[Sca-cooks] Here we go again- that old rotten meat myth

[Laura C. Minnick]

I fairly often get LTEs published, and I've found that comments to media 
articles are much the same- they prefer them short and to the point. So 
here is what I posted in their comment section:

> Was said:
>
> “Their intense enthusiasm occasionally manifests itself in less than 
> pleasant ways, as when a cook who was a little too eager to adhere to 
> medieval methods of food preparation allowed mutton to go rancid 
> before serving it up from a bubbling cauldron to hundreds of SCA 
> members. Widespread bowel pain constituted that night’s party favor.”
>
> Besides my rancor at the term “Period Nazis”, which will make hackles 
> rise in many if not most SCA circles, I have to take exception to this 
> remark about period cooking and SCA cooking in particular.
>
> We have no evidence that rotten meat was served for meals in the 
> Middle Ages. Quite the contrary in fact, as there are instructions in 
> many of the cookbooks from the period (and yes, there are many extant 
> cookbooks) about care and preservation of meats to keep this from 
> happening! Also, why would we imagine that people then would not be 
> sickened by rotten meat? Why would they eat it then?
>
> There are many, many accomplished cooks in the SCA (including many in 
> the Middle Kingdom) who work exclusively from period cookbooks, and 
> turn out wonderful meals where no one gets sick. Why your 
> correspondent would choose to report on what was surely one bad 
> incident from one ignorant cook when there are surely hundreds of 
> examples of excellent cookery is beyond me. My only explanation is 
> that the writer wanted to reinforce their own conceptions of the time 
> period, facts be damned.
>
'Lainie

-- 
"It is our choices Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."  -Albus Dumbledore

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