SC - Quantities of salt and spices used.

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Matthew Legge wrote:
> 
> I didn't really understand what other people meant when they described
> "conspicuous consumption" of spices (pun intended - sorry:) until I had
> tasted one of these at a dinner before the feast (we were testing the
> unfamiliar recipies).

Perhaps the amount of spices used in total was a bit too much for a
relatively bland tart filling.
> 
> What I would like to clear up is whether this heavy use of flavourings was
> an every day occurrance or if it was just to impress visitors/guests? The
> other way of thinking of this might be to ask whether the recipies that
> survived for us to read and interpret were the "special" ones, with the
> others being so routine that the cooks of the time did not think it was
> necessary to commit them to paper?

Please don't take this the wrong way, but can you explain the rationale
behind the idea that there was heavy use of flavorings? Certainly there
are some recipes that call for a lot of different spices, but no
quantities are mentioned in most of them, and along similar lines,
modern cooking from, say, Indonesia calls for a lot of different spices,
but some of the food is surprisingly subtle. Most of the recipes in,
say, The Forme of Cury, mention two or three spices, or sometimes it
will just say, "powder of spices", "powder of pepper", or some such phrase.

Given the expense of several of the more commonly-called-for spices,
which were brought overland on long journeys from far away, it's fairly
reasonable to assume that conspicuous consumption, while not unheard of,
was probably pretty rare. There are some wonderful hints in Le Menagier
de Paris about using spices frugally. Of course, he was not royalty, but
then the medical advisors of royalty might have had a thing or two to
say about excessive spice use too.

Adamantius
Østgardr, East
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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