[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:
>>  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.
>
>
>I think that's an overly presumptuous....well....presumption.  You 
>are assuming that inland cooks
>don't know liquamen from rotten fish, and I contend that they very 
>likely knew what 'good'
>liquamen smelled like, and could therefore tell when it had gone 'off'

You're right, it was a generalization. But it was in response to 
either one, or two, or more (I honestly don't remember) claims along 
the lines that nobody would know what bad liquamen smelled like, 
since by definition it smells bad (or words to that effect), that it 
is a product of putrefaction, etc. All of which is either patently 
false, or a matter of opinion expressed by people that don't often 
deal with fish, and whose opinions on the subject could be said to be 
somewhat colored by that fact.

>  > 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?
>
>
>No.  On the contrary.  I'm telling you that Apicius *did* know when 
>something was 'bad' or
>'spoiled', and used those terms in proper context.  Therefore, if he 
>says something smells 'bad',
>he means it smells bad for *what it is*.

Which then narrows the field somewhat, doesn't it? References to 
cruciferous vegetables notwithstanding?

>  > 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?
>
>Yes, yes, yes.... and I made the mistake of offering up a few 
>off-the-cuff references for other
>forms of food adulteration in antiquity, implying that it might be a 
>good place for a researcher
>to start.  That brought out the sharks, who immediately swam right 
>past the point for an
>opportunity to stick their 'expertise' into my neck.

Well, I live near the ocean, and oughtta know a shark when I see one. 
I confess I didn't see any. There was a difference of opinion, is 
all. It happens.

>I should have known it would happen, and kept my yap shut.

Look at it this way. It seems as if you feel people are pressuring 
you to think "within the box", and you feel you're thinking "outside 
the box" In actual fact, we're all thinking inside the box. We might 
just disagree as to its probable size, and we may not be proceeding 
on an accurate understanding of other people's view of same ;-). It's 
not like the most widely accepted rules for debate and reasoning 
processes in general were conceived by some mutated clone of Nicholas 
Murray Butler, farting out sauerkraut and onion fumes while drawing 
big red X's on students' doctoral dissertations. They were conceived 
by people like Aristotle and refined by people like Oliver Wendell 
Holmes. Among others. And maybe even some guy named Friedman. Until 
we come up with a better set of rules, it doesn't hurt to be on the 
same page.

Nobody's telling you to keep your yap shut. Rather, look at it as a 
reminder that being a smarta$$ is both an honorable profession and a 
lot of hard work... ;-).  Good smarta$$es don't grow on trees, you 
know...

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?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04