How Snobbery Helped Take the Spice Out of European Cooking
npr.org
npr.org
Main thesis.
Interestingly enough, the European pallate has also had a dterimental effect on some oriental and african cuisines athat were historically more spicy.
That bein said, history doesn't really bear out the main thses as laid out in the headline. Spices were a very late addition to the european pallatte, and the timeline give for their retrenchment would put them at a very small proportion of the timeline of historical europe. In other words, "the spice" era was merely a short lived fad. For most of its history spices were rare and not very widespread in usage, then they were available, and then they were superseeded with other technical innovations. The technical innovation of stock based sauce is a derivative of increasing economic wealth. But the snob factor is really a poor way to phrase it. It is more true that the european pallate took the spice out of middle-eastern and north african cuisine based on the snob-factor. This makes more sense because the status of european pallate was seen as being higher than local cuisinge during the colonial and post-colonial transition peirods. That is, it was social aspiration driving the trend, not technical innovation. Its much less clear that a similar explanatory sequence works for the evolution of the euroean pallate itself.
As to what was 'known' and what was actually commonly or widespread in use, for example, seems to matter a lot. For exmaple, there are definitely regions that show early adoption of arabic culinary influence eg, moorish spain. the early days of venetian traders of the middle ages (1250), etc. And the returning soldiers from the crusades would have rbought back implicit knowledge to incorporate spices in other areas further north (1100-1300).
But it would also seem that those exceptions prove the rule--the timeframe we are talking about is either early and very geographically constrained or later and constrained to a finite window of time.
But we know that the persians and arabs had spices and that the hellenistic and roman empires had access to the spoils of war from those geographic regions.
http://www.spiceadvice.com/history/
(not the greatest source, but illustrative)
"pinches bridge of nose Apart from the rather random and non sensical use of 'medieval' in here? Yeh it is pretty bad.
I mean what? Do they mean medieval as 'anything at all before the year 1600'? In which case there is a significant issue because up until the thirteenth century they didn't have most spices - maybe pepper, some salt (expensive as), bay leaves, clove... but none of the better known ones. Let alone sugar! They had honey.. and fruit, all of which have complex flavour profiles. You see some things coming back the crusades (cinnamon) and the like. Also it depends on where you are, because of course Constantinople didn't have that issue. Likewise parts of the Mediterranean and Iberia, and the Middle East. Normally classic 'medieval' flavours are sweet and sour and little differentiation between savoury and sweet - beer, vinegar, nuts, pepper, hyssop and other herbs achieved the flavouring. They definitely used meat, but almost certainly most people couldn't eat that on a regular basis because it is expensive, so this makes no sense on a class scale.
French cooking also comes out of fourteenth century cooking, so load of bollocks (I have a recipe here that is almost identical to what it is today) - there is just more cream with the advent of refrigeration. Most of the stuff we associate with it today is post French revolution and the nineteenth century - I love how the idea of French cuisine seems restricted to really narrow Parisian stuff. Not to mention the humoural theory of medicine was still prevalent into the eighteenth and nineteenth century in some parts (in particular the antipodes and Canada). Protestantism had nothing to do with the price of fish. If anything it was the trading networks established from Malacca and the like, which still meant that spices were only affordable by the wealthy until much later when engineering meant ships didn't take 15 months to get there and 15 months back. Paying in blood for spices. Wars were fought over this stuff, along with tea and opium. I suspect most of our modern eating habits are blameable on the Victorians - although having said that, Queen Victoria had her own Punjabi chef to make her curries!
There also seems to be some sort of changing shift about what 'spice' means - herbs are not spices. Neither is salt and pepper. Grah. Talking about cherry picking your responses from historians! "
and
"While some have praised the new research for revealing the secret to why Indian cuisine is so delicious"
It is just assumed that Indian food is fantastic. I love Indian food but this is not some sort of quantifiable thing is it - deliciousness?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9138580
A dozen other blogspam variants on that article appeared in short order and here we find it echoing again.
Although the direct source is American I can't help but think that the underlying meme has something to do with the objective horribleness of British food and the ubiquity of Indian restaurants in the UK.
But now? I've had superb meals in both city and country - and there's been a big rediscovery of the roots of British cuisine. Just with better ingredients, imagination, and avoiding shudder the classic blunder of oversteaming the veggies. :)
Case in point - hit up the Bull in Highgate in London. Amazing pub, that serves top-notch food for about $15 a plate.
Another thing is that the cuisines of the world were mostly fomented or enabled by the "sensibilities" of nobility/rulers where there was such lineage, as was the case in France, China and a few other places. For the most part, however, most national foods were derived from peasant cooking and thus are simpler, heartier and more robust.
There were no refrigerators or grossery stores then. The best you could do was salt your meat and place it in a larder.
Also, taking the meat straight off of a recently slaughtered animal happens about as often as it does today. Which is to say not that often.
The bulk of a cow, for instance, is so hard it's essentially uneatable as is unless you slow-cook it in a stew. That's part of what made ground beef so revolutionary and transformative -- women could go working instead of cooking all day. The remaining parts of the carcasse need about two weeks for enzymes to properly soften the meat. [1]
Technically, tender, tasty meat is in fact "slightly spoiled" -- in good conditions, of course.
http://www.quora.com/How-long-after-a-cow-is-killed-does-it-...
Edit:
> All they did to the parsnip was fatten it up. It's still the same earthy root fed to cows on the Isle of Guernsey, remarkably nutritious but long ago dethroned as Europe's major starchy root by the New World potato.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06...
(There is also the delightful, but seldom-updated http://www.gameofbrews.com/ .)
http://www.recipes4us.co.uk/Specials%20and%20Holidays/Mint%2...
I guess that makes me an elitist snob from the days of monarchy :)
Until very recently, mostly everyone has been a vegetarian so I don't believe your meat proposal is the whole story. Having said that, Indian not only differs from French food in terms of spiciness. As the article points out, Indian food has a much wider range of seemingly uncomplimentary flavors - recipes are typically a couple of dozen ingredients which is uncommon in the West.
In contrast, Europe had to import spices and thus the common people didn't have access to spices. Cold weather also pushes people towards hunting by making farming difficult. Obvious outcome is potato, making beer from potato, eating meat, drying meat (steaks).
I always figured the "mask the rot" explanation was another smug myth to put the past in its place.
(From 2001; I haven't looked for more recent work.)
I have read before that spicy food in general is slower to spoil, because of the antibacterial properties of many spices. Especially in warm and humid climates, there is much to be said for food that you can still eat the day after cooking, without getting stomach cramps. No matter if it contains meat or not.