Spice Use and Food Poisoning, etc.

[Philip W. Troy]

I was hoping we wouldn't get into this...

Sue Wensel wrote:

> 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.

True. Primarily the reason for this was (and still is) for tenderness.
The fact that this also produces a flavor some people enjoy is
secondary, although some people did hang their meats for the flavor they
discovered it produced. Bear in mind that the test for whether a piece
of game is sufficiently hung relies on testing it for
softness/tenderness, not on whether it smells bad. Generally it involves
the ease with which feathers can be plucked.   


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.

I don't buy this.  On an industrial scale, the meat that is aged before
sale is beef (and some lamb).  However, beef is aged under rather
strictly controlled temperature and humidity conditions. Much of it is
aged in the form of vacuum-sealed primary and secondary cuts, rather
than as sides of beef. The higher incidence of salmonella and e-coli
infection of various meats is almost entirely due to mechanized
processing at improperly cleaned plants.
> 
>         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.

Quite possible.
> 
> 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.

Okay. You are employing some interesting logic here. You seem to be
saying, in effect, that  copious spice use was a result of food tainted
to varying extents. In support of this, you raise the issue that
preventive measures were taken in France, which doesn't necessarily
support claims made (or not made, in this case) by Michael Best, who is
basing his supposed argument only on the fact that numerous spice names
appear in some of Markham's recipes, which describe spice use in late
period England.

What Best says is,
	"Markham's housewife prepared food which was not only sweet, but, it
seems, highly seasoned. Virtually every recipe requires that a number of
herbs or spices - frequently both herbs and spices - be added. The
housewife's garden would of course have supplied the herbs, and, like
sugar, spices had become more available ans somewhat cheaper with the
development of the spice trade. However, though many different spices
are recommended for a typical recipe, there is no reason to believe that
the quantities used were large; prices were still high enough to
discourage extravagance. It is sometimes said that the use of spices was
stimulated by the need to mask the flavour of meat that was 'far from
fresh,' but if this were so it is hard to see why spiced meat dishes
declined in favour over the next 200 years without any improvement in
technique for preserving meat. It is more likely that spices were used
so ubiquitously for the same reason that sugar appeared in so many
recipes; they were suddenly available to the general public because of
the increase of trade, and it was a period in which there was an
increased receptivity to new things - new ideas, new religions, new
political systems, and, it seems, new flavours. The frequency with which
certain combinations of spices were used suggests that the cook may have
prepared a blend of ground spices to add to the dishes, along the lines
of the powders 'fort' and 'douce' of medieval cookery; a jar containing
some combination of powdered cloves, mace, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger
would have been used in many recipes."

To me, this reads as a debunking of some popular but erroneous beliefs,
not support of them. In addition, Best is speaking of a work written at
the dawn of the modern age in England, not the middle ages, regardless
of where the SCA chooses to draw its cutoff date. 
> 
> 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.

I feel that the _presence_ of the spices might indicate status, but
there being no indication in the recipes of how much of any of them were
used, it is impossible to say that they were used in a heavy-handed
fashion. We know they were expensive, and have a fair idea of why. Those
things, along with the fact that spice powders were generally sprinkled
on top of food in the Middle Ages, rather than being mixed in, not to
mention Le Menagier's warning about removing and re-using the cloves
from a particular dish, among other of his helpful hints on spice
conservation, suggests that spice use was not heavy-handed, at least not
in France in the 1380's or '90's. This seems far more likely to be a
proper indicator of overall medieval practice, if there ever was such a
thing, than an English work of the turn of the seventeenth century.

Phew! Sorry to jump on folks about this. Just one of my buttons. 
 
Adamantius