[Sca-cooks] Meat preservation

[Stefan li Rous]

Gunthar replied to me with:
> >Which barony in Atenveldt was this?
>
> I now reside in Sundragon, which is part of the Phoenix region.

Uh oh. I was afraid that might be the case. That was the barony that
Master Ioseph of Locksley was a part of, until bad SCA politics
drove him off. :-( I hope that that story was not true or that it
was more of a kingdom thing or has passed. I found the people of
Sundragon to be quite hospitable when I camped with them at Estrella
ten or eleven years ago.

> >How do you mean using honey and butter? If you mean immersing the
> >meats in the honey or butter, aren't these just two different types
> >of potting?
>
> Basically. But by "potting" I meant making a pate and sealing it
> with fat or butter. The honey and butter method is immersion similar
> to a confit.

Okay, I wasn't making this distinction. I'll have to go back and
read about this and see if the author does.

> >The idea being to exclude air (and the bad beasties)
> >after killing the bad beasties with heat? What evidence have you
> >run across that this was done in period?
>
> I'll have to check some of my books but I do have evidence.

Thanks. I think the dates were either unclear or I felt there was
a good chance that potted foods were used before 1600, otherwise
there wouldn't be a file in the Florilegium on them.
potted-foods-msg  (13K)  5/ 9/01    Cooked foods put in pots and sealed
w. fat.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/potted-foods-msg.html

> >What I've seen shows
> >potting the meat in honey or butter, but after the meat had
> >cooled, therefor allowing the meat to get infested again.
>
> It's possible. But the honey and/or butter was usually warmed
> as well. There is the possibilty of something going wrong but
> I feel the possibilty is pretty slim. In many ways no worse than
> the eternal stockpot on the stove or eating the Thanksgiving
> turkey a couple of hours after dinner and it's been sitting
> on the buffet.

I'm not so sure about this. In just a few hours, the bad beasties
may  have gotten only a small start. Once you seal them away from
contact with the air and leave them for months, things may get much
worse. Heating up the butter or honey does not necessarily heat the
meat enough to kill any organisms that have started to grow there.
I believe in the book I cited in my earlier message there is evidence
of the early potted meats often going bad.
--
THLord  Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas         stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****