Re- SC - medieval "spam"?

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Tyrca at aol.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 97-10-26 06:05:17 EST, Admantius wrote:
> 
> << The sour flavor you taste in things like corned beef and some
>  salt pork is the acid produced by the bacteria in the brine. >>
> 
> Now I am confused.  I was under the impression that corned beef was soaked in
> a weak lye solution to partially cook/preserve it.  Am I wrong?  I pastrami
> almost the same thing?  All I know is what I find in preshrunk plastic wrap
> in the supermarket.

Corned beef is covered with a mixture of dry coarse salt and various
flavorings and spices. The cure sometimes (always, commercially, it
seems) has saltpeter added to it. One common form/source of saltpeter
avialable to the military supply crews who perfected the process of
"corning" was gunpowder, which comes in little kernels or corns, hence
the name. Previously salt beef was either known as salt beef or powdered
beef.

Anyway, the beef gets packed into a barrel with the salt, flavorings,
etc., and begins to give off a good deal of its own water, which turns
the salt into brine. Lactobacilli, which can survive quite well in salty
conditions, grow, and add their own little chemical processes to the
soup. The final effect, overall, is that the meat gets preserved in salt
and acid,  and flavored with salt, spices, and a bit of lactic acid.

Pastrami is originally a Turkish dish called bastourma, generally a sort
of salted, spiced, and air-dried beef. Kinda like cappicola made from
beef, or bresaeola, which is essentially a beef filet turned into
prosciutto, if you can get past the imagery and into the reality of it.

What we call pastrami in the USA, is salt-cured beef, similar to corned
beef (both are traditionally brisket, although wimps prefer bottom
round), that is then coated with some coarse black pepper and
cold-smoked for a while. It is then traditionally steamed to cook, since
boiling it, as one would with corned beef, would remove the outer
coating of smoky stuff and pepper.

Not quite sure where lye enters into any of this, but there are more
things in Heaven and Earth, etc.

Adamantius   
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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