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

[Jeff Gedney]

I can't get past the simple economics of it. 

Any household that is well off enough to afford a lot of expensive imported spices is certainly going to be able to afford a trip to the butcher's or the Poulterers for something fresh.

Spices like any other semi precious commodity would be usied intentionally and to achieve a desired effect.
The same applies to salt, for that matter, which had to be imported to most areas of Europe. England, for example, had almost nil salt production due to water quality and climate.

Pickling/curing meat is an intentional and often well planned process. 

I can't see why someone would wait until the meat had begun to spoil to start wither of these processes. If the meat continued to spoil while it was in the ad initio stage of salting/pickling, then the salt/spices or whatever would be wasted. 

Seems to me tossing a double handful of cinnamon and cloves into a pot on the off chance it would make the effects of Putrescine and Cadaverine less noticeable is potentially wasteful, the spices so used would be unrecoverable. If the 'experiment' failed the household would be out some valuable spices with out any benefit from them.

If you were poor you were frugal with your expenditures. You smoke and salt and preserve your meats as soon as you butcher them.  That is how it was done in communities without refrigeration in the US and all over Europe in the 17th, 18th, 19th, and even 20th centuries (read the Foxfire books). 
I find it hard to believe that frugal folk in the middle ages would not have been similarly frugal (and forethinking) about their precious supply of meats, salts and spices.

So the whole notion fails a basic economic test for me.
 
If you were rich enough to afford the spices to throw away, you were rich enough to have a regular supply of fresh meat. 
If you weren't, you would have been trained from birth to be careful with your assets and naturally put up the meat for the winter in the fall slaughtering time. 
If you were careful to PREVENT spoilage, you would not have to COPE WITH spoilage. 

A well run house was a frugally run house, and the assets of the house would be jealously husbanded. That includes both Meat AND spices.

Capt Elias
-Renaissance Geek of the Cyber Seas

- Help! I am being pecked to death by the Ducks of Dilletanteism! 
There are SO damn many more things I want to try in the SCA than I can possibly have time for. It's killing me!!!

-------------------------------------------------------------
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather 
wood, divide the work, and give orders.  Instead, teach them
to yearn for the vast and endless sea. 
  - Antoine de Saint Exupery