Three Uses of Spices
Explore the three main uses for spice in previous centuries.
The appeal of spices was their versatility!
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It was favoured in eastern cultures for its medicinal properties. However, in the past 500 years, spices were only considerable used for three reasons:
Preservative
Flavour
Prestige ​
1. Preservative
Spices have been used for thousands of years as a preservative for food. This is similar to sugar in this way, as pre modern societies needed to preserve meat. Without the aide of a refrigerator or freezer, it was not possible to keep meat longer than a few days. Therefore, spices would preserve meat for several months whilst also concealing the favour of rotting meat, making it more palatable for the average consumer.
Butcher's Stall, Pieter Aertsen (1551)
2. Flavour
Spice was also used to add flavour to a dish!
Instead of eating rotting meat, a diner would taste cumin or cinnamon- anything to cover up the taste of three+ month old meat!
What you prefer to taste: Rotting meat or a mixture of new and exotic spices?
Fun Fact
The word ‘spice’ derives from the Latin ‘species’ which means special.
Fun Fact
Paprika is a ‘modern’ spice only introduced to our diets in the twentieth century and is simply a ground mix of sweet red peppers and capsicum
The earliest example of spices as favouring is featured in Marcus Gavius Apicus's publication, De Re Coquinaria.
This is the only surviving book from Antiquity period that includes recipes that use spice.
Spiced wine was a favourite drink as spices supposedly added ‘heat’ to a banquet. The spices that were used most often were saffron and crushed pepper.
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Pepper was the first spice featured in English culinary life from the eleventh century and was used frequently to add flavour to medieval dishes.
By 1180, pepper was so important to the English diet and culinary life, it acquired its own guild (London’s ancient trade associations that played a significant part in the running of the city life).
The guild was responsible for maintaining the standard of the purity of spices that entered London’s ports.
As the desire for more and more spices grew in England, the guild was renamed the 'Grocers' company in 1373 to reflect this growing consumption of different spices in England.
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The Grocers still exists as a charitable and ceremonial organisation of the city of London today!
3. Prestige
The Worshipful Company of Grocers established 1373
'Prestige' was the real value of spice.
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Exotic fragrances and flavours defined luxury and also advertised consumer extravagance.
i.e - the ability to cook with and also consume foreign and expensive ingredients.
Pepper, saffron, cinnamon and ginger were the most common spices, which made up the bulk of ingredients that were imported from the Mediterranean.
Nutmeg and cloves were imported from Indonesia and were rare and expensive to obtain. The spices of Galagal, Zadoary and Long Pepper were also used but are unknown to the modern palate today.
For reference:
Black pepper was relatively cheap to purchase
Nutmeg was three times the price of pepper
Saffron was the most expensive spice of them all at ten times the price of pepper.
The wealthy gentlemen and ladies of elite society wanted to be seen using spices (they considered sugar to be a spice too) in their everyday diet.
Spices also become a frequent feature of cookery books across the early modern period to appeal to this ever growing consumption of spices by the upper and middle classes. Approximately 150 cookbooks survive from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries with 75% of these recipes make reference to spices and a further 90% of all English recipe books produced before the twentieth century requiring spices.
Even the cakes and biscuits featured on this website contain spices from the East, imported and frequently used by the elites and aspiring middle class households. The most featured spices include: coriander, caraway seeds, mace (all spice), cinnamon and nutmeg!
