[Sca-cooks] Spices and Cooking (oop)

[Elaine Koogler]

So far as the hot spices being used in cultures where the climate is very warm
(Thailand, parts of Mongolia, North Africa, etc.), my understanding is that they
make a person sweat, thereby making the food healthier...it's good for people to
sweat and thereby cleanse the body of all sorts of nasty poisons.  I suspect
that these folks are just as picky about the quality of their meat as 'most
anyone.

I do know that there are some cultures where refrigeration does not exist...I
lived in one, in Papua New Guinea.  I know that they often ate foods that we
might consider a little "off"...I think the reason it didn't make them ill was
that their systems were used to dealing with foods of this type.  In fact, I
asked my houseboy to clean out my refrigerator one time...it had a couple of
"science projects" in it.  I came into the kitchen while he was working on it
and discovered him eating food that I'd told him to throw away!  I never let him
do that again.  However, they didn't use any particularly heavy seasonings on
their food...mostly stuff like coconut milk, fruit, ginger, etc.

Kiri

Gwynydd Of Culloden wrote:

> 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* - the spices used in dish were more expensive than the
> meat in the same dish so this would have been a false economy. It is like
> using a perfect diamond in a plastic ring, except that in that case, one can
> retrieve the diamond. The spices are lost.'
>
> This elicited this reply:
>
> 'I just saw that post and was intrigued. I had never speculated about
> medieval times, but had done so about more contemporary periods/cultures. 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. Comment?'
>
> My response was that this may be true, but that I have some doubts - simply
> because it reeks of the arguments I have heard about medieval food.  I also
> wondered how well it would work.  If the curry is hot enough, the taste buds
> might be less sensitive to the slightly off meat, but it couldn't cover
> anything much more than that, surely?
>
> 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?
>
> Gwynydd of Culloden
>
> _______________________________________________
> Sca-cooks mailing list
> Sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
> http://www.ansteorra.org/mailman/listinfo/sca-cooks