[Sca-cooks] Origin of the "spice to hide taste of rotten meat" myth?

[johnna holloway]

Johnnae llyn Lewis sends greetings.

Regarding this topic which seems to bounce around
every summer of medieval spices used to disguise rotten meat and
was this folklore or not?

I've come across these sources, starting with this one by Andrew Dalby.

Dalby writes:

"It is also necessary to look critically at what earlier historians
have said. It is easy to perpetuate errors. At some time in the
twentieth century, a British historian unfamiliar with foreign food
was told (possibly by his mother) that spices serve to mask the
flavour of rotting meat. This assertion is now made of medieval
cuisine in several otherwise well-researched histories written in
Britain. It is undocumented, and, in general, for ancient and
medieval cuisines, it is most unlikely to be true. Spices were a
luxury item, affordable only by those who could afford very good food.
No recipe or household text recommends them to mask bad flavours. On
the contrary, spices are called for liberally in ancient recipe books
for their positive flavour, their aroma, their preservative and dietary
qualities."

This is taken from page 156 of Andrew Dalby.  Dangerous Tastes.
The Story of Spices. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
(In the UK by the British Museum Press, 2000.)

Also With regard to Spices and Rotten Meat...

FOOD HISTORY NEWS in the summer of 1996 offered this as "an
example of an old saw that we would like to dull..." It's one
of those oft-quoted , generally accepted, unquestioned
assumptions that in light of recent research and reinterpretation
needs to re-examined and dismissed.
The issue then offered an article by Alice Arndt entitled
"They Used A Lot of Spices to Disguise Spoiled Meat." Arndt
points out that medieval markets were regulated. Those caught
selling putrid meat might be fined or even pilloried in front
of their rotten carcasses. She notes that surviving medieval
recipes do not mention that one needs to add extra spices if
the meat is tainted. Much of what we accept in terms of this
accepted truth, she traces to Drummond (The Englishman and His Food),
who got it wrong in his book by misreading a number of recipes.
She notes that the use of spices in tropical cuisines has more
to do with inducing perspiration than with preservation. Lastly,
medieval preservation techniques were effective and remained in
use long after exotic spicing was abandoned.

The Oxford Symposium on Food Cookery 1992 which was entitled
Spicing Up the Palate Studies of Flavourings – Ancient and Modern
offered up several papers including:

“Tainted Meat,” by Gillian Riley. It was subtitled “An attempt
to investigate the origins of a commonly held opinion about the use
of spices in the cooking of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.” Pp. 1-6.

Riley admits that she thought it would be a simple task to work 
backwards until she found “some pompous eighteenth-century antiquary” 
that was the origin of the idea. But it was not that simple a task.
See her paper for all the details. She mentions Richard Warner and 
Austin, but also notes that several Italian authors in the 19 th 
century who were working with the Italian manuscripts were not taken 
with spicing and write about its "uncouthness." There's a bibliography
for further reading.

Other interesting articles/chapters on this question are:

Flandrin, Jean-Louis. "Seasonings, Cooking, and Dietetics in
the Late Middle Ages." appears as Chapter 25 of FOOD A CULINARY
HISTORY, edited by Jean-louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari, 1999.

Laurioux, Bruno. "Spices in the Medieval Diet: A New Approach."
FOOD AND FOODWAYS, v.1, no.1 (1985) pp.43-76.

Crossley-Holland, Nicole. LIVING AND DINING IN MEDIEVAL PARIS.
Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996. See her chapter "Sugar
and Spice..." pages 105-112 wherein she sets out to examine
Le Menagier with regard to his use of spices.  Along the way,
she covers all the bases regarding the old theories of spices,
rotten meat, and unsophisticated palates.

------------
So, what is one to think? Actually, I think the idea was accepted
by medievalists reading Austin, Warner, Mead and Drummond and written 
into a generation or two of textbooks. From there it made its
way into popular textbooks and children's books and so
now everyone grows up with the idea that meat spoiled & they
needed spices to hide the taste. Afterall every schoolchild
has to learn about Columbus and what drove all those ships westward
but the search for spices.

Hope this helps---

Johnnae llyn Lewis

Johnna Holloway


david friedman wrote:
> 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.