[Sca-cooks] Salt and pepper

[Philip & Susan Troy]

jenne at fiedlerfamily.net wrote:

 >> I'm basing my opinion on the absence of evidence- in short the
 >> lack of mentions of the ingredient, black pepper, in the MA
 >> manuscripts which I have available.
 >>
 >
 > All right, I'll dig this up. One mention I know of involved 2
 > priests and their household (no more than 2-4 servants) using a
 > POUND of pepper in a year.


It might be worth pointing out that one of those large
food-service-sized containers of whole peppercorns, which probably takes
  me and my family about a year (maybe slightly less) to go through,
weighs less than a pound, maybe twelve ounces or so. So if those priests
and their servants, a household twice the size of mine, used 1.33 times
as much pepper as we did, there are a lot of explanations for the
difference, but it seems pretty clear they used pepper.



 >> Modern recipes almost all specify "salt and pepper to taste"
 >> (except for sweet things), but very few of the medieval ones do-
 >> there are a couple which will say to add enough salt, but
 >> frequently the pepper taste is supplied by cubebs, long pepper,
 >> grains of paradise, etc. when wanted.


It may even out. We use, probably, a greater variety of spices than they
did, but in more... localized... applications. In other words, when we
cook Mexican or Thai food we use chilis, which they didn't, but many
people use cloves when they make apple or pumpkin pie, and not very
often otherwise.

Re salt: some recipes do seem to specify using "enough salt", others
caution the cook not to use too much, but make no other reference. Some
of them probably assume it. Interestingly enough, one of the recipes I
used this weekend for EK 12th Night, that for Sauce Gauncile, which
appears in one of the 15th century English sources (I think MS Ashmole
1463), has an instruction to add salt and pepper _in a different
handwriting_ from that of the original scribe or copyist. Apparently
some user of the book thought it was worth either making sure to add
salt & pepper because he liked it, even though the recipe doesn't call
for it, OR to clarify the fact that s&p was intended all along, and
wanted to be sure his cooks knew it.


 >>
 >
 > Discussion on this list has pointed out, I believe, several sources
 > which tell you to use salt to taste. I will certainly go home and
 > consult my recipes and make a list of those that use pepper.
 >
 >
 >> And, I learned to reduce salt extremely from what most people seem
 >>  to use because I was cooking for people whose Drs had told them
 >> to minimize salt as part of their health care.
 >>
 >
 > I notice that reduced salt consumption does not seem to have been
 > part of  the medieval physician's repetoire of treatments, but I'll
 >  look further.


Am I detecting a little Ginny Saykwa of unpleasantness here? If I hear
one more word of this kind of thing I'm gonne be all over it like
ravioli on a cuskynole...


 >>> Not to mention the fact that foods prepared from fresh by modern people
 >>>  don't use anywhere near the amount of salt that our pre-prepared
 >>>  foods do.
 >>>
 >> Again, my experience seems to differ from yours.
 >>
 >
 > Wow. Your friends must use tablespoon measures to pre-season their
 > food when it is made from fresh ingredients. Or do they just use
 > prepackaged ingredients?

Now, about those cuskynoles...


FWIW, I have an opinion on this, which is mostly to do with
modern-recipe experience and habits. As I've said today, if not before,
my training in production cookery has always counselled aggresive
seasoning, including, probably, too much salt. On the other hand, most
people seem to prefer it that way, at least when they pay for it. I
worked for a chef who taught me that for the majority to consider it
excellent, you should get just a few complaints about overseasoning (now
I know who they'll come from ;-) ). Not too many, because that would
indicate that the food truly _is_ overseasoned. But a couple, maybe one
in a hundred.

I don't know how the available evidence stacks up, and which conclusion
it points to in the S&P conflict, but a few points worth remembering are
that in general, eating in a healthy manner in re things like salt and
fat seem to be a fairly modern concept, and in certain parts of France,
Italy and China the average salt and fat consumption are enormous
compared to what the FDA recommends, and these people are not
necessarily short-lived. If you don't get a certain minimum you begin to
crave it, and medieval people lived different lives in certain key
areas. More of their meat and fish was salted than ours, what with a
lack of artificial refrigeration. On the other hand, they never ate at
McDonald's.

Again, it may simply even out.

Adamantius, waking and seeing his shadow, time for six more weeks of
sleep...
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com

"It was so blatant that Roger threw at him.  Clemens gets away with
things that get other people thrown out of games.  As long as they
let him get away with it, it's going  to continue." -- Joe Torre, 9/98