SC - nasty medieval food was re: pre 1500 cookery

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Daniel Serra wrote:

> Though none would admit to it, there is still a sentiment of the dark ages
> among some archaeologist, still a perception of the early medieval world
> as being dull, dark and damp.

Uh huh. Perceptions such as this are often hogwash, of course. Measuring
the level of creativity of a cuisine based on pertinent archaeological
finds, against what is available to the modern person, is pretty
illogical, and can lead to some pretty weird, and erroneous,
conclusions. I mean, I'm not comfortably sure which of the several
naughty "-isms" we are seeing here, but it clearly is flawed thinking.
Are we proceeding along the lines of an argument that goes that a
cuisine that appears to lack extensive use of allspice, cloves, black,
white, green, or pink peppercorns, dried ginger, saffron, and a plethora
of other spices from the Far East, is likely to be boring?

Yeah, Polish food is boring, all right. Eastern Europe. Snore.
Nineteenth-century Japan. Yawn.
> 
> I am currently studying the archaeology of Anglo-Saxon society, and the
> amount of prejudices that are present among many of the authors are
> scaring. In a discussion of a trade center in the 8th century, Hodges (the
> anglo saxon achievement - a dreeadful book) mentions in a brief passage
> how dull the food must have been, just after accounting for the ecological
> evidence from the place. This in a place were even foreign spices were
> present.
> 
> In other ecological studies though evidence has been put forth for various
> sorts of domestic herbs and plants...but since this is an ecological study
> it did not discuss the frames of what it proved, just presenting the facts
> (rackham &rackham  Economy and Ecology in  anglo saxon)
> 
> So unfortunately I would say that we owe much of this sentiments,
> prejudices to the heavy weight archaeologists and historians..
> Hopefully this will change as archaeology is taking different evidence in
> account, and archaeologists are less dependent on the predecessing giants

Pre-deceasing giants, was that? I was curious, as a matter of fact, how
much of the scholarship you refer to is derived from a culture which
until fairly recently felt that the English had a moral imnperative to
civilize the world, and that anything "foreign", meaning anything
non-English, even if the milieu was Bombay or the Sudan, was, by
definition, uncivilized. I have seen examples of such attitudes
expressed by the English, and, unfortunately, Americans as well, as
recently as the 1950's or '60's. More recently in the case of Americans.
Like yesterday, for instance.

So, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the idea expressed, in the
1930's or so, that the Anglo-Saxons, lacking, as they did, bangers and
mashed, subsisted on a very boring diet indeed.
 

Adamantius
troy at asan.com
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