478 food and diet: Europe in that environment Seaweeds and shellfish were collected, and it is still true today that the tastiest wild vegetables can be found only on the shorelines of northern Europe From this time there is also archaeological evidence from the residues in ceramics that milk products were consumed This evidence is confirmed by the high proportion of calf bones excavated from Neolithic camps around Europe, implying both the consumption of veal and the need for a large supply of milk Butter making would have been an important by-product of milk consumption Surplus butter was often placed in wooden barrels and submerged into peat bogs to keep it cool until it was needed Archaeologists have discovered large qualities of this butter, termed bog butter; these discoveries range from a few pounds to as much as a hundredweight of butter at one site in Ireland In the later Iron Age (2,800 years ago) we have the comments of various classical historians about the food of the barbarians they encountered It has been well documented in such texts that the barbarians of Europe loved wine and beer, and this was true for the peoples who preceded them as well The fermenting of liquids to produce alcohol was one of the “Empress” pepper pot, from the Hoxne hoard in Suffolk, Roman Britain; it was buried in the fifth century c.e., when Britain was passing out of the control of Rome (© The Trustees of the British Museum) earliest culinary activities after humans started to settle in one place and grow grains Simple beer was consumed as a regular drink, because, among its many virtues as a beverage, it contained vitamins that were often lacking in a cerealbased diet The discovery of malt may have been the result of storing grain in underground storage pits; the dampness at the base of the pits would have caused the remaining grain to sprout in the spring Attempts to preserve these tasty sprouts possibly led to the creation of malt, the base ingredient of our beers today Once dried, the grain sprouts turn into sweet-smelling malt owing to the concentration of sugars in the dried sprouted grain Malted grain ground into flour and added to hot water makes a pleasant drink A pot of this malt drink left near a fire for a day or two would have produced a simple beer Archaeological evidence of such malt processing was excavated in a burned-down Iron Age house in Denmark at a settlement called Osterbolle, in Jutland Archaeologists discovered two clay pots containing sprouted barley One was set away from the fire, presumably to ferment, and the other was next to the fire to possibly begin the drying process A variety of herbal teas was also consumed, not just for medical purposes but also as a refreshing drink Herbs and flowers were put into a ceramic pot with water, and small redhot stones the size of hen’s eggs were dropped into it Once the water was boiling, the herbs would release their flavors The stone was then taken out and the drink set aside to cool before consuming The most important type of cooking equipment from the earliest times was hot stones used to heat water Possibly one of the first skills a prehistoric child would learn was the difference between igneous stones, formed as molten rock cools and hardens, and sedimentary stones, formed by deposits of sediment in a seabed Having been subjected to extreme heat, igneous rock can withstand the heat of a fire Sedimentary rock, on the other hand, absorbs liquid readily; if such stones are put into a fire to heat, the water inside can expand and cause the stone to explode, possibly injuring those around the fire Volcanic stones, however, can be heated to red hot and dropped into water pits many times before they begin to crack and become unusable Huge crescent-shaped mounds of these fire-cracked stones are found around Europe In Ireland these sites are called Fulachta Fliadh, meaning “cooking places” in Gaelic In the middle of these mounds of stones is usually found a rectangular wood-lined pit dug into the water table In The History of Ireland (1908) Geoff rey Keating describes the method Early hunters would wrap meat in moorland grasses and drop it into water pits with hot stones to cook Cooking experiments have shown that when red-hot stones are added to water, it begins to boil within minutes Odd stones then would be added over the course of hours to keep the water simmering until the meat was cooked The grass was wrapped around the meat to prevent ash and grit from the stones from getting into the cooking meat