[Sca-cooks] Rotten meat and spices...

[El Hermoso Dormiendo]

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".)