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

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Jeff Gedney:
>Lavender and dill is not sufficent to cover up the smell of Putrescine.
>The human nose reacts to that in staggeringly small proportions.
>Same for mercaptans and other sulfates produced in animal decay like 
>Cadaverine. If it were, Coroners offices would be strewn with the
>stuff.
>
>Salt, at least in England was imported from a very early date. the
>Ocean girdling England made "gray" salt, which required a lot of
>boiling and separating to render palatable. And the Climate is not 
>suitable for salt making.
>
>Salt was traded for from France and Spain.
>
>Yes you put up the meat as soon as you had it butchered, if you did
>not sell your livestock to the butcher, and did it yourself.
>That was, as I said earlier, essential to a well run household.
>But you did not wait until the meat was blown and runny before you
>started putting it up. You did it fresh, then as now.
>
>So you salt/spice to PREVENT decay, not cover it up.
>And you used herbs and spices to cover up strong natural smells in
>foods, like in wild Duck, Swan, and Goat.
>
>Capt Elias
>-Renaissance Geek of the Cyber Seas

On a similar note, I was looking, earlier this evening, at a pair of 
mid-14th-century recipes (processes, really) in Curye On Inglysh. The 
second is a process for saving venison that is going off ("restyng", 
rusting or going rancid). The first is far more involved, and is for 
_preventing_ venison from restying.

You kinda have to assume that, if it was so much easier to repair 
tainted venison than to prevent it getting tainted, then why bother 
with the previous process? Why do I think the first, more detailed 
process, is the preferred one?

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