What's wrong with this Picture?

Ok, take a good look at the image below ...

Now let's think about how people really use refrigerators - assuming of course that we're talking about people who cook rather than those who open and heat. No, I'm not talking about how freakin' empty this fridge is, or how clean it is, or even the lack of mysterious containers of food leftover from some forgotten meal in a previous decade. What really stinks my cheese here is how the clueless engineers intended the fridge to be used.

Let me give you a hint. You're going to make beef stroganoff, or maybe grill steaks, or Thai curried chicken, or whatever, so you get the meat out of the freezer to thaw overnight in the fridge. Where do you put it?

Do you see the problem now?

Food safety guidelines have stated for the past million years that raw meats should NEVER be stored above ready-to-eat foods. Yet the bottom of the fridge is specifically set up with bins for fruit and vegetables (my fridge at home helpfully has the bins labeled, with a special little sliding lever to switch from "Fruits" to "Vegetables" - one's vented, the other isn't, I can't remember which is which though). So the frozen meat is set on the lowest open shelf where it can drip bacteria-laden grossness all over those nice grapes or apples or salad greens (my fridge at home helpfully has that little sliding lever and vent to allow the meat juice better access to the produce). I suppose you could rinse the produce with bleach before consuming, but that doesn't sound like a very safe idea either.

Here's a model from a different manufacturer:

This isn't an isolated thing. I can't remember ever having a fridge that didn't have produce drawers at the bottom. Are the people who design these things completely clueless, or do they just not think? Maybe they're all vegetarians?

As to the cause of this rant, suffice it to say that I had to sanitize the bottom of my fridge and pitch all sorts of leftovers that I'd been saving for the next nuclear apocalypse. Time to re-organize, re-purpose, and re-label.

Pickled Meat Pies

I was looking through some of the recipes in The Good Housewife's Jewell (England, 1596) and came across the recipe below.

To make fillets of beefe or clods instead of red Deare.
First take your Beefe, and Larde it very thicke, and then season it with pepper, and Salt, Sinamon and ginger, Cloues, and Mace good store, with a greate deale more quantitie of pepper and Salte, then you would a peece of Venison, and put it in couered Paste, and when it is baked, take vineger and suger, Sinamon and Ginger,  and put in, and shake the Pastie, and stope it close, and let it stande almonst a fortnyght before you cut it vp.

What makes this interesting is that it clearly states that the pie is to be kept for two weeks before eating it.  From what I've read recently, the spices called for have anti-bacterial properties (especially the cinnamon), which when combined with the vinegar may kill off any existing bacteria and prevent new growth (I'm still trying to find out just how well spices can do this).

The only other recipe I'd found before like this one is from a similar source, The Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchen (England, c. 1588).  It has a similar step of pouring vinegar into the baked pie, but only states that the pie can be kept "a great while."

To make a pie to keep long.
You must first perboile your flesh + press it, + when it is pressed, season it with pepper and salt whilest it is hot, then lard it, make your paste of rie flower, it must be very thick, or else it wil not holde, when it is seasoned + larded, lay it in your pie, then cast on it before you close it, a good deale of cloves and Mace beaten small, and lay upon that a good deale of Butter, and so close it up: but you must leave a hole in the top of the lid, + when it hath stood two houres in the Oven, you must fill it as full of vinigar as you can, and then stop the hole as close as you can with paste, and then set it in the Oven again: your Oven must bee verie hot at the first, and then your pies will keep a great while: the longer you keepe them the better wil they be: and when ye have taken them out of the oven, and that they be almost cold, you must shake them betweene your hands, and set them into the Oven, be well ware that one pie touch not another by more than ones hand bredth: Remember also to let them stand in the Oven after the Vinigar be in, two houres and more.

The common aspects of the recipes appear to be seasoned meat and fat, placed into a crust and baked, and vinegar poured in afterwards.  It's also interesting to note that both recipes instruct the cook to shake the pie, assumedly to distribute the vinegar.

This of course leads me to wonder how such a pie would taste, and just how safe (or unsafe) would it be to eat?  I'm tempted to make one and see if I can find a lab to test for bacterial levels after two weeks.

Spice and Spoilage

I recently came across an article from the March issue of Cornell University's Cornell Chronicle titled Study: Antibacterial spices explain why some like it hot. It describes the recent research done by Professor Paul Sherman, and the paper he published in the March 1998 issue of the journal Quarterly Review of Biology.

According to Sherman, some commonly used spices have significant antibacterial properties and may help prevent illness caused by food-born pathogens. More specifically, in the interview he said, "We believe the ultimate reason for using spices is to kill food-borne bacteria and fungi." Obviously this subject is of interest to a medieval food historian - medieval food preservation and disease prevention are a couple of those perennial hot topics. While I won't deny Sherman's claims outright, I do approach the whole thing with a good amount of skepticism.

antibacterial?

My first question is on the degree of antibacterial properties of the 43 spices he's studied. At what concentrations were his tests performed? The article lists garlic and onion as being among the most potent germ killers, and states that "... they kill everything". I'm very sure I've had food go bad that contained both onions and garlic, and I know that mixing them in with raw beef won't make it safe to eat. This means that the concentration of the active ingredient is important, and this leads me to wonder if the amount of a given spice (say, cinnamon) needed to be an effective antibacterial agent would make the food inedible.

Sherman also draws a connection between latitude and spice consumption, with the inference that in warmer climates foods will spoil more quickly and therefore they need more spicing to prevent this spoilage. The article doesn't mention that the majority of spices (e.g. cinnamon, cloves, pepper, etc.) do not grow well outside of a tropical climate, meaning they'd need to be imported to the colder climates and would therefore be less likely to be used there. Did his study make any attempt to correct for this? If not, then it would seriously skew his data.

The article goes on to state that people "... probably aren't eating spices for their nutritive value, the biologist said, because the same macronutrients are available in similar amounts in common vegetables, which are eaten in much greater quantities." I know of one specific case that contradicts this: capsicum consumption in Mexico. The traditional Mexican diet would be severely deficient in vitamin C if it weren't for the consumption of capsicum peppers.

On the plus side, at one point in the article Sherman notes that the idea of using spice to cover the taste of spoiled food is bogus. He says that such a practice "... ignores the health dangers of ingesting spoiled food."

I'll have to see if I can get a copy of the original paper.

UPDATE: I've found one link that gives more detail on the paper, and it appears that some of my questions were addressed. I've also found a couple interesting links that discuss the antibacterial properties of some spices (see the links below).

Darwinian gastronomy: Why we use spices
Antimicrobial Effects of Spice Extracts on Three Species of Bacteria
CINNAMON IS LETHAL WEAPON AGAINST E. COLI O157:H7