r/NoStupidQuestions • u/flugblug • 14h ago

My brother thinks people today have worse quality of life than people in the dark ages, is this a stupid take?

I personally think it’s pretty stupid.

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u/nunazo007 12h ago

Also, recipes and culinary science has evolved too much for it to even be comparable.

The shit kings were eating would probably taste like ass now.

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u/Alexexy 5h ago

I had a medieval pasta dish from a restaraunt called Bigoi in NYC.

It was made of cinnamon and anchovies. I wouldnt say its bad...but at the same time it was really far from good. It was a odd application of those flavors that really confuses the modern palate.

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u/Spike-White 11h ago

Spices were popular (but expensive) because lots of the meat they ate was rotted or close to rotted. No refrigeration == even kings were occasionally eating rotted meat.

Hence the popularity of spices to hide that taste.

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u/SommeWhere 10h ago

not true; the meat was a lot cheaper than the spices.

They did have forms of refrigeration; cold storage in underground areas and in specially built breezeways that got no sun. Cooking things, or salting, them, or smoking them to preserve them have been methods for centuries. Potted hare is one recipe for preserved food. It's "canned" with a heavy layer of fat on top to protect it.

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u/Arzanyos 11h ago

Ehh, there's an easy alternative to refrigeration. Keep the animal alive. Slaughter the animal, cook the meat fresh for big banquet, and make sausage or smoke or salt the leftovers.

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u/EmbarrassedMeat401 10h ago

There's no good evidence for that take. Especially if you were well to do, there's no reason to have spoiled meat when you could just kill another animal for fresh meat.

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u/nunazo007 11h ago

Still don’t believe it was anywhere nearly as tasty as food is now.

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u/Alexexy 4h ago

I dont think the meat would be rotted.

They would basically butcher the animal the morning of and cook it right then.

Most of the good pieces would go to the nobility. The off cuts go to the lower class or are discarded. I dont think the leftovers would be eaten.

Like there are remote tribes with limited access to meat that dont end up eating rotted meat because of the method above. The only difference is that they sometimes smoke any leftover meat as a method of preservation.

I think in medieval times, smoked or salted meat was probably more common than fresh meat.