[Sca-cooks] Recommend Books

[Johnna Holloway]

With regard to Spices and Rotten Meat, here are some books and  
chapters that I have recommended that people read over the past few  
years...

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.

So, what is one to think? Actually, I think the idea was accepted
by medievalists reading 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 them westward
but the search for spices.

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.
--
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.)
----
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.

ON the WEB--

Terry Nutter did an article on spicing and rotten meats. It can be  
found 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. "

Getting there takes a couple steps-- click first on--
http://web.archive.org/web/20021015225156/www.cottagesoft.com/~jtn/ 
Culinary/Articles/notesf.html
then click on "spices, sauces, and rot" in the left hand column.
That should take you to the article.

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

Doc and Helewyse have also written about the topic too and their  
articles were on the web.


Johnnae
On Nov 13, 2010, at 10:55 PM, yaini0625 at yahoo.com wrote:

> I sat in a workshop today and listen to one of the guest speakers  
> once again perpetuate the myth of rotten food in the Middle Ages.  I  
> was most annoyed because it was in front of future teachers.
> I approached the guest speaker to later, for lack of a better word,  
> correct her. She was reluctant to let go of her belief and tried to  
> side step by talking about Vegetarianism in the Middle Ages.
> I offered to give her two websites for further research. She  
> apparently is one of those people who don't use computers. I knew of  
> Food History immediately as a book.
> Does anyone have any recommended books that talks specifically about  
> the use of fresh meat or that can dispel the myth of rotten meat?
> Bless Bless
> Aelina the Saami