
25. Eggs, unwashed, are more resistant to transport than washed.
26. Unfertilized eggs are best suited for winter storage.
27. Eggs remain good on hot days, when laid in salt.
28. Eggs are easy to maintain, if one takes them 4-5 seconds in boiling water and then packs in a crate between chaff in layers.
29. Eggs can save when one immerses them covered with wet clay or hot fat.
30. Eggs can keep well for years, when plunged several times into water glassheated to 38 degrees solution, dry them well and lay on a wooden lattice.
31. Too dry cheese you put several days in thick sour milk. He is then fresh again.
 
32. To keep butter fresh for a long time, pour salt water on it until it is completely covered therewith.
33. Rancid butter can be used again, when it melts, scours and bread crust puts into it.
34. Rancid butter can be used again, when kneaded with a solution of backing soda, which is updated several times.
35. Become rancid cooking oil can be used again, when there is some drops of nitric spirit added, quite shake it and then heat.
36. Oil does not become rancid, if one adds some salt from time to time.
 
37. Dried legumes are protected against worms, when sprinkled them with salt and occasionally mixed shakes.
38. Mushrooms one dries: they are cut into thin disks and put them in the sun. By covering them with gauze one keeps the flies at bay. Fungi can also be dried in the oven.
 
39. Sauerkraut, which is on the verge of spoiling, keep it well, when, input whenever an amount is scooped out of the vessel, to add a glass of brandy to the wet.
 
40. If one wants to keep cucumbers fresh for a long, one covers it with egg white and hangs them on the stalk in a cool place.
 
41. Fresh fish can be observed through the fingers touching it. Disappears the impress immediately, then the fish is fresh, if not, then he's a bit older.
42. Fish can keep better, when laid in a bowl with salt water. Wash good before cooking.
 
43. Mustard does not dry in, when some salt is mixed through.
44. Table salt is not damp, when one does a few grains of rice in a salt shaker, which pull the moisture.
 
45. Fruit, if possible, is not stored in an area where potatoes or vegetables lie.
46. Apples should be put on shelves with the stem upwards and that in a darkened cellar. Occasionally airing, not need later anymore.
47. Apples people put in boxes or barrels in sand and put them it in a cool cellar.
 
48. When fruit has got a faint taste by storing or has lost the flavor, one must days laying them between wool blankets, then it will get taste and aroma back.
49. Frozen fruit and vegetables thawed one, putting it in a cool place in a weak saline solution. After thawing in an airy place to dry.
 
50. Cherries can be kept fresh for long if one plucks them with stem and buries in a tightly closed bottle.
51. Grapes (bunches) remain fresh until spring, when they are almost ripe reaped, the wound smeared with wax and hang in a cool place.
52. Prunes can be kept in the same manner as fresh as holding grapes.

As it used to be, so it's never been.
Previously.. When we had a future..