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

[Nick Sasso]

Jenne Heise wrote: 
> 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...

Not familiar with Dembinska or Eastern Europe, so I cannot comment on
the veracity of that reference.  If that is The recent Polish 'cookbook'
I'm curious what the original reference is and what time period is
discussed.  Veal is different than beef.  recipes in English 15th
century texts (Curye on English and 2 15th) distinguish veal when they
mean veal.  _History of Food_  has some good information and some less
supported information.  some is downright wrong.  I'll look at the
references to beef in my copy to see what you are bringing up.  This is
fun.

> 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!

In skimming Le Menagier for beef references, it usually is mentioned as
one of several meats, as beef stock or marrow or fat, or a ground meat
in a pie.  While it is certainly a food item, the few recipes for
cooking a leg or roast of beef say to boil it a long time or parboil and
then roast.  A couple of organ meat recipes, tongue has three, 6 for
roasting the leg or sirloin, 4 ground beef.  Many many references to
beef stock and marrow, but no mention what was done with the meat then. 
This definitely suggests that beef was a viable meat option, but not the
superfluity suggested when considering the number of recipes including
meats. I also inquire about the translation of beef and veal from
french.  I am not a french scholar and Janet Hinson's translation is
respected, so I suspect it is correctly done.
> 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.

Grains of Paradise were grown on the North West coast of Africa, and
very simple to obtain relative to Black Pepper from the far and middle
east trade routes.  The spice trade had to come through monopolistic
Arab routes from the east (Pepper production seems to have been confined
for a while to a small region in India (Malabar, in the South of India's
West
coast)) and the Venetian importers while coming from West Africa was a
cheaper prospect avoiding the long trades and high markups.  Same with
cubebs grown in North African regions.
When the Portugese found the route around Africa in 1487, then Vasco de
Gama reached India in 1499, the spice metropolis just moved from Venice
to Lisboa.

> 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.
>  --

You lost me on the 'rents' thing; don't know where that came in.  Using
spices as tax payment and tribute suggest that they were a combination
of valued, expensive, rare and desired by nobility. All of these suggest
it could be intentionally limited for low classed peasant types. Do you
have positive reference to purchase or use by working class farmer
types?  I don't say it never happened, but my readings suggest very
limited access to 'luxury spices' by any save nobility and later (post
1300) merchant classes in Italian regions, France and England.  Cannot
speak for Germany et al.  That would be for the appropriate scholars to
comment.  Lots of viable replacements spices and herbs were readily
available, as in the aforementioned ubiquitous mustard.

niccolo difrancesco