Pemmican is the ultimate trail bar | SeacoastOnline.com

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With deer season in full swing, it seems like a good time to contemplate pemmican.

I recently attended a workshop on pemmican given by Mark Kutolowski at the Snow Walkers Rendezvous held at the Hulbert Outdoors Center in Fairlee, Vt.

Pemmican is something that always has had a mystical allure for me. It's a compact mix of deer meat, fat and berries — a trail bar, a food that native people used to make, something you ate when you were living off the land.

Because of the meticulous records kept during many northern expeditions, we have a historical record of people surviving pretty much exclusively on pemmican for more than a year without experiencing deficiency diseases.

However, the pemmican has to be made correctly for it to retain necessary vitamins and prevent rancidity.

According to Kutolowski, traditional pemmican is dried meat and rendered fat with very few, if any, berries. The addition of berries or other sweeteners (such as maple syrup) turns this into "white man's" pemmican and reduces the shelf life; a mix of 80 percent calories from fat and 20 percent from protein is ideal.

The reason unsaturated fat turns rancid much more readily than saturated fat has to do with its chemical structure. Oxygen attacks these weaker points in the structure, damaging it in a way that can change its smell, taste and safety for consumption.

One effect of oxidation is that longer carbon chains are degraded into various reaction products; one of which is butyric acid, the chemical that causes the rancid smell. Butyric acid gives old butter, Parmesan cheese and vomit their distinctive aromas. The smell is unpleasant enough that butyric acid has been used in stink bombs; anyone who watches "Whale Wars" knows that stink bombs made out of butyric acid are one of the arsenal of weapons used in the battle against whaling ships.