In the nineteenth century, and earlier, there were storage tips already. None of them I have tried myself. What they told:…
To maintain fresh meat, especially beef meat, venison etc. 2 to 3 weeks with good taste, a cloth is beaten around it, after which it’s put in a coffin and covered with sand.
Better still, when the flesh in the coffin is shaken with annealed coarse charcoal powder. In both cases, it is put up into a cool place.
Whether one puts the meat, especially veal and lamb meat, etc. which should be fried and that cannot be immediately fried, in a deep dish and cover it with vinegar or skimmed and sour milk, that the first day twice, the next day only once is decanted. For cooking the meat is placed a single night in fresh water and immediately washed off.
Or: One toasts the outside of the meat to roast over coals on a ’gridiron’ a little brown, lay the meat pieces then in one pot, then cover with vinegar and overcharge him with stones. So it remains for many months as fresh.
In the late winter they freeze the flesh ; It keeps it selves well then as long as it takes the frost. Also, the wood acid (vinegar?) is a good means to safeguard flesh from decay.
To keep salted meat long good one takes pebble stones or pebbles, about the size of a grouse egg, which washes clean and cover with them the bottom of the barrel. Immediately thereafter comes the salted meat, and another stones one layer, then meat and so on, so that between each layer flesh a layer of stones is. In this way meat can be stored for a year or longer, without spoiling. The reason for this lies in the ever- cooling temperature of the stones and especially therefore, that the pieces of meat do not touch each other immediately.
To keep smoked meat long wrap it in paper, put it in a coffin and sprinkle with sifted dry ground beech ash. The box is full, it covers everything with ashes, which makes the insects are unable to lay their eggs in the flesh; and put it on a dry, airy place. To use the flesh clean it with a wet or dry brush of all mold.
In this way the meat will keep for years good and juicy, and free of maggots.
It is also possible, instead of ashes, to use layers of dry hay, taking the thickness of three fingers, the openings or interstices good filled and stuffed with hay, the upper meat layer covered with good hay and close the box.
(My idea: don’t try this at home.)