Meats/spices in MA (was Re: SC - I am So Ashamed! (long))

[Jenne Heise]

> I am curious as to when and where beef was served with regularity and to =
> whom.
> The medieval Health Handbook references beef as a difficult to digest meat =
> that should
> be avoided by nobility, at least.  Scully references in Cooking in the =
> Middle Ages that beef was far less common than other meats, likely because =
> of the quality of the meat.  Eating beasts of labor isn't terribly =
> pleasant . . . gotta use 'em to work the land, for milk, etc.  They hadn't =
> bred them for meat quality as we have now.

Well, bearing in mind that if you want to keep your cow in milk, you need
to breed her about every year or so,  you have a lot more male cattle than
be used up as oxen. So you have either veal or beef, depending on what you
call it when you slaughter it. C. Anne Wilson talks about beef, and
Dembinska talks about regulations governing which routes cattle from
different regions could be driven into the city  of Krakow for
slaughtering...

A look over Le Menagiers menus reveals a regularity, if not a superfluity,
of beef. However, skimming some of the menus in Two 15th c. coookbooks
doesn't show ANY beef that I recognized!

> If we are talking about what meats were most popularly served, we have to =
> delineate the who,=20
> when and where.  What was eaten regularly by the Duke of Naples in 1485 CE =
> is going to be different from what was common fare for a serf-farmer in =
> Northumbia in 800 CE.  Glumping them all together will cause fairly =
> useless information and inability to determine much of anything useful.  =
> Somebody, somewhere, sometime likely ate nigh on everything available that =
> didn't eat them first.

Yup.

> As for black pepper, my sensibilities (they could be limited) lead to me =
> to believe that it was not a spice available to what we would call dirt =
> poor peasant in much of the era we discuss.  Kingdoms went to war, de Gama =
> rounded Africa, Columbus went West with a country's fortune all in the =
> name of the pepper trade.  Lower income groups of people, according to =
> Scully in Cooking in the Middle Ages, seem to have been more likely to use =
> mustard seed, grains of paradise and/or cubeb pepper.  A traveler's diary =
> is quoted to have been distressed at the number of 'common' places he ate =
> at in England (14th century I think it was) that used mustard as flavoring.=
>   Mustard was indigenous to some parts of Europe, and could grow wildly =
> with little effort.  Black pepper could have been more regular fare for a =
> growing merchant and working free class in western Europe post 1200, but I =
> haven't read of that. =20

Interresting. Why would foreign spcies such as cubebs and grains of
paradise be cheap, and black pepper be dear? Black pepper, from my
research, would have been less expensive than other spices (such as
cinnamon or cloves) -- the two resources I remember off the top of my head
are C. Anne Wilson, Food and Drink in Britain, and J. O. Swahn, The Lore
of Spices. However, the lore of grains of paradise does indicate that they
were realtively cheap-- we hear of them being cast by maindens from a
'float' type castle in a theatrical entertainment in the 1200's. 

> Mediterranean Trade in Medieval Europe (I sure hope I didn't butcher that =
> title) discusses the cargo manifests coming into European ports from =
> roughly 1200-1600, IRRC, and the tariffs/port taxes levied.  These are =
> based on manuscript and documents from these ships and ports.  One could =
> infer from taxes compared to cargos what was relatively more valuable.  =
> Spices were insanely taxed.  There are often mention of 'tax spies' being =
> used to pay the taxes and pay tributes.  Cinnamon and Black Pepper were =
> the most common tax spices.  I suspect a spice of that regard could be =
> seen as less accessible to land-working/dirt-poor class with little =
> wealth.  That is inference as I have no reference stating what spices were =
> purchased other than by nobility, cooks, guilds and merchants, all persons =
> of significant means.

Well, I don't thein the tax spices were so much in special regard as of a
set, constant value, like salt. It's posisble that the use of peppercorns,
in particular, in rents meant that people of lower means had access to 
that spice.
 -- 
Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at tulgey.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.
"I do my job. I refuse to be responsible for other people's managerial 
hallucinations." -- Lady Jemina Starker