SC - Spiced meat

[Kallyr at aol.com]

In a message dated 98-07-17 21:37:01 EDT, Wolfmother wrote:

<< Therefore, I suspect that the heavily-spiced meat recipes
 from the earliest medieval cooking texts were originally used for game meats,
 not domesticated ones.  >>

Now this discusson is getting interesting.  I think this is an intriguing
possibility.  Also, we have to remember that at certain times of year much of
the meat consumed was preserved by salt, smoke, sugar &/or
pickling/fermentation.  Here our discussion loops back to the jerky one and
also an earlier comment from Elizabeth that meat preserved with Lord's Salt
gets pretty tiring after a week.  Whatever the popular preparations of a place
& time, surely variations from it would be welcome after a few weeks.  This
may also explain the use of vinegar and other tart sauce ingredients-- to
counterbalance the flavor of salty meat.  Modern recipe examples are
sauerkraut paired with ham and lemon juice in ham flavored split pea soup.

>From yet another angle, I attended a class at Pennsic last year about how both
cooking methods (how to prepare, i.e. boil, bake, fry) and food combinations
including spicing were selected to balance the food's qualities as dicatated
by the "medical" theory of the four humours.  Foods which were considered to
have a "hot and dry" nature would be boiled or fried in oil rather than baked,
etc.  Unfortunately, the teacher basically said that she read a book about
this and it was interesting, but did not pass on any information about what
goes with what using this method.

Spice is the wit of life,  ~~Minna Gantz <KALLYR at AOL>COM>
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