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Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

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Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#61

Post by rolisz »

falsemyrmidon wrote: post #49
bcjdjsndon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They observed that pickled vegetables preserved the veggies for months. Kind of a tautology. Why would they think to pickle something in the first place?

You can ask this about a lot of foods, but probably won't get many satisfying answers. For example cheese goes back many thousands of years, and it's theorized that it was invented accidentally due to storing milk in sheep stomachs or similar. Probably something similar for pickling. Someone noticed that salted foods last a long time, and vinegar never seems to go bad, so why not try combining them?

What about hakarl? "Rotten" icelandic shark meat. It stinks to high heaven. Yet somebody thought "let's eat this". I can't imagine how hungry they must have been. And, if it doesn't decompose for 6 weeks under sand, it's toxic, so you die if you eat it. I'm sure they knew that. Yet they still tried it... Must've been a helluva famine.

Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#62

Post by lo_zamoyski »

Tangurena2 wrote: post #27

> In thirteenth-century England, Christians were expected to avoid meat every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday during Lent (when eggs and dairy products were also forbidden), Advent and on some saints’ days (or the eves of their feasts) Every person (back then) could observe farm animals had sex. Since no one had seen fish having sex, it was believed that fish spawned spontaneously from rivers/lakes/oceans and therefor…

> Since no one had seen fish having sex, it was believed that fish spawned spontaneously from rivers/lakes/oceans and therefore were free from the animal version of "original sin".

I don't know who comes up with this stuff.

Aristotle wrote extensively about fish eggs, milt and breeding habits centuries before the Christian era. Not only that, fishermen throughout history were well aware that fish laid eggs.

On the other point, original sin applies exclusively to humans. Animals were never considered moral agents, nor were they subject to the Fall of Man in a way that required spiritual redemption.

> sauerkraut and kimchi are both pickled cabbage

Yes, but one uses Brassica oleracea while the other uses Brassica rapa.

Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#63

Post by RobRivera »

bcjdjsndon wrote: post #38
Tangurena2 wrote: post #27

> In thirteenth-century England, Christians were expected to avoid meat every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday during Lent (when eggs and dairy products were also forbidden), Advent and on some saints’ days (or the eves of their feasts) Every person (back then) could observe farm animals had sex. Since no one had seen fish having sex, it was believed that fish spawned spontaneously from rivers/lakes/oceans and therefor…

> They observed that pickled vegetables preserved the veggies for months. Kind of a tautology. Why would they think to pickle something in the first place?

That is not a tautology.

Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#64

Post by steveBK123 »

rolisz wrote: post #61
falsemyrmidon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can ask this about a lot of foods, but probably won't get many satisfying answers. For example cheese goes back many thousands of years, and it's theorized that it was invented accidentally due to storing milk in sheep stomachs or similar. Probably something similar for pickling. Someone noticed that salted foods last a long time, and vinegar never seems to go bad, so why not try combining them?

What about hakarl? "Rotten" icelandic shark meat. It stinks to high heaven. Yet somebody thought "let's eat this". I can't imagine how hungry they must have been. And, if it doesn't decompose for 6 weeks under sand, it's toxic, so you die if you eat it. I'm sure they knew that. Yet they still tried it... Must've been a helluva famine.

> Yet they still tried it... Must've been a helluva famine.

Humans have lived at subsistence level, one bad harvest away from famine for most of history. Our modern abundance is very recent (1-3 generations) thing depending on where you were born.

So I think a tremendous amount of food discovery was a combination of food accidents didn't want food to go to waste, and desperation level eating anything to delay death from starvation.

Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#65

Post by steveBK123 »

bobthepanda wrote: post #46
GuB-42 wrote: post #20

I am sure that in the past, good or bad food was more about conservation and food borne diseases than it was about nutrition. At least, that's the attitude that would make the most sense. That would explain sugar good / fish bad. There is probably a political aspect too, local food is seen as better than the rival neighbor food. The modern, first world attitude must be very unusual towards history. We basically solve…

For most of human history calories in was way more important than nutrition since we could barely even manage that. Just the fact that you can buy fresh fruit and vegetables in the middle of a harsh winter is an incredible feat of logistics and technology that has taken a century to develop.

> buy fresh fruit and vegetables in the middle of a harsh winter

This is extremely recent, most people even in my age range (40-50) recall growing up on frozen/canned in the off season for the most part.

The idea of getting year round good fresh produce flown in from other climates is regionally a very recent thing. Peru for example exports 40x more blueberries to the US today than they did even a decade ago.

Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#66

Post by maxerickson »

falsemyrmidon wrote: post #49
bcjdjsndon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They observed that pickled vegetables preserved the veggies for months. Kind of a tautology. Why would they think to pickle something in the first place?

You can ask this about a lot of foods, but probably won't get many satisfying answers. For example cheese goes back many thousands of years, and it's theorized that it was invented accidentally due to storing milk in sheep stomachs or similar. Probably something similar for pickling. Someone noticed that salted foods last a long time, and vinegar never seems to go bad, so why not try combining them?

The acidity in many traditional pickling methods is lactic acid produced by fermentation. No vinegar involved.

Looking it up, ocean water has the right salt content to facilitate this...

Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#67

Post by abrowne »

Tangurena2 wrote: post #27

> In thirteenth-century England, Christians were expected to avoid meat every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday during Lent (when eggs and dairy products were also forbidden), Advent and on some saints’ days (or the eves of their feasts) Every person (back then) could observe farm animals had sex. Since no one had seen fish having sex, it was believed that fish spawned spontaneously from rivers/lakes/oceans and therefor…

The Basques were whalers. They started from the coast, using watch towers. Once the Bay of Biscay was depleted they moved further and further into the Atlantic.

Whale meat was mediocre and didn't preserve well, and while whale bone (baleen) is useful enough, but the real target was whale oil, the best lubricant and fuel for lighting.

All of this is from The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe by James Belich. (Highly recommended (even to myself – I reread it within a year).

Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#68

Post by gregates »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #62
Tangurena2 wrote: post #27

> In thirteenth-century England, Christians were expected to avoid meat every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday during Lent (when eggs and dairy products were also forbidden), Advent and on some saints’ days (or the eves of their feasts) Every person (back then) could observe farm animals had sex. Since no one had seen fish having sex, it was believed that fish spawned spontaneously from rivers/lakes/oceans and therefor…

> Since no one had seen fish having sex, it was believed that fish spawned spontaneously from rivers/lakes/oceans and therefore were free from the animal version of "original sin". I don't know who comes up with this stuff. Aristotle wrote extensively about fish eggs, milt and breeding habits centuries before the Christian era. Not only that, fishermen throughout history were well aware that fish laid eggs. On the ot…

Aristotle thought some fish were spontaneously generated and others not (also all eels and Testacea).

"This occurs in ponds, especially one near Knidos, which, so it is said, on one occasion dried up at the time of the Dogstar and all the mud was taken out; water began to collect in it as the first came, and at that point tiny fishes appeared, as soon as the water began. This fish was a kind of grey mullet which is not produced as the result of copulation, and its size was about that of a small sprat: none of them had either egg or milt. (...) This evidence shows that certain fishes are produced spontaneously, and do not come out of eggs or from copulation" (HA VI.15 569a13-19, 25-26).

This is something of a problem for Aristotle, since the formal cause appears to be absent in spontaneous generation. He likely would have been happier to discover that spontaneous generation does not, in fact, occur for animals. But he felt that the evidence forced him to concede that it does.

Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#69

Post by AngryData »

bobthepanda wrote: post #46
GuB-42 wrote: post #20

I am sure that in the past, good or bad food was more about conservation and food borne diseases than it was about nutrition. At least, that's the attitude that would make the most sense. That would explain sugar good / fish bad. There is probably a political aspect too, local food is seen as better than the rival neighbor food. The modern, first world attitude must be very unusual towards history. We basically solve…

For most of human history calories in was way more important than nutrition since we could barely even manage that. Just the fact that you can buy fresh fruit and vegetables in the middle of a harsh winter is an incredible feat of logistics and technology that has taken a century to develop.

It was more of a storage problem than a production problem. Plenty of grains and foods people grew throughout known history were more than capable of providing all the calories someone would want or need without crazy effort. The problem is keeping that food good for an entire year, or more if there is unexpected bad growing weather. One person, even using entirely hand tools and no draft animals, could grow 10x more food than they need in a year. But people didn't do that because they knew they had no way of keeping food around for that long, all it would do is attract pests and/or mold and rot after enough time.

Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#70

Post by zdragnar »

GuB-42 wrote: post #20

I am sure that in the past, good or bad food was more about conservation and food borne diseases than it was about nutrition. At least, that's the attitude that would make the most sense. That would explain sugar good / fish bad. There is probably a political aspect too, local food is seen as better than the rival neighbor food. The modern, first world attitude must be very unusual towards history. We basically solve…

Dealing with sugar specifically, sufficient concentrations act as a preservative as well. Honey, in particular, can be applied to surface wounds to help promote healing by resisting infection.

Also, it's delicious, and you're less likely to find parasites in it than animal flesh.

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