SC - Re: sca-cooks Re: Spice Use and Food Poisoning, etc.

[Terry Nutter]

Hi, Katerine again.  Philippa asks:

>Just to play devil's advocate....  I quite understand growing up using what
>to some would be "heavy handed" spicing, but for what reason did this heavy
>use of spice start?  It is now tradition, but what were the origins?  And
>even if it weren't to cover the taste of meat going slightly "off", could it
>have been because the wild vegetables and gamier meat had stronger basic
>flavors which are balanced better by stronger spicing?
>Just a thought.

First, where spicing is heavy, the reason is often that people like the
taste.  That simple.  For virtually every major item that occurs in
medieval dishes that call for spice, we also have surviving recipes that
call for few spices or none.  Chicken, in particular, runs the gamut
from unspiced dishes to dishes that call for (some unknown quantity
of) half the spices on the rack.  That suggests that the intent is not
to cover, but to vary the cuisine.

But more crucially: what makes you think that medieval dishes were heavily 
spiced?

Every study I've seen that purports to support that conclusion does so
by looking at household accounts, and distributing total spice purchases
over kitchen purchases.  But that's nonsense, for four separate reasons.  
First, spices were also used in the bakery and brewery.  Second, spices
(especially salt and pepper) were used in preserving -- and soaked out
before eating.  Third, whole spices were sometimes burned on the fire for 
scent.  Fourth, food that comes in as local produce or as rents will not 
appear in the purchases, but constitutes a large part of what was eaten
in non-urban upper class settings.

Every study that actually looks at the spices used for a particualr meal
and the food in it reaches the opposite conclusion: that medieval spicing
was not particualrly heavy handed.

Since recipes by-and-large do not include quantities, you cannot tell
from the recipes themselves.

So: what makes you think that the phenomenon you are trying to explain
ever existed?

Cheers,

- -- Katerine/Terry