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

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

Laura C. Minnick wrote:

> Personally, I think our preoccupation with meat is in part due to our 
> own habits of meat consumption (in general- quite a bit) and for us in 
> particular, the fact that the extant menus and recipes are basically 
> those of the upper classes, which ate more meat. If Matilda, John the 
> Farmer's wife had written down her recipes and menus, we might see a 
> very different picture.

FWIW, here's Chaucer's description of the diet of a poor widow:

Three large sows had she, and no more, 'tis plain,
Three cows and a lone sheep that she called Moll.
Right sooty was her bedroom and her hall,
Wherein she'd eaten many a slender meal.
Of sharp sauce, why she needed no great deal,
For dainty morsel never passed her throat;
Her diet well accorded with her coat.
Repletion never made this woman sick;
A temperate diet was her whole physic,
And exercise, and her heart's sustenance.
The gout, it hindered her nowise to dance,
Nor apoplexy spun within her head;
And no wine drank she, either white or red;
Her board was mostly garnished, white and black,
With milk and brown bread, whereof she'd no lack,
Broiled bacon and sometimes an egg or two,
For a small dairy business did she do.

Canterbury Tales, "The Nun's Priest's Tale"
(modern English translation, translator unidentified )

-- 
Brighid ni Chiarain
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom
Robin Carroll-Mann *** rcmann4 at earthlink.net