[Sca-cooks] Rotten meat and spices..18th century viewpoint

[Johnna Holloway]

Robin provided the text from Two 15th Century--

For those that want earlier--- Pegge's edition of 

The Forme of Cury from 1780 is up now as an e-book on
Project Gutenberg.


Some excerpts from that 1780 introduction--

The Aborigines of Britain, to come nearer home, could have no great
expertness in Cookery, as they had no oil, and we hear nothing of
their butter, they used only sheep and oxen, eating neither hares,
though so greatly esteemed at Rome, nor hens, nor geese, from a
notion of superstition. Nor did they eat fish. There was little corn
in the interior part of the island, but they lived on milk and flesh
[11]; though it is expressly asserted by Strabo that they had no
cheese [12]. The later Britons, however, well knew how to make the
best use of the cow, since, as appears from the laws of _Hoel Dda_,
A.D. 943, this animal was a creature so essential, so common and
useful in Wales, as to be the standard in rating fines, &c. [13].


Hengist, leader of the Saxons, made grand entertainments for king
Vortigern [14], but no particulars have come down to us; and
certainly little exquisite can be expected from a people then so
extremely barbarous as not to be able either to read or write.
'Barbari homines a septentrione, (they are the words of Dr. Lister)
caseo et ferina subcruda victitantes, omnia condimenta adjectiva
respuerunt' [15].

As to the Normans, both William I.
and Rufus made grand entertainments [23]; the former was remarkable
for an immense paunch, and withal was so exact, so nice and curious
in his repasts [24], that when his prime favourite William Fitz-
Osberne, who as steward of the household had the charge of the Cury,
served him with the flesh of a crane scarcely half-roasted, he was so
highly exasperated, that he lifted up his fist, and would have
strucken him, had not Eudo, appointed _Dapiser_ immediately after,
warded off the blow [25].

In his general remarks about the roll he writes:

It were easy and obvious to
dilate here on the variations of taste at different periods of time,
and the reader would probably not dislike it; but so many other
particulars demand our attention, that I shall content myself with
observing in general, that whereas a very able _Italian_ critic,
_Latinus Latinius_, passed a sinister and unfavourable censure on
certain seemingly strange medlies, disgusting and preposterous messes,
which we meet with in _Apicius_; Dr. _Lister_ very sensibly replies
to his strictures on that head, 'That these messes are not
immediately to be rejected, because they may be displeasing to some.
_Plutarch_ testifies, that the ancients disliked _pepper_ and the
sour juice of lemons, insomuch that for a long time they only used
these in their wardrobes for the sake of their agreeable scent, and
yet they are the most wholesome of all fruits. The natives of the
_West Indies_ were no less averse to _salt_; and who would believe
that _hops_ should ever have a place in our common beverage [57], and
that we should ever think of qualifying the sweetness of malt,
through good housewifry, by mixing with it a substance so egregiously
bitter? Most of the _American_ fruits are exceedingly odoriferous,
and therefore are very disgusting at first to us _Europeans_: on the
contrary, our fruits appear insipid to them, for want of odour. There
are a thousand instances of things, would we recollect them all,
which though disagreeable to taste are commonly assumed into our
viands; indeed, _custom_ alone reconciles and adopts sauces which are
even nauseous to the palate. _Latinus Latinius_ therefore very
rashly and absurdly blames _Apicius_, on account of certain
preparations which to him, forsooth, were disrelishing.' [58] In
short it is a known maxim, that _de gustibus non est disputandum_;

Later after a discussion of medical history and issues...

But after all the avysement of physicians and philosophers, our
processes do not appear by any means to be well calculated for the
benefit of recipients, but rather inimical to them. Many of them are
so highly seasoned, are such strange and heterogeneous compositions,
meer olios and gallimawfreys, that they seem removed as far as
possible from the intention of contributing to health; indeed the
messes are so redundant and complex, that in regard to herbs, in No.
6, no less than ten are used, where we should now be content with two
or three: and so the sallad, No. 76, consists of no less than 14
ingredients. The physicians appear only to have taken care that
nothing directly noxious was suffered to enter the forms. 

Spices. _Species_. They are mentioned in general No. 133, and _whole
spices_, 167, 168. but they are more commonly specified, and are
indeed greatly used, though being imported from abroad, and from so
far as Italy or the Levant (and even there must be dear), some may
wonder at this: but it shouid be considered, that our Roll was
chiefly compiled for the use of noble and princely tables; and the
same may be said of the Editor's MS. The spices came from the same
part of the world, and by the same route, as sugar did. The _spicery_
was an ancient department at court, and had its proper officers.


The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Forme of Cury, by Samuel Pegge

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=16818&pageno=1 

Thanks for this edition by the way are owed to---

Produced by Tobin Richard, Charles Franks, Greg Lindahl,
Cindy Renfrow and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.



I'll browse through my Warner edition later and see what he said in 1790.

Johnnae

>-----Original Message-----
>From: David Friedman <ddfr at daviddfriedman.com>
>
>For the "overspicing"  version, the earliest source I know is the introduction to _Two 
>Fifteenth Century Cookery Books_, written at the end of the 
>nineteenth century. It's clear from context that the author is 
>reacting not to the amount of spices, which he has no information on, 
>but to the unfamiliar use of particular spices--I think to putting 
>cinnamon in soup in the example he mentions.
>
>Anyone know of an earlier example?
>  
>