coraa | on medieval food

Dear world,

Medieval cooks didn't use spices because they were covering up the taste of rancid or rotten meat. There is a very simple reason for this: eating bad meat will make you very very sick, and quite possibly kill you (especially if you live in a time when you can't get electrolyte drinks or IV fluid replacement). Covering it up with cinnamon and pepper will not fix that. Medieval people did not eat rotten meat, because, while they didn't have our modern germ theory, they were capable of noticing that people who ate meat that smelled bad got very sick and often died.

It is true that a lot of meat in the middle ages was not eaten right away, but then, a lot of modern meat is not eaten right away -- what do you think aged steak is? And yes, accordingly, some of the meat eaten at the time probably had a somewhat different taste and texture than our refrigerated meats. (Also, not surprisingly, they very often dealt with the no-refrigeration problem by preserving meats, by salting or drying or sugaring or pickling or submerging in fat. But they preserved them before they went bad, because that's the point of preserving.) And yes, absolutely, people in the middle ages liked their food heavily spiced, and also sweeter than most modern people do. But they liked it that way because that was what they liked; it was a luxury, and also just a preference. I like the way pickles taste, but that doesn't mean I eat them because I had to do something with a bagful of rotten cucumbers.

But they didn't eat rotten meat, because eating rotten meat isn't something people do -- our digestive tracks can't handle it. It's almost impossible to hide the smell or taste of rotten meat (being as it's one of the things our bodies are designed to teach us not to eat), and even if you could, you'd get out of that habit pretty quickly after the first round of people got sick and died.

(Also, since spices were extraordinarily expensive, and therefore province of the wealthy, it just doesn't make sense. You save nothing by refusing to throw out a piece of meat and instead putting on spices that cost many times the cost of the meat; it would be financially wiser to just throw out the meat and slaughter another animal.)

Medieval people didn't think like modern people, but they weren't stupid. They just liked spiced food, when they could afford it.

Yours in the puncturing of historical just-so-stories,

Cora

the irritated history geek who just watched Top Chef

Current Mood: annoyed

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

ironed_orchid

I am going to bookmark this and send people here whenever I hear people repeating that myth.

Of course, some spices do have drying or preserving qualities which make meat last longer without going bad.

Also, how do these people think salami is made?

From:

coraa

Yes, exactly. And it is absolutely true that people in the middle ages preserved meats -- heck, a lot of meat that we eat now because we like the taste (bacon, jerky, pancetta and prosciutto, salami and other dried sausages, confit, sauerbraten, pickled herring) were originally treated not for taste but so they wouldn't go bad. But they weren't rotten-covered-up, they were preserved.

From:

jonquil

::applause::

SO TIRED OF THAT ONE.

From:

coraa

Yes.

I need a button that says "Medieval People: Not Stupid"

From:

telophase

The judges of these sorts of things drive me nuts. On Shear Genius a year or so back, they did a hairstyles-inspired-by-history challenge. The guy who won was given the Tudor period and did something Georgian, and they praised him on his historical accuracy!

I almost threw something at the television.

From:

coraa

Oh good grief, yes. And the thing is, I don't object to people not knowing the intricacies of various periods of history -- I don't know as much as I should about, e.g., Chinese history. But I also don't make public statements about Chinese history!

From:

jmpava.livejournal.com

You are SOOOOOOO cute when your harness your indignation at historical anachronisms

From:

maggiedacatt.livejournal.com

From:

willworker.livejournal.com

It was partly "because they liked it," but also partly because spices are preservatives. Lots of popular foods were born of a need to preserve (bacon (smoke), sauerkraut (vinegar), jerky (dehydration), jam (sugar), etc).

Steve

From:

willworker.livejournal.com

Also, if cooked enough, most "bad" meat won't make you sick-- rancidity tastes bad, but if you boil the microbes to death, it can be eaten safely. I don't see why a priori rancid meat couldn't be cooked to sterilization and spiced to cover the flavor.

Steve

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