on medieval food

[coraa]

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

Comments

[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?

[jonquil]

::applause::

SO TIRED OF THAT ONE.

[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.

[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.

[coraa]

Yes.

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

[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!

[jmpava.livejournal.com]

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

[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

[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

[coraa.livejournal.com]

True, although I doubt that the preservative nature of the spices was the main reason, given how incredibly expensive spices were and what a very large amount of spices are necessary to have any noticeable antimicrobial effect. There are too many more affordable ways to preserve meat for it to be plausible as a utilitarian move -- not to mention that people who could afford pepper, for instance, could also afford to have animals slaughtered as needed.

I think it was partly a matter of taste and also, to a large extent, a status thing -- a matter of conspicuous consumption, literally.

[willworker.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the big flaw I saw in that reasoning was the "if you're rich enough to afford spices, you're rich enough to not usually be eating rotten meat." 's not like the poor could afford to pepper their food extensively.

Steve

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Let me put it this way: in my extensive study of medieval cookbooks and culinary texts, I haven't found any evidence that spices were intended to cover bad flavors, ever. And that includes texts about the uses of spices. There just isn't any evidence that it was done.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Very nice ^_^

Tangentially, your entry made me recall how superstitious people are about food contamination and refrigeration, a superstition that each summer gets reinforced by public service announcements. Is it meat? Is it dairy? Have you stopped eating it (i.e., is your meal over)? Well then RUSH THAT FOOD INTO THE FRIDGE OMG DON'T LET IT SIT OUT OR BACTERIA WILL GET YOU, DEADLY BACTERIA WILL GROW IN YOUR FOOD INSTANTLY OMG THE FRIDGE THE FRIDGE THE FRIDGE!!

I discovered, living briefly with my relaxed mother-in-law, that in fact, a roast can sit out for 24 hours and then be refrigerated. Milk can sit out, can get warm, for an hour, and not yet be sour. And so on.

I understand why service announcements urge people to be careful; it only takes one bad-luck case to send you to the hospital. But if something isn't *instantly* fridged, it's not going to suddenly, and inevitably, give you a case of food poisoning.

Back to your main point, though, I think it's a case of people using the word "rotten" too freely. Meat can start to break down without yet being "rotten." When you hang a pheasant after killing it (again, something that my in-laws did), you are letting some of that breakdown process occur--but it's not progressing to the "rotten" stage.

[tedeisenstein.livejournal.com]

It's not "why couldn't it?"; it's "why would they bother?" Cooked rancid meat still tastes bad, even if it won't kill you.

[tedeisenstein.livejournal.com]

The poor who couldn't afford pepper usually couldn't afford to buy all that much beef in the first place, and they certainly wouldn't have been allowed to hunt deer. They'd likely have small critters (chickens or rabbits) around, critters that reproduce easily, eat scraps and bugs and weeds and crop leftovers rather than big animals that require a lot of food themselves and would be more valuable as draft animals than as food.

(The poor: no rotten food because they couldn't afford enough food that it'd last long enough to become rotten. The rich: no rotten food because if it went off they could easily get fresh meat.)

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

I doubt this, mostly because the sheer amount of spices needed to create preservative level quantities far outweighs the uses I've seen on meat. Frinstance, the Koreans use peppers to preserve cabbages (and also salt and brine, but the peppers are important), but I've not seen that amount of spice in a meat dish outside of a king's table and they wouldn't eat rancid meat, period.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

I was cheered by this post! I got an F on an English paper in high school about this topic and it still makes me bitter. Oranges with cloves, yes, but whole roast deer? Not so much.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

They did eat meat just turning...I remember nearly choking when reading the full Pepys diary, in which he often describes his meals. One time he ordered a dinner, and came to sit down, to discover the meat covered with tiny worms. As far as I could see he ate it anyway.

[morganlf.livejournal.com]

willworker, yeah people didn't cook rotten meat on purpose, and they didn't really use spices as an agent of preservation, at least not commonly. Let me add some information from a few sources to the conversation:

"Spices, to judge by extant household records of a year's supply -- not to mention the cost -- were no doubt used as sparingly as a modern cook uses pepper, although there were certainly some dishes (then as now) that were more spicy than others" (Hieatt, et al, xiii).

There are records in late-medieval England that people knew the difference between newly-caught, or fresh, meat and rotten meat. Both words are used with some frequency: "Venysoun fresshe haue I fondyn" and "Take fresshe porke and sethe hit wele". Also that people understood the difference between fresh/rancid grease or fat for cooking: "Do it to-gedir wyth frees grees of a swyn" and "Frye hem on fayre freysshe grece."

There are other sources (that I'm too lazy to find right now) that mention people being fined for trying to sell rotten meat.

So yeah, meat was usually either eaten fresh or preserved. Most poor people didn't really have ready access to meat (other than small game, like tedeisenstein mentions). They ate a lot of 'pottages' or stews that would stretch whatever food they had to the fullest.

[morganlf.livejournal.com]

Not to be nit-picky, but Pepys is certainly not medieval.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

True, yet isn't the point the same?

[morganlf.livejournal.com]

Sure, but it also just furthers the "those people in olden days ate rotten meat" stereotype. Dunno, Pepys seems pretty appalled by his spoiled fish in this entry:

"Thursday 26 June 1662

Up and took physique, but such as to go abroad with, only to loosen me, for I am bound. So to the office, and there all the morning sitting till noon, and then took Commissioner Pett home to dinner with me, where my stomach was turned when my sturgeon came to table, upon which I saw very many little worms creeping, which I suppose was through the staleness of the pickle." (source.)

[morganlf.livejournal.com]

And cue the apologies for coming off as a snark-monster. Truly, I need to caffeinate before I read livejournal.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

That was the entry--thanks for pinning it. (I should have remembered Pepys is online--I didn't want to plow through the entire set of books to find it.)

I don't think it perpetuates the "people ate rotten meat" myth so much as how different the standards were--which I should have pointed out. The innkeepers ought not to have served it, but they did--and Pepys turned up his nose, just as we would today.

[tedeisenstein.livejournal.com]

Weren't oranges with cloves used more for the scent in a pomander than as a foodstuff?