posted on 2021-01-20, 05:27authored byMaurizio Campanelli, Jane Muir, Alice Mora, Daniel Clarke, Darren Griffin
Earth ovens may relate to different ancestral cooking
techniques, serving specific needs and functions. In eastern and south-eastern
Australia, they were a significant element of a thriving pre-colonial
Aboriginal culture. However, today it is extremely rare to find such structures
well preserved.
Based on archaeological and historical records, we
re-created an earth oven with clayey heating elements in Jadawadjali Country,
central western Victoria, and cooked a culturally significant Aboriginal staple
food: the yam daisy or murnong. The aims of the experiment were to explore the
cooking process and investigate the nutritional implications of using this
earthen structure for cooking these tuberous roots.
Nutritional analyses of fresh and cooked samples
of Microseris scapigera (used in place of the traditional M. walteri), reveal
that the cooking process does not increase the chemical potential energy, but
softens and sweetens the solid matter, perhaps providing a desirable and warm
baby food. Detailed carbohydrate analysis revealed that the M. scapigera is a
good source of prebiotic inulin-type fructans (2.71 g/100 g wet wt).