[Sca-cooks] Spices and the Irish Common folk

[Tom Vincent]

Thanks for the correction.

Having been to Ireland several times, I wonder why any Irish people 
would want to bother with beef at all, what with the spectacular seafood 
they have there.  Not a dam on any river and beautiful salmon, trout and 
lobster abound.

Duriel



Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:
>
> On Mar 24, 2006, at 2:08 PM, Jeff Gedney wrote:
>
>>>  3.  Beef in the timeperiod wouldn't have been fed corn ('corn', 
>>> pre-maize, being generic grain), but would have been grass-fed.
>>
>> Just a heads up to friend Tom...
>> "Corning" haas nothing whatsoever to do with what
>> an animal is fed.
>> It is a form of curing.
>> It is similar to Pickling.
>> It refers to the coarse salts and spices used as a
>> packing to coat and cure the beef.
>> Today most corning is actually done commercially by
>> brining and not corning.
>
> It's been alleged by various sources that "corning" is a reference 
> either to A) coarse salt resembling "corns" of gunpowder, or possibly 
> B) actually containing some of that gunpowder (for its saltpeter 
> content). Spices are sort of incidental, it appears.
>
> I've never encountered a period or near-period reference to corned 
> beef, myself: salt beef, yes, and later, powdered beef.
>
>> Also, beef would not have been common food.
>> IIRC most beef was reserved as walking wealth for the
>> English nobility, not the Irish peasantry (though Irish
>> cattle, by all accounts needed a lot of boiling to eat).
>> The ancestor food to corned beef was probably boiling
>> a joint of salted pork or bacon with cabbage and potatoes.
>> (Think "raw" ham and you probably got it.)
>> In America beef was cheaper, especially in the 1800's
>> for the Irish following the railroads west.
>> So cheap corned beef was substituted for the bacon.
>> Eventually Irish repatriots and nouveau riche brought
>> the beef concept back to Ireland.
>
> Malachai McCormick says that during his childhood in Ireland, most 
> Irishmen thought corned beef on St. Patrick's Day was pretty funny -- 
> why eat an English dish on the feast day of the patron saint of 
> Ireland? _Ham or bacon_ and cabbage, OTOH, is another matter entirely. 
> Flavor-wise, one of those bullet-shaped, cured, boneless pork 
> shoulders, the ones which actually used to be made with real pork 
> tenderloin, once upon a time, is probably one of the better 
> substitutes for the harder-to-find Irish boiling bacon, which 
> generally comes from the loin, like "Canadian" bacon, only not so 
> severely trimmed of the rib meat and fat...
>
> I like coriander seed, mustard seed, and plenty of bay leaf in my 
> corning mix, myself.
>
> Adamantius (thinking for some reason of Dublin coddle)
>
>
>
>
>
> "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
>
>
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