Why I am I posting this here? Well... the Medieval Cooks had some interesting ideas of how to use spices in dishes. If there's interest, I'll find some redacted recipes for adventuresome people (like DS and B4) to try at home.
Renaissance Spices – Show and Smell
by Baroness Katja Davidova Orlova Khazarina
Ginger, black pepper, mace, cloves, anise, caraway... these are spices that are used as commonly in today's modern cuisine as they were hundreds of years ago during the Renaissance. Finding them listed in historic recipes generally is not a problem for the redactor either insofar as calculating the recipe amounts or having them on-hand when trying out a recipe.
However… what about when you see "qubbybs" in a recipe? Or "granes of paradys"? Are "cassia" and "canel" the same thing? Is "long pepper" just another name for plain black pepper? Furthermore, where can you buy these?
Here, therefore, is a brief overview of the now-uncommon spices used during our period of study. All of them are available from The Pepperer’s Guild at Pennsic or online at http://members.cox.net/periac/pepperers.html. Some can be found in Indian groceries.[1]
Inspiration for Exploration
To say that spices were highly valued before modern times is a vast, vast understatement. Being able to own and use spices, even small amounts, was a tremendous demonstration of wealth and social status from as far back as ancient Roman times. Imported from far away, sometimes rare, and generally expensive, spices were kept under lock & key[2], their use tracked carefully in household accounts[3], and given as gifts and largesse. Sometimes, they were even used to pay salaries and rent![4]
…it is easy to say what spices are. They are natural products from a single limited region that are in demand and fetch a high price, far beyond their place of origin, for their flavour and odour. These powerful, pleasurable, sensual aromatics have been used in foods, drinks, scented oils and waxes, perfumes and cosmetics, drugs; in these various forms they have served human beings as appetizers, digestives, antiseptics, therapeutics, tonics, aphrodisiacs.[5]
Platina’s De Honesta Voluptate, Markham’s English Hous-wife, the Trotula, the Tacuinum Sanitatis: medieval and Renaissance era household and dietetic manuals regularly recommended ginger, pepper, sugar, and other spices to treat stomachaches, headaches… even cure poisoning. The Viandier, A Newe Booke of Cookeries, Epulario, and other cookbooks of the royalty and nobility followed the Humoral theory[6] and all contained tarts, meats, soups, and other recipes that included great numbers of spices (although likely not in the great amounts per each dish as often assumed; they were certainly too valuable to be used to cover up the taste of rotten meat, also as often assumed[7]) that created the distinctive sweet-spicy cuisine of this time period.
The cost of spices fluctuated according to the supplies available, but in general cinnamon (often called canell), ginger, and pepper were among the cheapest, cloves and mace were rather more expensive, while saffron was always very dear, retailing at 14 or 15 shillings a pound at various times in the 13th and 14th Centuries.[8]
So, now we know they were highly valued, but why were spices so expensive? With the exception of mustard, fennel, and a few others, most spices originated from India or islands in the Far East and had to be transported to Europe over the course of many months (if not years) via land trade routes like the Silk Road; the cost of various taxes and tolls, as the caravans traveled through each country on the trip, added to the initial price.[9] Explorers were hired to find faster trade routes by sea so as to make the spice trade more profitable, and England continued to battle (literally and figuratively) with Genoa, Venice, Portugal, Holland, and Spain over several centuries for dominance in this competition.
The 15th Century equivalent of today's quest for alternative fuel sources was a less costly trade route to the lands where spices grew, a route that would at once steer clear of toll restrictions and permit the transport of larger quantities of goods. The answer was a sea route to India, which was perhaps the grand obsession of the 15th Century. A whole generation of entrepreneurs and adventurers went in search of this route. Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama were merely the successful heroes who made it into the history books. In any case, all who were caught up in this quest were driven by the prospect of the enormous riches that awaited the man who could put the pepper trade on a new, sounder footing. In the 15th Century, control of the pepper trade meant having a hold over European taste and the vast sums that would be made available to maintain that taste. Whoever controlled pepper would essentially control the purse-strings of a continent.[10]
Selected Spices[11]
Cassia (Cinnamomum cassia): Bark and buds of the cassia tree, originating from China. Often confused with (or substituted for) cinnamon, cassia has a rougher, stronger taste. Most “cinnamonâ€