[Sca-cooks] Spices and Cooking (oop)

[ruadh]

and you worry about week old meat in the fridge >???

----- Original Message -----
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 2:44 PM
Subject: RE: [Sca-cooks] Spices and Cooking (oop)


Leaving the fermenting skate aside, from the description, I would say the
meat may be "aged" rather than "bad."  Icelanders may be a little extreme in
the aging process, but I seriously doubt they let the meat get truly toxic,
since that represents a self-correcting error, evolution in action.

In the modern process of dry aging, a carcass with the outer layer of fat
intact is quickly chilled to about 40 degrees F, then hung in a refrigerated
environment between 32 F (0 C) and 38 F (3.3 C) with 85 to 90 percent
humidity and an air flow of 15 to 20 linear feet per minute (to quote U. of
Missouri Ag Bulletin G02209).  The carcass is sometimes covered with cloth
to keep off insects, dirt, etc.

During the first 3 days, the internal enzymes soften the meat bringing it
out of rigor mortis.  During the next 7 to 10 days, the enzymes soften the
connective tissue in the carcass.  The process tenderizes the meat and
increases the flavor.  Beef, for example, may be aged as much as 42 days.

Because the process is expensive, dry aged beef is seldom found outside of
specialty meat dealers and fine restaurants.

The considerations on aging are a layer of fat to help keep bacteria from
the meat, cool temperatures, a clean, dry place to hang, and an air flow to
evaporate moisture escaping from the carcass.  A farm shed in Iceland in
late autumn just might fill the bill, the same way farm sheds were used for
hanging the deer carcasses in the US in October and November before the
advent of the professional processing plants.

Bear

> Don't know about other countries but here in Iceland, many
> people used to
> actually prefer meat that had gone "bad". For instance, a
> common treatment
> of cattle and horse bones (with some meat attached) in the
> 18th and 19th
> centuries was to hang them in the cow shed for a couple of
> weeks for the
> desired taste (I'm not making this up); then they were boiled
> (sometimes
> after a brief smoking) and the meat was eaten. This was
> called "hraun" and
> the fat rendered from it was eaten with bread and highly thought of.
>
> I don't know why everybody didn't die of food poisoning but presumably
> people were much more tolerant back then because of constant
> exposure to
> germs. And cooking will kill most of them anyway. Besides,
> not all bacteria
> that "spoils" food is harmful to humans - I'm reminded of
> some very potent
> surface smear cheeses I've had, for instance.
>
> Here, almost all slaughtering was done in a relatively short
> period during
> the autumn because in Iceland, it has always been more
> expensive to feed the
> animal during the winter than to preserve the meat somehow.
> Fresh meat was a
> rarity, and not neccessarily popular - perhaps because it was
> thought to be
> bland compared to the usual fare. Fresh meat was more often
> than not cooked
> in a soup made with soured whey to liven it up and make it
> taste more like
> preserved meat.
>
> Spices were rare in pre-20th century Icelandic cooking. Too
> expensive, and
> we didn't need them because most of our food was fermented, putrefied,
> dried, whey-preserved, soured or smoked, and tasted strongly
> of it - and we
> more or less preferred it that way.
>
<clipped>
> Now, something like that sure doesn´t need any spice, and no
> spice in the
> world would mask the flavor.
>
> The point I'm trying to make is that not all meat may have
> been fresh. But
> that doesn't neccessarily mean people felt any need to mask the
> "off-flavor". Some of them may have preferred it; there is
> ample evidence to
> show that Icelanders often did.
>
> Nanna
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