[Sca-cooks] Food Myths

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Generys ferch Ednuyed:
>I'm doing a class next week for a canton meeting on various food related
>things (it's an overview of a lot of things rather than going really indepth
>on anything, just to keep non-foodies interested... :-) )  and one of the
>subjects I wanted to spend 5 minutes on was various commonly-held (by
>SCAdians and non) beliefs about medieval food that just aren't true, or are
>distortions of fact, etc... (i.e. I'm going to talk about the
>spices-to-cover-rotten-meat thing, of course, but when I do so I'm also
>going to mention that one recipe that I believe we talked about on this list
>(have to find it again) for burying rotten meat to make it good again...)  I
>was wondering if you all had any favorite myths to contribute - esp. if they
>have interesting bits to them like the burying rotten meat thing.

You know, I thought about this a bit more, and realized perhaps you
may be misinterpreting the recipes for rescuing venison that is
tainted, rusted or "restyd" (there are a few such recipes out there).

The process isn't a magical, but ineffective, method of restoring
putrid meat to a state of freshness.

What it is designed for is salvaging meat that has _begun_ to go bad,
but is not actually rotten, yet. Not unlike (well, okay, here's where
I embarrass myself because I'm a barbarian and all) when you look in
the fridge and see that that package of ground beef has gotten a
little brown around the edges and is sitting in brown, bloody juice
when you bought it two or three days ago, and shoved it to the back
of the fridge, and you say, "I'd better use that up tonight, or throw
it away tomorrow." Or when you see the little rainbow pattern on that
slice of deli ham, or note a peculiar texture to those slices of
salami. Do you use them up quickly and make time in your busy
schedule to be near a bathroom, or just pitch them?

These are foods that are considered by most people "on the edge". No,
I really don't need to hear from all two hundred of you that you'd
never eat food like that, or, for that matter, that you would without
a second thought. The point is that this concept is one which both
we, now, and medieval people, then, have faced occasionally.

Now, the recipe for rescuing venison (any of several, or at least a
couple, of such) seems to involve washing the meat, probably cutting
off the worst and most affected parts, rubbing it down with salt
(both a preservative and an abrasive to remove slime and decaying
tissue), vinegar (changing the pH, possibly killing or disabling
surface bacteria, and either masking sour flavors such as lactic acid
produced by bacteria, or offsetting bitter flavors associated with
mild decay), or ash (pH adjustment, again, as well as repelling
insects _and_ possibly the abrasive action mentioned as for salt).

As for burying the meat until you're ready to use it, well, it may be
that a hole in the ground is cooler than just hanging it in a larder,
and will slow down the process of decay that much more.

In short, I don't know that the recipes you mention are really good
examples of myths.

Adamantius
--
"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes
deserves to be called a scholar."
	-DONALD FOSTER