[Sca-cooks] Old Meat and spicing ....

[HICKS, MELISSA]

Jadwiga said:

> *blink* why would they require less spicing, when they have
> more flavor of their own? If
> you wanted to taste the spices as well as the flavor of the
> meat, wouldn't you have to
> use more spices when combining them with something with more
> flavor of its own?
>
> I thought the general concensus was that meat from older
> animals had a stronger flavor
> that even today most people are not as fond of, and that
> people in the middle ages used
> spices as much as they did because they _liked_ spicy dishes,
> in which case they would
> want to use enough spices so that they were no obscured.

I grew up in a farming community in country Australia.  I grew up on a diet
of mutton, goat, pig (pork, ham, bacon etc) and very little beef.  No
four-legged animal was slaughtered under 12 months of age.  I did not find
the taste of these meats "gamey" or "unpleasant" it was the simply the way
the meats tasted.  The spice mixtures we used complemented those flavours.

When I moved to the city and had to actually buy lamb from a supermarket, I
found it completely tasteless!  I had to change the spice mixtures I used.
Not lessen or increase the quantities of spices, but to actually change
which spices I was using until I found a set that complemented the taste of
lamb (as opposed to the mutton I grew up with).  The flavours of mutton and
lamb are actually different.  Mutton in not simply stronger lamb.

I do not find the taste of older meats unpleasant at all and am constantly
amazed at people who like their meat tasteless - but then that depends on
what you've grown up with, doesn't it?

Meliora.

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