[Sca-cooks] Rotten meat and spices... (a few excerpts from Apicius)

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Chris Stanifer:
>--- "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" 
><adamantius.magister at verizon.net> wrote:
>>  Also sprach Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise:
>>  >  > >1. pg 48 - VI [9] To Improve a Broth
>>  >>  >If broth has contracted a bad odor, place a vessel upside down and
>>  >>  >fumigate it with laurel and
>>  >>  >cypress and before ventiliating it, pour the broth in this vessel...
>>  >>  >
>>  >>  >
>>  >>  What Vehling has translated as "broth" is actually liquamen, according
>>  >>  to Flower and Rosenbaum.
>>  >
>>  >One wonders what the bad odor in liquamen could possibly be? Perhaps it
>>  >started to smell good?
>>
>>  When it started to smell like meat.
>>
>>  A.
>>  --
>
>
>Whatever it started to smell like, if it no longer smelled like 
>broth, liquamen, meat or whatever
>it was originally, then it's safe to assume that it had started to putrify.

My vote would be for early-stage rancidity. It's got some fish oils in it...

>  Unfortunately, and as
>is often the case in these early manuscripts, the author does not go 
>into minute detail as to what
>he means by a 'bad odor'.  He does not write, specifically, whether 
>the 'bad' odor is caused by
>cruciferous vegetables (as has been opined), or rot, or even fish 
>poop.  He merely states that it
>has a 'bad odor'.  In which case I think we can all walk out on that 
>limb and state, with absolute
>confidence, that 'bad' is not 'good'.  And, when faced with a 'not 
>good' smelling
>broth/liqumen/meat, what does he advise???  Fix it so it doesn't 
>stink any more, and serve it
>forthe...

Some fish for thought: Liquamen was apparently in some cases 
something of a luxury item. It was made at sunny seaports, required a 
fair amount of fish or fish byproducts to produce, and plenty of 
expensive salt, and was then shipped all over the Empire. This was 
not going to be a cheap item in the market.

Saving it could easily have been a sensible priority, at least 
preferable to throwing it out and buying more. And note that the 
process of saving it appears not to have included large quantities of 
expensive spices.

Now. If we think about what liquamen/garum/halec were, and how they 
were made, it surely doesn't tell us what the Roman upper classes 
would have considered "a bad smell". That's fact. On the other hand, 
we can offer, you should excuse the expression, an edumukated guess. 
We more or less know what to expect when we know the eggs have gone 
rotten. We know bad meat. and the yeasty mildew smell of moldy bread. 
We know that when people say wine has gone bad, to expect something 
akin to vinegar. As for liquamen, we know it was quite salty (recipes 
for a quick substitute say it should start with a brine sufficiently 
salty to float an egg, and recipes for the more genuine article also 
involve a fair amount of salt, so actual putrescence seems fairly 
unlikely. For a bad smell, we can take a line from some of the 
commentary we heard here tonight. I suspect there's a line to be 
drawn between the people who live on the water and those who don't. 
The difference will be that those who don't live near the water will 
expect bad liquamen to smell like liquamen, while those that live 
near the water will expect good liquamen to smell like fish, and bad 
liquamen to smell like rotten fish.

We can claim not to know what the Apicius author meant by a bad 
smell, but some on, now, William. You're a food service person. You 
gonna tell me you can't tell me what a funky batch of mackerel smells 
like?

Ultimately, of course, it has to be fixed one way or another. For me, 
the process is intriguing, but it seems to discuss mostly the masking 
of one strong odor with others. In the nota about honey, I can't 
decide if the honey is supposed to simply sweeten and smooth the 
texture and acrid sharpness some funkified foods can have, but since 
It's to abate the saltiness, I wonder if it's intended to sink to the 
bottom and be racked off from above.

>If that's not evidence of tampering with bad food in anituquity, 
>then I don't know what is.  of
>course, I've never slopped a hog or milked a goat before, so I'm no expert...

Well, I'm an expert. I only read about them in books, but show me the 
hog who'll try giving me a hard time and I'll show you a hog with a 
kicked booty, okay?

However... I may have missed part of this thread. Were we not looking 
for evidence that "broken" foods such as questionable meat were being 
repaired with copious use of spices?

Adamantius
-- 




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
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Holt, 07/29/04