SC - transporting ingredients

[Decker, Terry D.]

If you look at the import duties of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, spices
delivered by sea paid a higher duty than spice delivered by caravan.  This
suggests that spices shipped by sea via India and the Red Sea were more
potent and valuable than those brought overland.

Spices shipped by sea would have been sealed in containers which would
protect them from water.  This would also help protect them from the air.

Bear

> One thing you may have noticed:  when quatities of spices *are* mentioned
> in period recipes, it looks like a ridiculously large amount.  It is. 
> Their spices weren't very potent. (this is corroborated by explorers'
> surprise at the flavors when they reached the Spice Islands)  As a friend
> once told me, "These things were put in hide bags and transported on the
> back of an animal for months, then put on a leaky boat for more months. 
> Care to guess what happened to the essential oils?"
> 
> If you want everything to taste good, worry less about how they
> transported it and look instead at the physical conditions you have to
> deal with--heat, humidity, wind, rain, marauding drunks.  Screw top jars
> are fine and medieval people would have killed for them.  Come to think
> of it, they'd kill for our quality of spices.
> 
> Morgana
> 
>