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

[James Prescott]

At 11:29 -0700 2001-05-10, Ruth Frey wrote:

> 	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.

Absolutely!

Each town often had its own standard measures, which might be
close to those of the next town along, or which might be quite
different.  The standard measures in a town might also change
with time, though that would be rarer.  The standard measures
could also change in response to political power changes.

In some cases the same name might mean something different
depending upon what was being measured -- the only remnants we
have today that I can recall at the moment is the difference
between dry ounces and fluid ounces, and (though probably not
directly relevant to cooking) between ounces Troy and ounces
Avoirdupois.

Only yesterday I was reading in _Gourmet_ of someone being given
modern directions for bicycling in Swedish 'miles', and only
finding out later (after much cycling) that a Swedish 'mile' is
about six English miles.

Another complication is that sometimes amounts are probably given
in terms of the cost of the ingredient, as in 'a denier's worth
of cinnamon'.  There is ongoing controversy about whether it was
really based on value; or whether 'denier' meant a specific small
weight, or specific small volume, in such circumstances.


> 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.

Sounds entirely likely to me.

Also, if Dr. Scully's interpretation is accepted, there could have
been people whose spice amounts and proportions would have been
dictated by their personal physician as much as by their cook or
their own tastes.  In such circumstances the 'medicinal' flavour of
far too much e.g. cinnamon might have been desirable.


> 	On the other hand, the "you needed more because your
> spices were old" also makes sense; sometimes processing of
> spices changes, too.

Both could be true, though until we know how long it really takes
in modern times for our jars of ground cinnamon to make it from
the tree to the table I wouldn't want to be dogmatic.  One can
easily imagine some medieval spices taking three years to get
from tree to table (for example one year Indonesia to India, one
year India to Egypt, one year Egypt to Paris).

With stuff being stockpiled and warehoused at various stages in
modern times it wouldn't surprise me to learn of similar delays.
Does anyone know of any specific modern transit times?

If one is grating whole nutmeg there might not be much difference
in 'age' once one gets more than a few millimetres into the nutmeg.

I have zero evidence, but it wouldn't entirely surprise me to
learn that for some specific spices the medieval methods of
careful packing and shipping (in anticipation of long journeys)
could have been superior to modern methods, and could have resulted
in 'fresher' spices despite possibly longer transit times.


We can probably never know for certain.


Thorvald