[Sca-cooks] Rotten meat and spices...
El Hermoso Dormiendo
ElHermosoDormido+scacooks at dogphilosophy.net
Tue Apr 12 13:11:47 PDT 2005
On Tuesday 12 April 2005 10:15 am, dale elliott wrote:
> What of the pheasent scene from Sho-Gun. Did the English hand the pheasent
> until the neck rotted? or is this bunk?
[...]
"Rotted" is probably not the correct description, either, whether they
actually did it or not.
"Aging" meats is an autocatalytic process - it's not to allow spoilage
organisms to invade the meat, but to allow time for existing enzymes in the
meat to break it down and tenderize it.
Presumably in the case of the pheasant, the idea was not that it would "rot"
but that once the muscle and connetive tissue had softened enough, it would
no longer be strong enough to support the weight of the bird's body. At that
point, you'd know the tenderizing process had reached the point that you
wanted. Hanging the bird up would also allow gravity to stretch the muscles
and minimize the effects of rigour mortis on the texture of the meat.
Apparently, both the initial rigour mortis and the subsequent
"aging" (breakdown and softening of the muscle fibers due to enzyme activity)
happen fairly quickly in birds, as compared to e.g. beef or mutton.
I'd also suspect that the cool climate of England probably kept spoilage
organism growth on a bird hung outside to a relatively slow pace.
If you had spoilage organisms invade the bird, it would likely bloat up and
reek horribly (MMmmmm, hydrogen sulfide and related gasses), and I can't
imagine any amount of spices masking that...spoilage only on the surface of
the bird would presumably be peeled away with the skin and any remainder
washed off or cut out, I would think.
And as far as period recipes for dealing with spoiling meat, the one that I
can remember was, I think, from the "Goodman of Paris" document (upper-middle
class rather than nobility, as I recall) and (again, from memory) explicitly
described REMOVING the parts that had been affected by spoilage, and
described steps for saving the remainder. I don't personally recall ever
running into a "put a bunch of spices on it and nobody will notice that the
meat you're feeding them is rotten" reference in "period" - not that there
couldn't be any, but I've never seen any hints that there are.
(On the other hand - Harold McGee reports that in the 19th century beef and
mutton WERE literally hung up until the surface of the meat was ACTUALLY
rotted. No mention of doing this with poultry, though, and of course 19th
century is post-"period".)
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