SC - jerky documentation?

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

And it came to pass on 15 Sep 00,, that Wajdi wrote:

> Pure speculation on my part, but has any consideration been given
> to the idea that dried meat products may be found in early
> Spanish or Arab writings?  Seems to me as if those areas would
> have had sufficient sun to dry meat.

Dunno.  I've seen recipes that use air-dried fish: hake and conger eel.  
There's a 1553 Spanish treatise on the benefits of physical exercise that 
mentions "tasajos", which the Royal Spanish dictionary says is meat 
that has been preserved by drying and salting it, or in oil.

http://www.uida.es/mendez/portada.html

So I searched for "tasajos" at google.com, and found a link to a page 
about food in Don Quixote.  (Okay, so I'm obsessive.  Everyone needs a 
hobby.)  http://www.jimena.com/cocina/apartados/quijote.htm
It gives a quote from the novel, in which some goatherds are boiling 
tasajos of goat meat in a cauldron.  The explanatory note says that 
tasajos are:
"Carne adobada durante cuatro días y dejada después a secar. Es 
como la cecina del cabrero. Se puede hacer con vaca, ternera, venado, 
jabalí..."

"Meat marinated for four days and then left to dry.  It is the cecina [a 
type of hung dried beef] of the goatherd.  It can be made with beef, veal, 
venison, wild boar..."

I found another online source -- a 16th century commentary on sailing 
and life at sea -- and it had some scathing things to say about the 
rations for passengers on a galley-ship.  Tasajos of goat were 
mentioned, along with such delights as rancid bacon.

There was also a quote from a 17th century comedy by Tirso de Molina. 
 Two laborers are complaining that their employers don't pay well.  One 
of them says that his rations are badly-seasoned tasajos and coarse 
bran bread.

I get the feeling that tasajos were often used as a food for travellers and 
the poor.


Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
mka Robin Carroll-Mann
harper at idt.net