Spice Use and Food Poisoning, etc.

[Philip W. Troy]

Sue Wensel wrote:
> 
> Adamantius,
> 
> I agree:  I don't think that spices were necessarily used to cover *spoiled*
> meat; however, I do think that spices were in part used to cover slightly, to
> more than slightly, off flavors.   I will grant that the spices most likely to
> be used were the cheapest -- not saffron and its ilk.

Seems like ginger and pepper figure heavily for this, if you look at the
recipes for recovering tainted venison, for instance. Also vinegar. Are
we pickling after the fact here? Actually, my point was that we can't
really know what was regarded as an "off flavor"; that's pretty
subjective. Obviously the concept was known, but whether it corresponded
closely to what we would regard as an off flavor, and whether the spices
necessary to mask  it bore much relation to ours, is unknown.
> 
> To take on your point about hanging meat to tenderize them -- that is often
> one reason given; however, as an avid consumer of venison, I have never
> noticed a difference between meat hung for a couple of days and meat not.  The
> difference is in the cooking.

The correlation between hanging and tenderness is in connection with
rigor mortis. Enzymes in the muscle tissue act to break it down over
time. Depending on the size of the animal, rigor sets in after an hour
or two in some cases, while hanging the meat to allow it to soften up
again could take upwards of three weeks. Obviously the effect is
different, depending on the temperature of storage. 
> 
> Regarding the issue of bakers in France, that point was to support the fact
> that people did use old meat, sometimes not being terribly careful enough
> about how old it was.  (BTW: The author in Savoring the Past also mentions the
> use of spices for jazzing up aging food and leftovers.)

Understood. People did occasionally use old meat, but that would have
been to reduce loss for some kind of middleman, as in the case of
butchers, and, of course, pastrycooks, who got in a supply of meat for a
given time, with no sure idea of how long it would take to sell. It is
only the idea that this was a universally common thing that I take issue
with. I don't think that it was common for people to be faced with such
meat in the seasons where the weather was warm. More likely in the
spring and summer there would be salt meats and fish (which the poor
were glad to get and the rich were heartily sick of after a few months)
supplemented by freshly killed poultry and small game like rabbits,
which were not generally hung for very long, if at all. Compare the
feast menus with the dates during the year, and you'll see this. As for
Ms. Wheaton, if I remember correctly, she merely repeats the classic
argument regarding heavily spiced food, without really providing any of
her own opinion on the subject, let alone support for one theory or
another. 
> 
> That said,  I was going on to point out other reasons why spices were used
> heavily at times.  I apologize that this was not clear in my post.

Again, heavy is a relative term. Sorry if I misunderstood you. 

> Actually, there are some ways -- perhaps not the best -- to determine how much
> of different spices were used.  What we can do, as suggested in Savouring the
> Past, is look at the household bills and see where the increases in spending
> for spices occurred.  What Savouring pointed out was that we could see
> increases in spending and that these increases were more than could be
> accounted for in just increased amounts of food.  In addition, the author
> quotes a few steward diaries complaining about the cooks' heavy hand.  Now
> just how heavy that was to our modern palates is hard to say, but we do have
> some recipies that serve as a starting point.

That's true. We do have an idea of how much of certain spices were used
over a given time by various household accounts (probably Elinor
Fettiplace is the clearest source on this) but we need to keep in mind
the size of the households involved, and the amount of entertaining they
did. The purchase of x ounces of pepper, for, say, a two-month period
isn't out of proportion with the amount of beef purchased for a similar
period, even by modern standards. Another possibility is that the spices
we are able to purchase are far fresher and stronger than the ones used
in period, having been transported circuitously in sacks in the holds of
ships, or often over land through deserts. This would have to have a
serious effect on their potency, and if more were used to compensate, it
seems pretty reasonable. I know that Ms. Wheaton feels that the spice
purchase increases were disproportionate to the overall food purchases,
but that is failing to acount for decreased potency, and also for the
fact that spices were also used extensively for brewing and other
non-culinary purposes.

Ah, well.

regards,
Adamantius