SC - Re: SCA myths

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Stephen Bloch wrote, quoting somebody or other:
> 
> Adamantius quoted someone on the SCA-ARTS list.  For the most part, I
> agree with what Adamantius says, so I've snipped it.  Here are some
> further comments:
> 
> > > Because of the spoilage speed, meat of all kinds was eaten
> > > the same day it was slaughtered. Mundanely, we prefer ours to have a
> > > slightly "aged" (spelled 'controlled spoilage') flavor. Theirs would taste
> > > "gamey" by comparison.
> 
> Adamantius, since you know more about meats than many of us, could
> you comment on this particular point?

Some game could have been eaten the day it was killed, but not all.
Also, since the term used is "slaughtered", rather than "hunted" or
simply killed, I feel it is fair to assume the writer is talking about
domestic animals. Larger animals like beef and mutton would almost
certainly have been hung: extant slaughtering accounts suggest that
there was a standard operating procedure regarding what would be eaten
first, and how. The various viscera, blood, etc, would have either been
eaten almost immediately, or processed and cooked in the form of
sausages and such. Even then they wouldn't have been expected to keep
more than a few days.

The hanging, or aging, of meat has more to do with rigor mortis than
with a taste for controlled spoilage. Depending on various factors,
rigor mortis, the stiffening of certain muscles after death, will set in
within about eight hours or less. Meat in rigor mortis is referred to as
"green", and is EXTREMELY tough.

Animals to be roasted whole, or broken up and cooked immediately after
slaughter, don't need to be hung. This might include the animals listed
in the beginning of Chiquart's "Fait du Cuisine". On the other hand,
butcher's meat, with an uncertain time and date of purchase, would have
had to be hung. As for the question of spoilage, it's no accident that
farmers seem to have done the majority of their slaughtering in the late
autmn and early winter, putting up much of the meat in salt for use at
other times of the year. When meat was allowed at all, those who could
get it had a choice of things like salt beef or pork, or a  supplement
of  freshly slaughtered smaller animals like lamb, veal, and chicken.
Other possibilities include freshly captured game and locally raised
coneys, killed to order in a market stall or shop.

I just don't buy the whole spoilage argument.
> 
> > >  Common preservation technique was by salting, a
> > > process which normally required a minimum of three days of soaking in fresh
> > > water changed every six hours to remove the salt. Even still, it was overly
> > > salty.
> 
> I can imagine finding textual support for the first sentence, although
> I'm not sure I've actually seen it.  The second sentence, it seems to me,
> could be supported only through experiment, and then would be subject
> to the criticism that one might have done the salting and/or rinsing
> incorrectly.

That, and the fact that "overly salty" is an almost meaningless relative
term.

> I think the "proliferation of fruited meats" is more due to _Fabulous
> Feasts_ than to any medieval dietary habit.  Yes, currants often appear
> in the same recipe with pork.  But then, apples often appear with pork,
> and pineapple with ham, in modern cooking.  I think Madeleine Pelner
> Cosman saw a few recipes calling for fruit where she didn't expect it,
> and exaggerated the difference tenfold.

It may be significant that the dried fruits used were also fairly
opulent imports, which might have been used to augment the even more
expensive sugar in some of the various baked meats.
> 
> > > Vegetables were ALWAYS cooked, generally boiled, and usually overdone by our
> > > standards. Instead of potatoes, they ate turnips. They salt preserved their
> > > vegetables too, in the manner of pickling. Even their grains were boiled for
> > > eating, flavored with a touch of salt and maybe some butter.
> >
> > False. Which I could be more diplomatic about this, but I can't. Some
> > vegetables were often eaten raw. It's just that no sensible cook bothers
> > to write down a recipe for carrot sticks....
> 
> Although I consider it quite likely that "some vegetables were often
> eaten raw" (and fruits, for that matter, although medieval medical books
> seem to consider both unhealthy), and that the "recipes" were too simple
> to write down, I wonder what evidence we DO have for the practice.

Regrettably, most of the evidence is negative, but evidence nonetheless.
As was pointed out elsewhere today, we know that recipes for raw sallets
exist from period, and we have recorded medical warnings against the
practice of eating raw fruit. The warnings wouldn't exist if no one ever
did this. Then there are the various wines and ciders, drunk fresh from
the press in some cases. They aren't cooked. Add to that the fact that
some sectors of society were hard-pressed at times to obtain firewood.
One of the Norman forest laws, if I remember correctly, had to do with
villeins picking up fallen branches for firewood, rather than cutting
down trees. Just how would every apple have been cooked, anyway?

> sauces (real sauces, not hunger or freshness) from the 14th and 15th
> centuries.  Before that, we don't have many surviving recipes for
> ANYTHING (at least in Christian Europe), so we can conclude neither the
> existence nor the nonexistence of interesting sauces.

And, with respect to Mar Joshua's area of specialization, there are
PLENTY of interesting sauces from the cultures of non-Christian Europe,
many of which are still being eaten today, in only slightly modified
form. Including, by the way, a recognizable relative of mayonnaise. 
> 
> > > The fruit dishes were all highly seasonal
> > > and thus more of a treat than expected. And of course, the church placed
> > > some highly restrictive laws on what could be eaten at what time of year as
> > > well.

Yeah yeah yeah, the big bad Church, despoiler of everything fun. I don't
recall fruit was ever in question for Lenten, fast, feast, meat, fish,
or Ember day laws enacted by the Church. Don't recall any local
sumptuary laws either.
> 
> Fresh fruit is highly seasonal.  Dried fruit is not.  Hence quince
> pastes and all those recipes calling for raysons of Corance.  As for the
> church dietary laws, it's not clear that those ever prevented anybody
> from serving flavorful food -- just not food containing meat (or
> whatever this particular day forbade).
 
> By the way, for those of us in mathematics, "periodicity" really does mean
> something repeating itself regularly.  Sorta like this argument :-)
> 

I think perhaps they're trying to catch us napping and slip some
doggerel past us...

Adamantius
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================