[Sca-cooks] No sugar - too much spice.

[Ruth Frey]

> << I know that some recipes seem to call for very large quantities of spices
> proportionate to the amount of other ingredients.  >>
>
> Agreed. However, thise recipes that do contain quantities (outside the middle
> eastern collections) really are rather rare. Given the unpalatible nature of
> the resulting dish, it is my contention that either there were scribal errors
> which creeped in through the process of hand copying and recopying or that
> the quantities given were meant to be  ground and mixed to gether and use as
> a seasoning much like we use Cajun seasoning or apple pie spice.

	One thing I recall reading (I believe in a "cookbook"
printed from a website many years ago -- so I have to say I can't
quote the source) is that some measures have changed between
Medieval times and now.  The cook whose account I was writing
told of making a dish to the exact specifications of a Period
recipe, only to have the thing turn out almost inedible because
of extreme spiciness/sweetness.  Unhappily, they put together a
new, more palatable, and, s/he thought, less accurate redaction.
Later on, however, talking to a scholarly friend, s/he found out
about the change in weights and measures, and when s/he worked
out the "corrected" spicing from the original recipe . . . it was
almost identical to the "modernized" version!  The author then
concluded that Medieval folks were not spice-crazed maniacs, we
just aren't familiar with their measurements.
	Sounds moderately logical, though I have never done any
study to confirm or deny it.
	On the other hand, the "you needed more because your
spices were old" also makes sense; sometimes processing of
spices changes, too.  There's a recipe in the "Joy of Cooking"
(can't remember if it's the "old" or "new" at the moment) that
adapts an older one from, I think, the 1800s.  The original
calls for 2 tablespoons of cayenne pepper (!); the "Joy"
authors note that, at the time of the original recipe, cayenne
was heavily processed (ground, cooked, sun-dried in cakes, and
re-ground, or some such), and ended up with about the flavor
of paprika.  No more!  In order to avoid kitchen disaster,
the "Joy" recipe offers a much saner amount of modern cayenne.
And if that's no more than a 100-200-year-old-recipe, just
think of the changes in 500 + years!
	Anyway, my thoughts.

		-- Ruth Freebourne