Original Reviews

          It is hard to reconcile the importance that nutmeg, allspice, cloves, and other spices played in history with those dusty bottles that occupy our spice racks. But Paul Freedman’s book attests to the fondness of the European privileged classes for spices in the medieval and early modern periods.

          Used to give a pronounced taste to dishes, spices were also valued as medicinal drugs and for their scent. Freedman explains the complicated medieval notion of balanced bodily humors and the use of spices to alleviate dangers imbalances caused by the food they ate. Spices are no longer kept in our medicine cabinets.

          Fragrances? Frankincense, from various Asian and African trees, is still used in Catholic services as a perfumery. But balsam, ambergris, musk, civet, castor, and aloe wood — also once popular perfumeries — are no longer on grocery shelves. In their place, ‘miracles of modern chemistry.’

          Early Christians considered perfumes to be a sign of the divine presence. The sense of smell is not as tangible as sight, hearing, and touch and hence a better sign of the divine being’s presence. Ambergris, by the way, is a secretion of the sperm whale, coughed up and found floating in the ocean.  Castor is a secretion of a gland found in the groin of several species of beaver. So much for those divine essences.

          In medieval Europe, most spices and perfumes were obtained from the east via the Islamic world. Alexandria in Egypt was the major spice entrepôt. Merchants from Venice, Genoa, Marseilles, Barcelona, and north Germany established ‘factories’ or warehouses for the storage of spices, awaiting favorable prices and a good sailing wind to re-export them to Europe.

          Portuguese and then Spanish exploration was inspired by wanting to cut out those Moslem middlemen by figuring out how to sail around Africa to reach India. India, it turns out, was another entrepôt in the spice trade, re-exporting goods that Indian and Arab merchants had for centuries gathered from the East Indies as well as the subcontinent. Direct trade with India soon replaced Egypt and the Mediterranean trade.

          Though a grade-school dogma, Christopher Columbus did not set out to prove a new theory of Earth’s shape. And, alas, what Columbus discovered  when he sailed west was that there were two continents blocking his way to the ‘spice islands.’     

          The ecclesiastical profession was an important consumer of imported spices. But Freedman points out that they were also its critics. Indulgence in spices led to gluttony. And that led to other deadly sins, particularly lust. Spices and perfumes were associated with a catholic Mediterranean culture and disapproved by protestant northern Europeans.

          Spices became less important to Europeans and European tables in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Freedman explains this as the result of the rise of French cuisine. French chefs created flavor with heavy cream and butter sauces and herbs — thyme, marjoram, rosemary, sage, oregano, parsley — found growing around the Mediterranean. New beverages replaced spiced wine: chocolate, tea, and coffee. Cream and sugar were the additives to those new drinks, not spices. France’s gastronomic leadership would hold forth for another three centuries. European and North American waists tell that tale.     

          Ah, sugar. Sugar is no longer considered a spice. Rather it is an ingredient, like flour, and we consume prodigious amounts. Sugar has lost ground, however, in main courses and was largely relegated to a final course, dessert. Where it reigns supreme.

          Haven’t we recently been retreating from rich foods? Perhaps spices will return. Some flavorings are doing well in cuisines that have come along with Asian immigrant communities: cumin, coriander, turmeric, and soy sauce for example. Pepper has gained a place alongside salt on our tables. A New World spice, chili peppers or cayenne, and the related but milder chili powder and paprika are also doing well.

          Freedman has made it difficult to set down to a good meal without thinking about its spices – out of the east.