SC - Weird but cool kitchen gadgets

[Stefan li Rous]

> Jim Revells wrote:
> > 
> >     I am on another reenactment groups list as well as the several SCAdian
> > ones.  Recently the discussion turned to food & someone sang the tired old
> > song about using spices to hide the flavor of spoiled meat.  I need some
> > documentation to back me up.  Does any one have a good caned rant on the
> > subject that sites period sources?

To add some further observations to those already posted.


Places like Paris 1390 required meat to be sold on the day of 
slaughter (see Menagier).


If you can afford spices you can afford fresh meat.

Conversely, if you can afford fresh meat then you are willing
to pay large amounts of money to import exotic spices.

If you can afford spices you can afford to hang the meat for the
right number of days under the right conditions to get the exact 
flavour you want.  When you have it just right, you may choose to 
compliment it with some spices, but you sure don't want to disguise 
that lovely flavour up after all the trouble you've been to to get 
it right.  This is properly aged meat, not spoiled meat.


Nobody in period, AFAIK, mentions using spices to cover up rancid 
meat flavours.

  Undoubtedly in times of famine people would have used all manner
  of means to hide the taste of whatever it was they were reduced
  to eating, but that's the exception not the rule.  And even in
  such times of scarcity, what meat there was probably got eaten 
  immediately after slaughter with no chance for it to go bad.  One
  scrawny pig per day until they were all gone, then....


Spices in some households (see Scully's Chiquart) were sometimes 
dispensed on the advice of the physician, so as to obtain the
desired balance of humours.


And a micro-rant that you can use: if spices were used to cover
up the taste of spoiled meat, what were the ground-up pearls and 
gems used for?



Thorvald