Subject: Re: SC - Re: Substitutions (Raggum Fraggum)

[Philip & Susan Troy]

> Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 02:20:37 EDT
> From: CBlackwill at aol.com
> Subject: Re: SC - Re: Substitutions
> 
> In a message dated 4/27/00 6:28:03 PM Pacific Daylight Time, allilyn at juno.com 
> writes:
> 
> > 
> >  BTW, someone mentioned substituting pork for beef.  Don't think that
> >  would have happened: beef was hot and dry, pork was cold and moist.  By
> >  the time you changed the cooking methods and the liquids, seasonings and
> >  sauces, you had a different recipe.
> >  
> 
> Im curious to know, and see documentation regarding, how prevailant "humoral 
> theory" was in medieval cuisine.  Was it actually the guiding force that 
> people seem to think it was?  Or was it merely a case of "oh, yeah...keep in 
> mind humoral theory if you want to..."?  This is a serious question.  I would 
> like to know, and do not have the resources (yet) to make an assessment.
> 
> Balthazar of Blackmoor

It probably wasn't a universally guiding force then any more than
considerations regarding cholesterol and food additives are now. Most of
us disobey our doctors now and then. Charlemagne did in the matter of
roast meats versus boiled.

On the other hand, Anthimus (who was himself, of course, a doctor),
Platina, Maynard Mayneri (whassisname, the Opusculum Saporibus guy) and
Chiquart all make specific references to humoral qualities of foods, and
Taillevent, in his sometimes rather peculiar-seeming combinations of
frying, parboiling, and roasting the same piece of meat, for example,
seems as if he probably was practicing a tradition of medically-informed
cookery, even if he didn't know that that's what he was doing. This
doesn't prove or even suggest it was universal, though. But it existed.

Another consideration is that sometimes personal and public tastes are
based on what I can only call medical _prejudices_. F'rinstance, one of
the yummy treats advocated by Dr. Atkins is pieces of cheddar cheese
wrapped completely in bacon and deep-fried. Its medical advisability can
be described simply by saying doctors disagree wildly, but I, for one,
find it repulsive, and a part of the problem is that somehow I've been
conditioned to _feel_ my arteries harden at even the thought of such a
food. I wonder if perhaps, as today, people in period did ignore the
advice of their doctors, but had their tastes in food shaped to some
extent by medical opinion anyway.

Adamantius (who coulda sworn he'd promised not to respond to anything
else in this thread...)
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com