Salted fish

So he decides over here to eat something very salty, for example, a very salty fish.

Mishnah says, [speaking foreign language] If they bring to this person who's trying to balance out all the sweet fruit, uh, fruits that he ate all day with something salty, so he decides to have the salted fish, but that salted fish is unable to be consumed unless somebody has pat with it.

He can't just eat the salty item on its own.

It'll be too tough to get down, so he has it with a piece of bread.

And depending on how this is put together, uh, it can actually be liquefied fish itself because the fish, uh, if they're exposed to salt water for a very long time, actually become, you know, essentially like kind of like a soupy mixture, which can then be used like as anchovy butter and kinds of things like that.

But let's have a very quick lo-- quick look at the role of fish in diet and specifically how salted fish was used.

Here's a picture of ancient Egyptians actually producing fish.

Fish was an extremely important source of protein in the ancient world.

Um, although it's interesting to note that fresh fish was actually quite a bit of a delicacy and was reserved for the most part for higher level people with, um, greater amounts of disposable wealth.

Um, most people ate a lot more dried fish or salted fish, which could be produced in two different ways.

You could either dry it with salt over a very long time until finally it was, it was-- could be preserved for extensive periods of time without refrigeration, of course, which wouldn't exist for quite a while.

Um, or you could salt it very lightly, and that would extend its life at least until Kiddush, uh, where you would have like, you know, like herring and things like that, where it would last a little longer without refrigeration, but there's no way it would last, uh, for a very long time.