[Sca-cooks] Spices and the Irish Common folk

[Mark Hendershott]

At 10:00 AM 3/24/2006, you wrote:
>I've been having a discussion with my father (a 
>self-proclaimed authority on almost anything 
><grin>) about the types of spices the common 
>Irish folk might have had.  This was sparked by 
>a neighbor taking him to dinner for St. 
>Patrick's Day and he felt the corned beef & 
>cabbage wasn't fixed correctly <sigh>.
>
>I did find him a fairly good recipe for it on 
>Martha Stewart.com, but he has come back to me 
>with the idea that the common Irish folk who 
>invented this dish (?? did they, I don't know 
>that, myself) just didn't have the spices 
>necessary for making corned beef.  I told him I 
>could show him 14th century recipes in England 
>that used most of these spices, but he countered 
>that the common folk wouldn't have had them.
>
>Anyway, what I need is some help finding out the 
>real story behind not only the way corned beef 
>came about, but also some info on the spices 
>normally used to make corned beef.  Martha 
>Stewart corned her beef with water, pickling 
>salt, dry mustard, pickling spices, garlic, and 
>ground pepper.  Now, pickling salt would be just 
>good old sea salt, I'm sure.  Mustard is no 
>problem, neither is garlic... but what about 
>pickling spices?  I don't pickle, so I don't 
>know what they are a mixture of.  Pepper might 
>have been a slight problem for a common 
>Irishman, but was it totally un-used by them??
>
>Any help would be welcome.
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Meisterin Katarina Helene von Schönborn, OL
>Shire of Narrental (Peru, Indiana)  http://narrental.home.comcast.net
>Middle Kingdom
>http://meisterin.katarina.home.comcast.net

I can't comment much on the spice issue.  My 
experience with St. Paddy day corned beef is that 
all too frequently it is simply removed from the 
plastic wrapper and boiled for awhile.  Better is 
to soak in water overnight, drain, trim (the fat 
is nasty) and bake in a closed casserole w/ 
whatever spice and wine appeal.  4hours at 375 
degrees works nicely for me.  Even better are the 
reubens made with the leftovers.

Simon Sinneghe
Briaroak, Summits, An Tir