Re(2): I'm New Here Too

[Sue Wensel]

Tammy McJannet wrote:
> 
> Hi.  I am also new to this list - as it seems many are today.  My
> interest in medieval cookery is more for mundane purposes at this time,
> however, once upon a time (and I expect in the future) I
> "feastocratted" a bit and would like to keep this interest alive.  I
> love the use of spices in period (although I'm glad our food is fresh
> enough not to need it for reasons other than taste).

Gideanus Tacitus Adamantius replied:

>One of the things you'll find as you delve deeper into the repertoire of
>medieval cookery is that the idea of copious spice use to disguise the
>"off" flavors of spoiled food is, in almost every case, an unjustifiable
>myth. People didn't like food poisoning any better then than they do
>now: they may not necessarily have understood how and why food poisoning
>occurs (although I understand Friar Bacon did experiments with
>refrigeration and freezing in the thirteenth century or so) but trial
>and error take on a whole new meaning with life and death on the line.

Food, especially meat (though I wouldn't trust birds), can taste off before
they are actually spoiled.  In fact, with some meats such as venison, people
let it "cure" for a few days before they cook it.  In the modern day, this
leads to a higher incidence of food poisoning for two reasons:

	1.	The microbes are more prevalent.
		Just as we have a high incidence of salmonella infection of chickens,
		which is why we have to cook them more thoroughly, and we have an
		increase in the incidence of E coli infection now than we did even
		20 years ago, I believe that we have a higher incidence of infection
		of our food supply now than we did 500 years ago.

	2.	We are less resistant.
		I also believe that our resistance to the little buggers has been
		reduced by our cleanliness.  The polio epidemic in the earlier parts
		of this century were definitely contributed to by our cleanliness --
		children did not get exposed to the virus when they were infants and 
		could more safely gain immunity from the exposure.  I think we can 
		see much the same trend with food poisoning.

Read Michael Best's introduction to Markham's The English Housewife. He
clearly postulates that heavy-handed spicing is to cover "off" flavors of food
soon to spoil.  I don't think he was saying that they covered the flavors of
spoiled food, although that did happen as well.  In France, they passed laws
to prevent bakers from serving left-overs at reduced prices (by outlawing the
practice of selling left-overs/scraps and by setting minimum prices) because
of the outbreaks of deadly food poisoning.

In addition, heavy-handed spicing was a status symbol -- you could afford the
luxuries of such expensive spices and you could afford your cook a heavy hand
with such goodies.

Derdriu