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

[David Friedman]

>Regardless of the end use, we can begin to see how the layperson may 
>view this 'regulation' as an
>authorization to sell spoiled meat to the consumer...and make the 
>next logical assumption that
>folks ate spoiled meat.  And therein lies the seed for the belief 
>that medieval folks ate spoiled
>meat.

I don't think the belief that medieval people sometimes sold spoiled 
meat is particularly puzzling--it's a fairly obvious fraud and one 
which, as has been pointed out, there were explicit rules against. 
And I agree with you that the existence of the rules provides some 
evidence of the practice they were intended to discourage.

The puzzle is how to get from there to the idea that cooks used 
heavily spiced dishes to conceal the fact that the meat was spoiled.

Perhaps part of the answer is that the myth of overspiced medieval 
food already existed. Once someone believes that, it's an easy step 
to "perhaps they did it because" and from there to "they did it 
because."

Within the Society, I have observed how conjecture can get converted 
into fact with two transmissions--there is no reason it shouldn't 
happen elsewhere as well.

Another part may be that people unfamiliar with the relevant history 
don't realize, for forget, that spices were expensive.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com