[Sca-cooks] The rotten meat thread

[SEBD at aol.com]

Hi. I hope nobody minds if I jump in here, but
the question interested me, so I went all techie
and started looking at the web. Here are a few 
short, good articles on the topic:
 
 
_http://home.comcast.net/~iasmin/mkcc/MKCCfiles/MedievalFoodFactFantasy.html_ 
(http://home.comcast.net/~iasmin/mkcc/MKCCfiles/MedievalFoodFactFantasy.html) 
 
www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/  issues97/mar97/around_mar97.html 
_http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20030217medieval0217p3.asp_ 
(http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20030217medieval0217p3.asp)  
There are  bunches more. Just Google "spices" and "rotten meat" 
The arguments  go: 
(1) Rotten meat  makes you horribly ill and you can taste it whether you 
spice it or not.  
(2) The law  specified that meat had to be sold within two days after an 
animal was  slaughtered (How about that? A medieval "sell by" date!)> A butcher 
got fined  if he didn't obey the law. 
(3) Spices were  really expensive, so who in their right mind would use spice 
to cover up rotten  meat? 
I personally  like the line in one of the articles that says that the list of 
herbs and spices  were not so much recipe instructions to the cooks (who were 
by and large  illiterate) but to the steward who had to know what kinds of 
spices to buy for  specific dishes. The cooks did then what home cooks do 
now--put in enough  spice or herbs until it tastes good. 
I haven't been  reading medieval cookbooks long, but that's the first 
observation on spices and  their proportions that I've read that makes actual sense 
to me. 
Some cooks had a conversation in a friend's kitchen in  about a chicken dish. 
"Needs mustard," I said, tasting the bland concoction.  
"There's none  listed in the recipe and we want to be authentic," said my 
friend.  
"If there was  mustard in the kitchen, I bet anybody tasting this  dish would 
have  added some," I persisted. 
Next day, I got  an e-mail: "You know, I took some of that chicken for lunch 
and added mustard.  It tastes better that way. It's not authentic, but it's 
good." 
Cheers, 
Elianne