[Sca-cooks] Spices and Cooking (oop)

[Bronwynmgn at aol.com]

--
[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
In a message dated 7/24/2001 3:20:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
gwynydd_of_culloden at yahoo.com writes:


> Someone else chimed in with the statement that 'my mother told me about the
> "hot-spice-covering-up-rancid-meat" theory back when I was a kid 50 years
> ago...This is a well-known theory; as for evidence, it seems so intuitive
> evidence hardly seems necessary.'  Frankly, I am distrustful of the idea
> that it is intuitive enough not to require evidence (so was the idea that
> medieval cooks did the same thing!).
>
> So, what do people here on the List think?
>
>

My theory is, even if it covers the taste, really rancid meat is going to
give you food poisoning no matter what you spice it with.  After all, the
spice does not suddenly make the meat "good" again, or kill any of the
nasties in it that would make you sick from eating it.  Last I heard,
cinnamon doesn''t kill salmonella...  When I bring that fact up, most people
usually go, "Oh, yeah, right, I forgot it would make you sick anyway" and
that pretty much ends the discussion right there.  After all, who would
continue eating something for hundreds of years if a few trials made you just
as sick as if you hadn't bothered to spice it?
The more I think about it, I think it's a form of prejudice against "more
primitive" or "different" cultures and a closed culture's way of discouraging
experimentation with other culture's food.  Sort of a "they couldn't really
like it  that way, so they must be doing it to cover meat that tastes even
worse because it's gone bad" kind of theory.  After all, those dumb (members
of culture) are too stupid to know about refrigeration, so of course their
meat must have been bad.

I also bring up the numerous recipes that either specify "fair fresh meat" or
tell you how to kill and butcher the animal at the start of the recipe.  Most
modern people are so far removed from meat on the hoof that it never occurs
to them that the easiest way to keep meat fresh is to keep it alive until you
want to eat it....far easier than refrigeration, at any rate.

Brangwayna Morgan