SC - Jerked Meat

[Michael F. Gunter]

Anne-Marie Rousseau wrote:
> 
> My favorite debunker of the spoiled food myth is to point out that we have
> shopping lists for big households and when you look at the amount of spice
> they buy, it really isnt that much. Where lots of people get confused is in
> the variety and number of DIFFERENT spices (especially those of the exotic
> garlic salt crowd). Medieval food often (but not always) will call for
> small amounts of lots of different things. This seems exotic until you look
> at the lable of a Heinz 57 bottle, or read the ingredients of your Kentucky
> Fried Chicken. Your basic ketsup has far more types of spices in it, say,
> than your basic egredouce.

Yeah, if you look at a source like Le Menagier, who, while not royalty
or anything, seems to have been well-to-do, the evidence found in his
work seems to suggest extreme frugality with spices (including
suggestons for best ways to re-use the cloves, etc., how to clean the
last bit of powdered pepper out of your mortar so it doesn't go to
waste, and a number of other indicators that suggest that while a number
of spices were used, even by the "middle class", their use was not
profligate). Add to that the fact that it seems evident that there were
definite seasons for slaughtering several farm animals, as well as for
hunting game, and the picture is much more of a society whose
consumption of fresh meat was centered on the colder months of the year,
say, November to February.

Following that you have Lent, with meat-eating severly curtailed, if not
entirely eliminated, for a month and a half or so. That leaves us with
half of spring and the summer to be eating this alleged rotten meat, in
spite of the fact that we know a lot of salt meat was eaten at these
times, together with the fresh meat of smaller domestic animals and
game, like chickens and rabbits. The recipes I have seen that are
specifically identified as being for summer seem to center on chicken
and capon, which would be killed on an as-needed basis.

Finally, there are the recorded laws against disguising day-old meat as
fresh, with pretty stiff penalties, especially for those who processed
it in things like pies to make the freshness, or lack thereof, a more
burred issue.

I just can't buy the idea that there was so much meat just lying around
going off.      
 
> --Anne-Marie, who actually prefers the flavor of medieval spicing to modern
> in many cases. Try some cinnamon in your spagetti sauce!

Oh, those wacky Greeks ;  ) ! What won't they think of next???

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