[Sca-cooks] Myth of Spoiled Meat

[Johnna Holloway]

Here's a summary of what I've come across and mentioned in the past.

You can in fact approach this question in another way.
Look at what was being written about food and the authors' conclusions.
For instance read the 1931 edition of The English Medieval Feast by  
Mead.
And take a look at Drummond.

Do try and take a look at Professor Terry Nutter's article on spicing  
legends and urban myths.

So, what is one to think? Actually, I think the idea was accepted
by medievalists reading Austin, Warner, Mead and Drummond and written  
into a generation or two of textbooks. From there it made its
way into popular textbooks and children's books and so
now everyone grows up with the idea that meat was spoiled & they
needed spices to hide the taste. Afterall every schoolchild
has to learn about Columbus and what drove all those ships westward
but the search for spices.

Johnna


Johnnae llyn Lewis


 From July 2001 when I wrote

With regard to Spices and Rotten Meat...


FOOD HISTORY NEWS in the summer of 1996 offered this as "an
example of an old saw that we would like to dull..." It's one
of those oft-quoted , generally accepted, unquestioned
assumptions that in light of recent research and reinterpretation
needs to re-examined and dismissed.

The issue then offered an article by Alice Arndt entitled
"They Used A Lot of Spices to Disguise Spoiled Meat." Arndt
points out that medieval markets were regulated. Those caught
selling putrid meat might be fined or even pilloried in front
of their rotten carcasses. She notes that surviving medieval
recipes do not mention that one needs to add extra spices if
the meat is tainted. Much of what we accept in terms of this
accepted truth, she traces to Drummond (The Englishman and His Food),
who got it wrong in his book by misreading a number of recipes.
She notes that the use of spices in tropical cuisines has more
to do with inducing perspiration than with preservation. Lastly,
medieval preservation techniques were effective and remained in
use long after exotic spicing was abandoned.
---------

I can report that the above article on Spices and Rotten Meat

Old Saw: "They Used A Lot of Spices to Disguise Spoiled Meat."

by Alice Arndt is available on the FHNews website now---

http://foodhistorynews.com/debunk.html



Then continuing from 2001--

Other interesting articles/chapters on this question are:



Flandrin, Jean-Louis. "Seasonings, Cooking, and Dietetics in

the Late Middle Ages." appears as Chapter 25 of FOOD A CULINARY

HISTORY, edited by Jean-louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari, 1999.



Laurioux, Bruno. "Spices in the Medieval Diet: A New Approach."

FOOD AND FOODWAYS, v.1, no.1 (1985) pp.43-76.



Crossley-Holland, Nicole. LIVING AND DINING IN MEDIEVAL PARIS.

Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996. See her chapter "Sugar

and Spice..." pages 105-112 wherein she sets out to examine

Le Menagier with regard to his use of spices.  Along the way,

she covers all the bases regarding the old theories of spices,

rotten meat, and unsophisticated palates.



Followed by August 2001

I've stumbled across another source, this one by Andrew Dalby.



Dalby writes:



"It is also necessary to look critically at what earlier historians

have said. It is easy to perpetuate errors. At some time in the

twentieth century, a British historian unfamiliar with foreign food

was told (possibly by his mother) that spices serve to mask the

flavour of rotting meat. This assertion is now made of medieval

cuisine in several otherwise well-researched histories written in

Britain. It is undocumented, and, in general, for ancient and

medieval cuisines, it is most unlikely to be true. Spices were a

luxury item, affordable only by those who could afford very good food.

No recipe or household text recommends them to mask bad flavours. On

the contrary, spices are called for liberally in ancient recipe books

for their positive flavour, their aroma, their preservative and dietary

qualities."



This is taken from page 156 of Andrew Dalby.  Dangerous Tastes.

The Story of Spices. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

(In the UK by the British Museum Press, 2000.)



Thought it might be of interest to those who were involved or

followed the initial discussion.



Followed by another post---

The Oxford Symposium on Food Cookery 1992 which was entitled
Spicing Up the Palate Studies of Flavourings – Ancient and Modern
offered up several papers including:

“Tainted Meat,” by Gillian Riley. It was subtitled “An attempt
to investigate the origins of a commonly held opinion about the use
of spices in the cooking of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.” Pp. 1-6.

Riley admits that she thought it would be a simple task to work
backwards until she found “some pompous eighteenth-century antiquary”
that was the origin of the idea. But it was not that simple a task.
See her paper for all the details. She mentions Richard Warner and
Austin, but also notes that several Italian authors in the 19 th century
who were working with the Italian manuscripts were not taken with
spicing and write about its "uncouthness." There's a bibliography
for further reading.

So, what is one to think? Actually, I think the idea was accepted
by medievalists reading Austin, Warner, Mead and Drummond and written
into a generation or two of textbooks. From there it made its
way into popular textbooks and children's books and so
now everyone grows up with the idea that meat spoiled & they
needed spices to hide the taste. Afterall every schoolchild
has to learn about Columbus and what drove all those ships westward
but the search for spices.

 From 4/15/2005

For those that remember Terry Nutter, I looked up her
thoughts on spicing and rotten meats via the wayback machine.

She began her essay "Remarks on Urban Legend #27"
"The urban myth that medievals used flavoring ingredients to cover the
taste of spoiled meat has proved astoundingly persistent. Competent
historians who know little or nothing about the culinary record retail
it in survey texts. Articles in popular sources blithely subscribe to  
it.

It's nonsense, and it's demonstrable nonsense. Below, I present three
modern observations, and then some facts about what the primary sources
from the time have to say on the subjects of rotten meat and sauces. "

NOTE 2009 the article was up this am at
http://web.archive.org/web/19960101-20020701re_/http://www.cottagesoft.com/ 
~jtn/Culinary/Articles/notesf.html


It also appeared in hard copy in an issue of Serve It Forth.

Does this answer the question?

I can also report that I went through and examined every recipe that
appears in the Concordance
of English Recipes and we didn't index under "meat, rotten."

Johnna Holloway


On Nov 21, 2009, at 2:47 AM, Ian Kusz wrote:
>
>
> Can someone help me out, here?  I'd love to put these doubts to rest.
>
>
>> --
>> Ian of Oertha