Vast fortunes made and squandered, powerful rulers seduced, ailments cured, and nations discovered…all in the name of spice. Spices have always cast a spell on our imaginations and flatter our senses: our sight with their vibrant colors, our smell with their enticing fragrances, and our taste with their distinct flavors.
Spices have been the catalysts of some of the greatest adventures in human history, like Christopher Columbus’ voyage and the fabled travels of Marco Polo. And who can not be moved by the multitude of stories ascribed to the Spice Trade? Still today, spices empower us as explorers, even if we never journey beyond the kitchen counter. They energize our daily adventures in food and remind us of journeys to exotic places and favorite meals with loved ones & dear friends.
Though the word “spice” didn’t appear until the end of the 12th century (a derivative of the Latin word “species,” which denoted a wide variety of products), the use of herbs dates back to early humans. Primitive peoples wrapped meat in the leaves of bushes, accidentally discovering that this enhanced the taste of the meat, as did certain nuts, seeds, berries and even bark (note that the Aboriginal folks in Australia still do it). In ancient times, spices and herbs were used as a way to mask the often unpleasant taste and odor of food, and later, to keep food fresh. The first spice expeditions were organized in ancient times to ensure that these coveted commodities would always be in supply. Legend has it that around 1000 B.C. Queen Sheba visited King Solomon in Jerusalem to offer him “120 measures of gold, many spices, and precious stones.” A handful of cardamom was worth as much as a poor man’s yearly wages, and many slaves were bought and sold for a few cups of peppercorns.
Arab traders were the first to introduce spices into Europe. Realizing that they controlled a commodity in great demand, the traders kept their sources of supply secret and made up fantastic tales of the dangers involved in obtaining spices.
At the crossroads of land trade from India and sea trade from the Mediterranean, spices played a huge role in Phoenician trade. The Phoenicians were expert merchants and smooth navigators; so much so that at the end of the 14th century B.C., spices were called “Phoenician merchandise” (I read this in my trusted Encyclopedia of Food) These slick middlemen knew how to offer their services to kings as well as pharaohs in order to extend their supply sites and possibly pave the way to India.
But spices’ origins remained a mystery, despite the fact that, in the 4th century B.C., the great conqueror Alexander the Great lifted a part of the veil of this mysterious, magical India where, as Herodotus wrote, “cinnamon grows in deep lakes, near the homes of flying animals.” I could write about spices ad infinitum. One of the secrets of being a great chef is to venture into the unknown when it comes to creating new dishes. In the next post I’ll describe my approach to buying produce from the point of view of a restaurateur/chef, and the many pitfalls that await the untrained eye.
9 Comments
I have many favorites, I can quite make up my mind as to what is the most important single spice entity that has changed the cooking world. I think, like all great books and films, it has to be thought as at least ten. I’ll make up my top ten and will post it later. Do yours as well.
Does salt count as a spice? I have relatively recently discovered the joys of different kinds of salt - kosher salt, sea salt, “grey” salts - some are “saltier” than others, giving more flavor than sodium, while others (like kosher salt) give a lovely crunch.
I don’t use very many spices - pepper, coriander, cinnamon, nutmeg, chili peppers (do they count as a spice?), allspice and cloves. I can only come up with eight!
Salts, like so many other foods, has become trendy with the multitude of seas salts now available to the home cook. Is the trend overrated or are these salts really worth their weight in salt! And yes, it is a spice, like pepper.
Cumin!
And my daily treat: cinnamon chips, which I grind in with my coffee every morning.
I look forward to your next post!
I love cumin too, and coriander seeds, curry, turmeric…and so many more. I don’t think I’ll be able to stop at ten, might as well make it twenty!
Turmeric, omg! One of my favorite cheap treats is popcorn with a dash of good olive oil and Braggs, then liberal applications of cumin and turmeric.
I’m looking forward to this summer and time enough to make Indian food again and indulge in turmeric daily. Speaking of which, I seem to recall a great “dip” I made a year or so ago with good yogurt, turmeric and cumin. Hmmm.
I’m a spice novice, really, but I do love nutmeg. I use it in both sweet and savory dishes. It’s great in eggs. I have a nutmeg grinder right by my stove, next to the pepper grinder.
No one has mentioned ginger yet! Fresh, it’s indispensable in almost all Chinese cooking; dried and powdered it’s wonderful in European-style cookies and cakes. It’s good for your stomach, it clears your sinuses, and it makes you happy. Okay, it makes me happy–YMMV.
Finally, though I doubt if it will make anyeone’s top ten list (except maybe Fuchsia Dunlop’s), I must mention Szechuan pepper–aka Prickly Ash–as a unique and powerful spice-medicine, a sine qua non of Szechuan cooking. It imparts the “numbing” hotness that is so characteristic of northern Chinese cuisine.
Szechuan pepper became the locus of a modern-day spice story when the USDA banned it from importation to the United States. It’s distantly related to the citrus family and was theoretically capable of carrying citrus canker, a disease that threatened the US citrus industry.
So from 1968 to 2005, American Chinese cooks who wanted to prepare Szechuan food had to smuggle their prickly ash berries in. A sort of mystique of danger grew up around the spice for a generation. Tieyu, my Chinese cook friend, gave me a whole packet of the powder that she’d brought in her luggage from China, saying it was indispensable and could not be bought here.
The USDA actually lifted the ban in 2005, provided the berries are heated slightly to kill any citrus canker bacteria before packaging. Now you can buy whole Szechuan pepper berries at any Asian market, if you know what to look for, and grind it yourself.
I’m surprised to hear that Szechuan pepper was banned for so many years. I guess having lived in Australia for nearly 20 years, where it is inundated with Chinese products right, left and center and no ban has ever been put in place between the two countries. I used to buy Cuban cigars too, and wave them in front of my American friends noses, taunting them…
The only ban we suffered was when the Aussie government decided to ban all French cheeses (it lasted almost two years) in the mid seventies as a protest to nuclear testing done the Pacific ocean (I wrote in a magazine at the time that Australia shouldn’t play the moral card as it was the major supplier of Yellow Cake to nuclear countries, such as France) Like the prohibition days in the US, it was farcical and Brie and Camembert were smuggled in by the ton. I paid off pilots of French airlines to bring me Brie and others from Noumea as they had to stop at Sydney on the way to Europe. Where there’s a will, there’s a way! Imagine the sneaky cheese parties I used to host!!!
Hah! Bootleg Brie. Bathtub Camembert. Pont l’Eveque served behind a wall of crackers in case the coppers raid. “It ain’t Pont l’Eveque, officer! It’s Gouda!”
No one, of course, has the right to play the morality card. But I remember admiring Australia for its stance back in the day.
Speaking of yellowcake, I think I’d better post a cake recipe. I have just the thing…
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