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

[el2iot2 at mail.com]

This would be true of imported spices.  

but there are a great many herbs that can be harvested wild in western Europe, as well as the British Isles.  Lavander is one that covers-up a great many unpleasent tastes.  And the poor were very much hunter/gathers<as long as they did not get caught with the King's game>, so they would have been well aware of herbs to make the unpleasent more palateable.  Koshering of meats<soakingin a salt brine to remove the fowl blood taste<in seacoast areas this would have been an easy task>>.  

When you have to kill an animal for meat, how are you going to eat all of it before it goes bad??? 300 lbs of pig, can't kill one every 3 days so you can have fresh meat.  1200 lbs of Cow, even 40 lbs of goat is an awful lot of meat.  that is why salting,smoking,other curing and pickiling methods happened.  And as to meat availability, check the standard peasent/lord duty/responsibility contracts.  the ones I have seen state a lord is required to provide a set amount of meat<in the form of live animals to a peasent each year<or feast period>.  

Dill is used to cover many fishey/strong tastes that may not be appealing: as in Gravlocks, Borscht<both Ukrainian<chicken> and Russian<beef>>.  Junniper berries for gamey taste of wild meats, there are forms of Ginger that will grow well into Normandy.

Roman Herb knowledge would have survived well into period. 

just things to think about
Joy
Radei 
----- Original Message -----
From: "Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at jeffnet.org>
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Rotten meat and spices...
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 10:37:21 -0700

> 
> At 09:15 AM 4/12/2005, you wrote:
> > What of the pheasent scene from Sho-Gun.  Did the English hand 
> > the pheasent until the neck rotted?  or is this bunk?
> 
> Last I knew, it was a relatively recent taste.
> 
> > I know I do prefer aged meats<and not always aged properly by 
> > modern standards>, but that is me.  And I am sure, if you are 
> > poor enough and that is all you have, rotten is better than 
> > nothing.
> 
> Unfortunately, there is a bit of a 'let them eat cake' logic here. 
> Spices were *expensive*. They were often a way to display your 
> wealth. If you are so poor as to be forced to eat rotting meat (and 
> no, I don't buy that- people that poor seldom had meat in their 
> diets) you aren't going to spend what little you have on spices.
> 
> 'Lainie
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joy

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