SC - corned beef

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Stefan li Rous wrote:
> 
> Margali said:
> > Dried meats are period, corned meats are period, smoked meats are period.
> 
> I remember discussing corned beef earlier on this list. But I don't
> remember anyone giving any evidence that it was done in period. I have
> held off adding a file to the Florilegium with some of the messages
> posted on corned beef because I didn't think it was period.
> 
> If anyone has evidence that it is period or if they can show me I just
> missed it in the earlier discussions, I would appreciate someone
> showing me this.
> 
> Thanks.
>   Stefan

Corned beef, per se, is not period. Dry-cured, brined beef (rubbed with
and packed in salt, possibly some spices and some sugar, and stored in a
barrel or something where the meat juices will run out and create a
pickling brine) is probably period, but the extreme liklihood is that
such meat was grey, not the pink or reddish colors we associate with
corned beef, due to a lack of nitrates in the cure, and a totally
dry-cured beef, like salt cod, only made from beef, was probably more
common as a period salt beef. In some cases saltpetre may occur
naturally as an impurity in the salt, though, in which case the meat
might be red, more or less by accident.

Corned beef _supposedly_ gets its name from the use of gunpowder corns
as a source for nitrates in the brine. By extension, later versions of
corned meats use a coarse-grained "corn" salt. Period salt meats seem to
have used a fine salt as a general rule, hence the references to
"powdered" beef in later sources.

There's a fair amount on period salting in Mark Kurlansky's book "Cod: A
Biography of the Fish that Changed the World".
 
Adamantius
Østgardr, East
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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