[Sca-cooks] Spices and Cooking (oop)

[Elizabeth A Heckert]

Tempus est, erat, non est.
(Time is, Time was,  Time is not.)
--inscribed on an English sundial.


On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:17:49 +1000 "Gwynydd Of Culloden"
<gwynydd_of_culloden at yahoo.com> writes:
>I recently opened a can of worms on a message board to which I post by
>saying:'["spices were used to cover the taste of rotting meat by
medieval
>cooks"] is a fallacy *smile*

>This elicited this reply:
>
 I got the idea that hot spices--curry, chile, those little red peppers
in both
>Thai & Mongolian food, etc., used in their 'native' habitat--might be
>used to cover meat that was going bad, especially since many "hot spice
>areas" seem to lack as much refrigeration as we are used to.

    I have two comments.  Spoiled meat is spoiled meat.  Bleaahh!
Wouldn't bad meat make those who were trying to cover up the taste sick
enough not to repeat the experiment???

    What about game that is allowed to hang???  That is done to enhance
the flavour of the meat and is controlled rotting, as I understand it.
In both cases--either oversight on the cook, or with a goal of making the
meat tender, neither one requires the prescence of spices.  Spice is
superfluity in most cases, often changing nothing but the taste; but
definately always serendipity, and I think the view of spice as
conspicuous consumption of a precious commodity is the only sensible
understanding of the matter.

     I will say, however, that the idea that medievals used spices to
cover up the taste of bad meat is a fairly long-lived idea.  My mom was
born in the late twenties, and it was a tidbit she learned as a child at
school.  Based on info in the '1900 House' documentary on PBS, I'd be
willing to bet it was a Victorian idea.  Apparently, the Victorians were
extremely phobic on the subject of dirt, germs and filth.

   Elizabeth

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