In the quite-recent past, it was common routine to buy (or harvest) huge (by current well-to-do standards) quantities food "in season", and stockpile it for consumption months later. Historically, cheese exists because it's a way to store the nutritional value of milk - when you don't have access to pasteurization, refrigeration, and modern "steady-ish milk production 365-days-per-year" dairy operations.

And similarly (quite-recent past, before the green revolution and massive farm subsidies), far more of most people's income went toward buying food. So they managed their inventories of stored food pretty carefully - vs. modern "meh, whatever, I'll just buy more" attitudes.