SC - Re:

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Tim Wyatt wrote:
 
> Until 1968, very few cases of PSP were recorded in the medical literature of
> the world, although the problem was well known in California and eastern and
> western Canada. In Europe less than a dozen outbreaks are known prior to
> 1968.
<snip>
> Do old cookery books warn about this problem?

Not as far as I know. If you juxtapose the above statements with your
question, it seems fairly clear why. Another reason might be that once a
cook gets hold of shellfish, there's little the cook can do to detect
the problem before serving the fish and waiting for symptoms to appear,
and precious little they could do if symptoms did appear. As a result, I
wonder if the information would have been better disseminated, if it was
known, in other surviving books than cookery books.
 
> By way of examples, a few years ago I was told there is no PSP in Sweden
> because Swedes don't eat mussels. Is that true? Are there no mussel recipes
> in Swedish cookery books? In the Philippines, green mussels are a recent
> addition to the diet, and PSP seems to have increased in parallel with the
> quantities produced by farms there. There are apparently no taboos
> associated with eating green mussels. In Europe there is a tradition of not
> eating shellfish unless there is an R in the month, and it is a fact that
> the PSP risk season is mainly from May to August. It "works" for many
> western European languages! But is that the real source of the R taboo?
> Another thing, in clams much of the toxin is found in the coral, so that
> they are safer to eat if that part is removed. Is removing the coral from
> clams a matter of squeamishness or does it have practical value?

As far as I know, the tradition about an "R" in the name of the month
applies to oysters, not to shellfish in general. Certainly there are
enough similarities in bivalve pathology to make it likely they'd share
some diseases, but I'm no clam doctor. I confess I haven't seen any
noticable coral in clams, and another consideration might be that clams
don't seem to be nearly as popular in Europe as oysters, scallops and
mussels, and this appears to have been the case in the SCA's period as
well. I can't think of a single clam recipe, offhand, in medieval or
Renaissance European recipes that I've seen, and the only reference to
clams in a food-related text I can think of is a 15th century English
recipe that descibes sugar as becoming "clammy". Now I _have_ seen coral
in scallops, and I suppose it's possible, and likely, that clams were
eaten in situations outside of the parameters set and covered by period
cookbooks (i.e. non-aristocratic foodways and the diets of people either
living near or visiting the seaside may include clams as a matter of
course, but the shellfish middens that have been found seem to be mostly
oyster shells). 
> 
> I guess I've said enough to provoke anyone interested in this little
> (academic!) problem, and look forward to any responses you may have. Perhaps
> I can add one more detail though. Puffer fish are an expensive dish in
> Tokyo, and female puffer fish contain PSP toxins when they are ripe. They
> release them to attract the males which I presume are immune to the toxic
> effects. I have heard that the skill of the puffer fish chef lies in
> blending the correct quantity of toxic liver with the meat, so that the
> consumer gets a nice buzz but not total paralysis! Comments on that too?
> Could we get drunk on June mussels? Much cheaper than whiskey!

If that were true, or at least widely known, I supect it wouldn't remain
cheaper for long. Not all species of puffer fish are severely toxic, by
the way. We used to be able to catch them in huge numbers off the coast
of Long Island (the Northern Puffer or blowfish) when I was a boy, and
they were regarded as a sort of "trash fish" by some, in spite of
excellent meat and an ingenious and safe method of cleaning them that
didn't damage the liver of the fish.  Eventually they became
aggressively harvested and nearly extinct in the area, but it was kind
of funny to see the weird-looking little fish I used to catch as a kid,
on the fishmonger's slab for $12 a pound.
  
G. Tacitus Adamantius
Østgardr, East
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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