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

James Prescott prescotj at telusplanet.net
Tue Oct 22 16:31:09 PDT 2013


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







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