3 ms·

This varies a little from my understanding I learned in school that food used to need to be heavily spiced because it was old/rancid, and that died down as fres

• ars 8y ago
  As best as I can tell this is an oft repeated myth. The best evidence against it is that spices are expensive, if you could afford them, you could afford fresh food.
  • mirimir 8y ago
    But actually, that's part of TFA's argument. As spices became less expensive, TFA argues that became popular among poorer people. And so richer people instead came to emphasize the intrinsic flavors of foods. But for that to work, those foods had to be high quality, and unspoiled. So, by TFA's argument, it was poorer people who came to use spices to mask low quality and spoiled foods.
  • jwbensley 8y ago
    Depends on the spice and the part of the world you're talking about. Chilli was/is used heavily in Mexico and India to add or mask flavour but, also they also have antibacterial and anti inflammatory properties in countries were you have / have had large concentrations of poor people. Classical French Haute cuisine is heavily flavoured with fats (butter and creame) which required a lot of milk to create, i.e. the yield is low considering how much precious milk one had to put in. That was something that was at the time exclusively for the wealthy.
• jwbensley 8y ago
  Here in the UK that is the case but, not for spices but for herbs. If you're from the UK you'll know that mint source with your Sunday roast is very common. It was invented by the Welsh to make their old lamb/mutton taste better.
  • robocat 8y ago
    > to make their old lamb/mutton taste better I find that hard to swallow. I think if you are brought up on mutton, then mutton tastes great! Although mutton or hogget is hard to find now. I generally dislike most European beef dishes because they use tasteless (to me) veal or wintered(?) cattle. I prefer grass fed - probably because that is what I am used to? And then it seems the same crowd get excited about wild pork or venison - strong flavored - the opinions just seem dissonant to me. Although I do find ram, billy goat, and old glandy boar are rather too tasty for me!
    • nrki 8y ago
      Note that he said "old" as in, probably well past any "use-by" date (that wouldn't have existed back then). :)
    • jwbensley 8y ago
      As per @nrki's comment; > I think if you are brought up on mutton, then mutton tastes great No one has been "brought up on" any kind of meat further ago than the last 100 years or so, people couldn't afford it. People kept animals until they were old and had no other purposes (like milk or wool) before they were killed for meat.
      • staticautomatic 8y ago
        That's definitely not true.
• iguy 8y ago
  > food used to need to be heavily spiced because it was old/rancid This is often said but I really doubt that it was ever true. Nobody ate meat that was old/rancid, because (1) that was a great way to get ill, and (2) a cook who let the meat go off would surely have been fired, meat was super-expensive. They knew damn well how to handle it without wasting any. I'm sure the peasants sometimes ate cabbage that was past its sell-by date, but if that was all you could afford, then clearly you could not afford spices brought from across the world.