[Sca-cooks] Re: spices and rotten meat

[Ruth Frey]

> From: david friedman <ddfr at daviddfriedman.com>
> 
> In the course of a Usenet discussion, someone raised the question 
> of 
> when and where the belief that medievals used lots of spices to 
> hide 
> the taste of rotten meat originated. The best I could do was point 
> at 
> the reference to the strong stomachs of our ancestors in the 
> introduction to _Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books_, done about 
> 1890--but that says nothing about rotten meat. I said I would put 
> the 
> question to this list.

     Dunno about the origin of that myth, but FWIW, all the reading I have done actually indicates that spices (especially cinnamon) have anti-microbial properties, and thus can *keep* meat from spoiling (at least for a little while).  I have to admit, haven't gone and done any serious research on the primary sources of these statements, but there are supposed to be actual studies on the topic.

     So, one interpretation might be that the spices were preservatives; OTOH, there's also the issueof spices as a status symbol, and of medical practice, which seemed to think that things with a gazillion ingredients were more effective than things with few ingredients (since food and medicine weren't all that clearly divided, theories tended to get passed back and forth between the fields).

     None of which actually answers your question :) . . . but it does show that there are alternative reasons for the Medieval fascination with lots of spices.

                 -- Ruth