Why do many traditional cuisines rely so heavily on meat even though it has been scarce for most of history?
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Meat is literally everywhere plants are. It’s not that hard to trap fish, fieldmice, squirrels, rabbit, etc.
Not to mention straight up shooting big game.
The problem is likely to be “what is traditional cuisine?”. And here we have an implicit bias – almost a survivorship bias.
Meat, in poor areas, is a luxury and usually something celebrated over. Because of that it sticks in the memory and is revered. Over time, it becomes the “traditional dish” because it was uncommon to have and only eaten during celebrations. It takes on an emotional and social significance of its own.
You are right that meat was a luxury for many cultures and that is probably exactly why meat dishes become exemplified. Preparing the dish was important, learning how to cook it properly was important etc etc.
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As it’s often not the everyday traditional cuisine, but a modern take on it. There’s often not a lot of meat in the older poorer kinds of food.
Meat was for the ones with money.
I’m sorry where did you get this idea or information that meat has been scarce throughout history? Humans evolved eating both meat and vegetables/fruit. Even some of our earlier ancestors like Homo Habilis (who lived approximately 2.3 mya) were known to eat lots of meat. We have archeological evidence of this.
One thing is that meat on the whole hasn’t necessarily been incredibly scarce, but rather the good cuts have. Many “peasant dishes” use offal and the sort of leftover cuts, which the richer folk didn’t bother with, so you get a lot of slow-cooked stews and such to soften the meat up.
A sidenote on poor people’s food: Back in the 18th century, lobster was considered “the poor man’s chicken” in the US. It was frowned upon so much, that when it was used as prison food, the practise of over-serving it was deemed “cruel and unusual” and laws were enacted against doing so.
Because dishes that are called “traditional” may not necessarily have been everyday dishes eaten by the general peasants. They could be traditional for wealthier people, or traditional for holidays, or traditional for “whenever we have meat.” Average everyday meals for regular people tend to be unremarkable even in today’s world. Hamburger Helper may be a “traditional” Midwestern American meal for a working class person, but no one is going to rave about it the way they rave about Thanksgiving turkey. Same with whatever vegetable and grain people were eating day in and day out in the olden days.
And how scarce meat is depends a lot on the exact culture we’re discussing, and exactly what meat we are talking about. Meat being less common than a modern western diet simply means they couldn’t eat red meat daily/multiple times a week. Some cultures may have been eating meat fairly regularly, just not necessarily every day or many times a week.
Because what you’re eating is party food.
Traditional cultures mostly ate a starch and a protein. So rice and beans or something.
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