FW: [Sca-cooks] Too much spice.

[Philip Troy]

On Thursday 26 July 2001 12:46, Christine Seelye-King wrote:

> I saved this message about the preservative powers of cinnamon from a lady
> on this list.
> Christianna

> 	Kinda shoots another hole in the "spices to cover up
> rotten meat" -- it might actually have been the case (sometimes)
> of "spices to prevent meat from rotting in the first place."

Possibly this technology is valid, but whether it was known or practiced in
medieval Europe is another question. With the possible exception of Lord's
Salt, which contains no salt, IIRC, but a lot of vinegar and spices,
including cinnamon, how often were imported spices used by adding them to
meat for later use? And in the case of Lord's Salt, how much of the
preservative power was in the vinegar?

Cindy, I'm having a little trouble finding the various references to the one
or two recipes for the process to keep venison from "restyng", or recovering
from same. I checked Austin's index to the Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery
Books, as well as Hieatt's and Butler's index to Curye On Inglysch; I know
you had spoken about these on the list. Any chance you have access to your
earlier posts?

This would be a specific example of how medieval Europeans (or at least one
way in which, etc.) dealt with the problem of saving meat that was going off,
from going off further, and perhaps of disguising the extent to which it
_had_ gone off. If any ;  ) . I STR it involved vinegar, and considering that
the recipe presumably comes from a social strata that had comparatively easy
access to spices, you'd think if these people knew about it, they might have
used it. But as has been pointed out, pound for pound, it was far cheaper to
buy fresh meat than it was to buy the spices that might be required to save
bad meat.

Adamantius