Hannah Glasse instructed cooks that if a joint of venison “stinks, or is musty,” one must rinse it multiple times with water and milk, then “rub it all over with beaten Ginger” and hang it to dry (10). Recipe books abounded with household hints for camouflaging flesh that had passed its prime. Of course, English people of the pre-refrigeration era also ate spoiled meat. A hind and a stag of the family of Red-Deer and a Fallow-deer, Wood Engraving after Thomas Bewick. Where Johnson and the English saw rottenness, the Oneida saw fermentation. As Mintz has also argued, many indigenous cultures rely on “core” staple grains for the bulk of their caloric intake, and then add nutritional value, flavor, and variety with the use of condiments, or “fringe” foods. ![]() While Johnson seemed repulsed by this practice, the Oneida sought out the taste of fermented fish: “rottener the better they Say as it will Season more broth.” This pungent condiment added variety and flavor to an otherwise repetitive winter diet of corn. Joseph Johnson, a Mohegan missionary, wrote in February 1768 that the Oneida (who lived east of the Seneca) kept “rotten fish” from the previous fall “to Season their Samps,” or corn soups. For example, Icelandic people prize their fermented shark delicacy, hákarl, while Anthony Bourdain has called it “the single worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.” (Full disclosure: the closest I’ve gotten to hákarl is Brennivin, the so-called “Black Death” schnapps that is meant to accompany the shark-it is also unspeakably foul.) In light of the cultural specificity of fermentation, it is less clear whether Indians ate these “rotten” foods only when they had no other options, or whether they sometimes desired the potent flavors that fermentation produces. Of course, according to the anthropologist Sidney Mintz, rottenness is “culturally specific”-one culture’s rotten, inedible food is another’s fermented, edible food. The Seneca also ate other foods that Kirkland considered rotten: as Kirkland’s sister-in-law cut up maggot-infested bear meat to feed to the family, she whispered to her husband Tekânadie that she feared “their brother white man could not eat of it.” Brown Bear, Etching by James Tookey after Julius Caesar Ibbetson, 1796.įrom captivity narratives and missionary accounts, it is clear that Indians routinely and without digestive upset ate foods that the English thought of as rotten or spoiled. Regardless, the fact that the cakes had begun to spoil did not deter the Seneca children from eating them. Perhaps they were already moldering by the time he purchased them, or, as he noted, his digestive system was sensitive after months of near-starvation. ![]() It is unclear why the cornmeal cakes so disagreed with Kirkland. The hungry children could stomach what Kirkland could not. He kept the remaining cakes until they began to mold, then offered them to his adoptive nieces and nephews, who ate them without hesitation. So great was his hunger, “At first sight I thought I could devour them all at one meal,” but he vomited up the first cake he ate. When food ran low in early 1765, Kirkland traded one of his shirts to an Indian outside the family, receiving four cornmeal cakes in return. A hard winter followed, and the family shared their increasingly scanty food supplies with Kirkland. However, no animal parts went to waste, including the bladder, stomach, and womb of the pig, which were often used as sausage casing.In Autumn 1764, the English missionary Samuel Kirkland was dispatched to a Seneca Indian village in western New York, where a Seneca family adopted him, as was common practice. The truly discerning palate would prefer only fresh meat as opposed to salted, preserved cuts. The sometimes intricately decorated crust on the outside was usually not intended to be eaten and existed to keep the meaty insides fresh and protected. ![]() Pies were often seen on the table among other roasted and stewed meats, containing layer upon layer of pigeon, rabbit, or pork. Some feasts may have included a roast boar stuffed with sausages that would pour out of its belly when the beast was carved. A single banquet menu once consisted of a veritable zoo of creatures, with 12 pigeons, 12 chickens, six rabbits, two herons, a whole deer, a sturgeon, a pig, and a kid goat appearing in just three of the massive six courses. Even hedgehogs and porcupines sometimes ended up on plates. Medieval gourmets ate a lot of different animals - rabbits, cows, pigs, goats, fowls, sheep, deer, and boars, just to name a few.
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