11 th C. spices and zedoary (was: Re: SC - Spice cabinet-what do we stock?)

[Valoise Armstrong]

All the discussion of what spices we stock for recreating period cooking
tickled something in my memory. In my never-ending search for all things
German I found the following on the web page for Francesco Sirene
<http://www.silk.net/sirene/medgerm.htm> There's a chart called A Medieval
and Renaissance German Spice Chest. I rummaged through my files and found
it. Apparently this was complied from 7 cookbooks ranginf from mid-14th to
late 16th centuries by Michel Balard. Complete bibliographical info is on
the page. One of the spices on the list that I don't recognize is zedoary.
Anyone know what that is? This is from an English translation of a
French-language article on German cookbooks, I'm not sure which language
zedoary comes from.

On the the 11th century part - On the same page there a quote from a 13th
century book that quotes an earlier work by al-Tartushi, who visited Mainz
in 1083 and described the spices available: "On occasion spice, which comes
from only the farthest Orient, is found there, whereas Mainz is situated in
the farthest Occident: for example, pepper, ginger, cloves, spikenard,
costum, and galanga, which are imported from India, where they occur
quantity."
Full bilbiographical information is on <http:www.silk.net/sirene.medgerm.htm>



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