[Sca-cooks] Note to "spices hide the taste of bad food"

[Johnna Holloway]

A quick search in medievalcookery.com's recipe database doesn't turn up any other recipes for porcupine.

Wikipedia indicates that they are eaten as a delicacy in Kenya where they are a pest. They are also eaten in Southeast Asia.

Johnnae

On Oct 22, 2013, at 7:31 PM, James Prescott wrote:

> 
> Greetings, Reading Scappi's "Opera" (Scully trans.), I find on page 179:
> 
> 89. Various ways to cook porcupine flesh.
> 
> Get a porcupine in August because at that time, owing to its feeding, it is very fat, even though its flesh has a less bad odour between October and January. <snip> Stud it with some cloves of garlic and whole cloves and rosemary tips to take away its bad smell.
> 
> It makes one wonder a bit what the social forces were that led the popes and cardinals for whom Scappi cooked to want porcupine in their diets. "Less bad odour" indeed! Thorvald