I am surprised canned food is not mentioned more often as a source of nutriment for Londoners. Rats and fungus are nice an all, but there does seem to be a demand for Surface foods. Canned foods should be transportable to London (relatively) cheaply and with low spoilage rates.
In the United States, at least, the production of canned foods boomed after the Civil War: approximately 30 million cans per year, compared to 5 million per year pre-war. [li]
With the caveat that historical niceties have very little to do with the Neath, I’ll observe that it had only been a few years before the Fall that a rather messy scandal involving rotten Navy meat had rather damaged the reputation of tinned foodstuffs. The story of how the tin can nearly wasn't - BBC News
Tinned food in this era makes plenty of sense in the States because of the relative closeness of product (cattle) to the factories. Tinned meat is still economical enough that in our time line, it became cost-effective for Australians to ship to England, and I suppose theoretically that could be done here - but on top of one long sea voyage, you have another long and extremely more dangerous Zee voyage from Italy to Zee (I’ve not heard of the Spiral being used for any kind of serious goods trading; someone do chime in if that’s not so.) So it’s hard to get the goods to the Neath, and no one in London society is likely thrilled about the tinned stuff anyway.
Besides, if there’s so much fungus around then someone’s probably discovered a Quorn-kind-of-thing. If you can flavour mushrooms to taste like any kind of protein, then the big appeal of Surface food is the posh "look at our expensive Real Meat" snobbishness - which would not be served by tinned meat. edited by Teaspoon on 9/5/2016
[quote=Teaspoon]Besides, if there’s so much fungus around then someone’s probably discovered a Quorn-kind-of-thing.[/quote]I’m pretty sure that Mr Murgatroyd either has already done that, or is working on it! ;)
Excellent points, Teaspoon, and thanks for the link. And while canned meat may not make much economical sense, other than as a luxury item (there are rats after all), canned fruits and vegetables would probably be in high demand. I imagine that there would be a secondary market for the cans themselves as a source of metal. Finally, I suggest a neologism for this kind of discussion: Neathonomics.
[quote=Teaspoon]With the caveat that historical niceties have very little to do with the Neath, I’ll observe that it had only been a few years before the Fall that a rather messy scandal involving rotten Navy meat had rather damaged the reputation of tinned foodstuffs. The story of how the tin can nearly wasn't - BBC News
Tinned food in this era makes plenty of sense in the States because of the relative closeness of product (cattle) to the factories. Tinned meat is still economical enough that in our time line, it became cost-effective for Australians to ship to England, and I suppose theoretically that could be done here - but on top of one long sea voyage, you have another long and extremely more dangerous Zee voyage from Italy to Zee (I’ve not heard of the Spiral being used for any kind of serious goods trading; someone do chime in if that’s not so.) So it’s hard to get the goods to the Neath, and no one in London society is likely thrilled about the tinned stuff anyway.
Besides, if there’s so much fungus around then someone’s probably discovered a Quorn-kind-of-thing. If you can flavour mushrooms to taste like any kind of protein, then the big appeal of Surface food is the posh "look at our expensive Real Meat" snobbishness - which would not be served by tinned meat. edited by Teaspoon on 9/5/2016[/quote]
Wow, that was impressive on my part. The question I was trying to pose in my sleep addled state is that if you were to open the tin in a dark room, would that preserve the fish?
See, now I’m imagining a merchant carting some salted zee-beast to the Surface, opening the crate in which it was sealed… and finding a zee-beast-shaped pile of salt.