system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 How did they marinate meat before the refrigerator became widely available? Are all the recipes with marinated meat post refrigerator?
gpt
There were ice boxes and cold rooms. So it was still possible. They would also primarily season meats during the curing process to preserve them. If the meat was consumed fairly quickly the primary concern was preservation via salting/smoking/whathaveyou.

Keep in mind that food doesn't go bad quite as fast as we think of today, but its much safer to consider it that way. You can have raw meat at room temp for a decent period of time before it becomes really dangerous. Also, death from disease caught from eating contaminated food wasn't exactly uncommon either. Before modern microbiology food had to be noticeably off to our sense before people would consider it bad.