A very popular way to keep fresh meat from spoiling was simply to eat it. For urban dwellers, the simple solution was to buy the meal's meat, cook, and eat. Given enough customers, the meat at the butcher's shop will be fresh, even without refrigeration. (In some places, traditional butchers hang skeletons (or just the spines) in front of their shop, showing customers their turnover and therefore freshness.)

Where meat is obtained by hunting or killing one's own domesticated animals, if the animal is too large for the family, sharing it within the community is a common solution. Those who the meat is shared with will reciprocate in the future, if they can. Often, this type of sharing takes place even if the family (or even just the hunter) could eat the whole animal - maintaining social bonds can be worth the price of less meat in your meal.

Meat will keep somewhat longer (perhaps 2-3 days instead of 1 day) if it is cooked. Even if the animal is too large to eat at one meal, it can still be cooked, and the leftovers will be OK for another day or two. The effect of cooking on how long the meat keeps can be increased by protecting the meat from the environment. For example, meat pies baked in a thick crust can keep for a week. Meat cooked in pie crust or a bread crust is also conveniently portable.

The extreme version is potted meat or confits, where the meat is cooked in oil/fat (or sometimes the food is cooked in sugar syrup), and put (while hot) in a container and covered with the oil/fat (or syrup), which will keep air and bacteria from the meat. Meat prepared this way can keep for months, or even over a year. If the meat is salted first, the time it keeps for can be longer.

Other methods, often used in combination, are salting, drying, and fermenting. Salting makes the environment around the meat unsuitable for bacteria that would attack the meat (and is thus related to confits made with sugar syrup). Drying needs to reduce the moisture content below the level at which bacteria can survive in the meat. Fermenting, typically using Lactobacillus, lowers the pH (i.e., makes the meat more acidic), which will stop harmful bacteria. A classic example using all three methods at once is salami. Smoking can be used in combination with these, helping stop bacteria from attacking the meat in the early stages of drying and fermentation. One example of meat that is fermented without salting or smoking is the Faroese skerpikjøt, legs of mutton which are hung up to dry and ferment for many months:

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(an Icelandic version is lightly smoked over a dung fire at the start of the process). A classic example of drying and salting together is jerky. An example of fermentation alone, without salting, drying, or smoking is kiviak (or kiviaq), an Inuit dish from Greenland which is made by stuffing a seal skin with auks (a seabird) and leaving them to ferment for a few months:

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For some foods, the fermentation process can be extreme, producing a paste or sauce (like SE and E Asian fish sauce, or Roman garum and liquamen). These are not made purely for preservation - they are effective flavour enhancers. Meat sauces like these featured in ancient Chinese cooking (and were largely replaced by soy sauce and fermented bean pastes).

The fermentation (to reduce the pH) step can be separated from the meat by pickling the meat in vinegar or wine.

Finally, for traditional methods, if the weather is suitable, meat can be frozen by being left outside in the cold.

There are modern methods that predate refrigeration. Canning was developed for the long-term preservation of food, and is a modern analog of confit/potting, replacing the oil/fat with a sterile sealed container. Even with the advent of widespread refrigeration, canning has continued to be a major method of preserving food.