Perceptions - was, Re: [Sca-cooks] Tonight on the Food Network - Biblical Foods

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Phlip:
>I recently asked a question on EK List in response to another one of those
>"But Medieval people didn't have the same tastes modern people did"
>statements, referencing several sites where they could find Medieval
>recipes, and asking them what, exactly, they were referring to when they
>thought of nasty Medieval food. The only responses I found were in two
>categories, despite my attempt to avoid personal preferences- personal
>preferences, including misunderstandings of what actually happened in some
>forms of food prep, and organ meats- which I feel would go under personal
>preferences. The telling point to me was someone's description of rotten
>fish made into a sauce- Adamantius came in and explained a bit about
>pickling and enzymatic actions.

Unfortunately, the lady to whom I was responding simply left the 
discussion, I believe. I dunno; am I so scary? Or so rude? The 
impression I get was that the lady's opinions on "fermented" fish 
sauce were so emotionally ingrained that she didn't want to hear them 
challenged, even to the point of being asked to consider them before 
explaining her position more clearly.

She said, if I recall, that the fish sauce of the Romans and 
Byzantines was, essentially, inherently nasty; I'm pretty sure she 
used the dreaded f-word (which is the dreaded nine-letter f-word, not 
that other one). She went on to quote a fairly basic recipe, and 
suggested that she had some hard data supporting the idea that the 
fish sauce as described in the recipe could conceivably be harmful to 
the health of anyone using or consuming it in quantity.

I went through the recipe point by point, tried to determine an 
approximate saline percentage of the total mass, and suggested that 
the fish in fish sauce was actually fairly well-preserved by salt at 
the very least, and possibly by lactic acid in some cases, and that 
whatever else fish sauce may be, fermented or not, enzymatically 
degraded/digested, certainly, but rotten, in the sense of 
putrescence, definitely not.

I even did some of her homework _for_ her, pointing out that Anthimus 
appeared not to advocate the use of liquamen, but did ask her for 
more detail about her evidence to suggest liquamen was and is a 
harmful product. Still waiting for that.

In the end, and this is the unfortunate part, the lady comes across 
as just another fish-hating crybaby aiming their prejudices at the 
unfamiliar. Which is not to suggest that there aren't people who 
genuinely have given various fish dishes a fair shot and simply 
dislike them; it's just that my experience has been that many of the 
most vocal opponents of fish served at SCA events (in areas where 
it's plentiful and cheap, anyway) are simply airing an unfortunate 
side of their upbringing wherein Mommy and Daddy put them in charge 
at an early stage. I suspect a large overlap between the "I don't eat 
bait" and the "Vegetables are what food eats" contingents. Rest 
assured that I have pages and pages of clinical evidence that proves 
this, but I won't post it here... the dog ate it, and I left it in my 
other toga. And the sun is in my eyes, and it took a bad hop off the 
astroturf. But I'd post it if I could, believe me. It's in the mail...

Adamantius