SC - spices organisation

Tue Jun 20 12:04:41 PDT 2000

My allergies have left me enervated, so I am a little behind on my research
and replies.  This particular question intrigued me, so I have spent some
quality time with the OED and a paper by Gary Allen of the Culinary
Institute of America. 

> At 9:12 AM -0500 6/16/00, Decker, Terry D. wrote:
> >  >   "Decker, Terry D."<TerryD at Health.State.OK.US> writes:
> >  >
> >  > >  The Portuguese had introduced
> >  > >  > grains of
> >  > >  > paradise no more than 70 years prior to Columbus' 
> voyage and they
> >  > >  > were
> >  > >  > accepted and widely used.  Why not chilies?
> >  >
> >  > What is your source for that? Grains appear in  Le Menagier and
> >  > Taillevent, both of which are more than 70 years before Columbus'
> >  > voyage.
> >  >
> >  > David/Cariadoc
> >
> >IIRC, the source was a paper from the cooks symposium 
> earlier this year.  In
> >any event, I am depending on someone else's research, which 
> is often a
> >source of error.
> >
> >I apologize for being imprecise.  Rather than "grains of 
> paradise," I should
> >have used Aframomum melegueta.  "Grains of paradise" has been used to
> >describe cardamom seeds as well as the melegueta pepper.
> 
> What's the evidence for that? I've seen the assertion, but never the 
> basis for it. The tastes are entirely unrelated, which makes me 
> skeptical.
> 
> Or did you mean "'Grains of paradise' has been used to describe 
> cardamom seeds by the authors of bad modern secondary sources on 
> medieval cooking?"

According to the OED, cardamom has been used to refer to A. melegueta.
Grains of paradise also refers to A. melegueta.  While the OED doesn't show
cardamom and grains of paradise as being synonyms, the fact that they are
both used to refer to the same spice makes it probable they were used
interchangeably at times.  

The earliest references to malagueta pepper seem to tie it to the East
Indies.  Since the use of the terms grains of paradise and malagueta pepper
pre-date the major trade in A. melegueta from West Africa, it is probable
that malagueta pepper and grains of paradise were a member or members of
Amomum imported from Asia and were supplanted by by A. melegueta as part of
a marketing ploy by the Portuguese.

Guinea pepper has been used to mean A. melegueta and cayenne pepper.
According to Trager (questionable source), the Portuguese were trading
chilies into India in 1525, which could mean that a 16th Century recipe
calling for guinea pepper might be talking about chili pepper.  Guinea
grains I would expect to be malagueta pepper.

The OED provides the following:

Grain

4.  Specialized applications of the plural.  a. (in full Grains of paradise:
in early use also sing.);  the capsules of Amomum meleguetta of Western
Africa (cf. cardamom b.), used as a spice and in medicine; called also
Guinea grains (see GUINEA).
?a 1366 Chaucer Rom. Rose 1369 Clowe-gelofre, and licoryce, Gingere, and
greyn de Parys [orig. Grains de paradis], c 1386 Miller's T. 504, But first
he cheweth greyn and lycryce, To smellen swete.  c 1420 Liber Cocorum (1862)
38 Take..of maces, cloves and graynys also.  c. 1460 J. Russell Bk. Nurture
126 Graynes of paradise, hoote and moyst they be.  1542 Borde Dyetary (1870)
286 Graynes be good for the stomake and the head.  1614 B. Johnson Barth.
Fair iv.iv,  I'ld cure him now.. with.. garlike, long pepper and graines.
1669 Worlidge Syst. Agric. (1681) 225 Steep the Regulus of Antimony in Ale,
with a little of the spice called Grains.  1705 Bosman Guinea 305 Malagueta,
otherwise called Paradise Grains or Guinea Pepper.  1743 Lond. & Country
Brew. IV, 288 When I found it [Two Penny Drink] left a hot Tang behind it,
it gave me just Reason to believe they had used Grains of Paradise, or long
Pepper, both which will save Malt.  1812 J Smyth Prac. of Customs (1821) 96
Guinea Grains and Grains of Paradise are considered by the Trade, as one and
the same article.  1850 Kingsley Alt. Locke viii, 'Beer poisoned wi' grains
o' Paradise and cocculus indicus.'

Cardamom 
...
A spice consisting of the seed capsules of various species of Amomum and
Elettaria...

b.  Also occas. applied to the capsules of A. meleguetta of Western Africa,
usually called Grains of Paradise.

Guinea Pepper

a.  An early name for Cayenne pepper.

b.  (see quot. 1839)

1839 Penny Cycl. XI, 480/2 Guinea pepper, the seeds of two species of
Amomum, found on the West Coast of Africa, within the tropics; the one
Amomum grana Paradisi, the other, Amomum grandiflorum.  They are powerfully
aromatic, stimulant and cordial.

>From Allen, Gary, "The Pantry in the Tower of Babel," European Cooking From
Rome to the Renaissance, Conference Proceedings, pg 7-11; Colorado Springs,
2000.

More puzzling is the sudden appearance of several variants on "Malaguetta."
It doesn't appear to be a place name.  The Oxford English Dictionary
provides a rather confused etymology:

[Of obscure origin:  App. identical with med.L.melageta, the name of a spice
mentioned c1214 in connection with cloves and cardamoms, and said a1331 to
be among the productions of Java ... in 1486 Simon a Cordo (Clavis
Sanationis) explains the word as a diminutive of It. melica millet remarking
that the grains resemble those of millet.  This seems probable; but if the
word be of European origin it has either been adopted in a corrupt form into
some West African langs., or confused with a native word, the source of the
earliest Eng. form and of the F. maniguette.  In 1599 Townsend (Hakl. Voy
II. ii 27) in a list of phrases from the language of Guinea gives 'manegete
afoye, graines ynough.'  Miss M. Kingsley West Afr. Studies (1899) ii. 57
says that in the native lang. at Cape Palmas the name is emanequetta, but
that as the name is very local (the more usual word is waiauzag) a European
origin is possible.]

If the 1214 date is accurate, our Meleguetta Pepper got its name from yet
another spice (a not-unheard-of process) which is, as yet, unidentified.
The 1331 statement would seem to allude to something in Marco Polo (for
there were no other reliable accounts at the time), but the passage he wrote
of Java (or Canba, as he callet it) is only a page long.  The entire
relevant passage is:

"This island is full of very great wealth.  They have pepper in this island
and nutmegs and spikenard and galingale and cubebs and cloves and in short
all other kinds of good and dear spicery which one could find in the world."

> 
> >A. melegueta is a
> >West African plant and the Portuguese were the primary 
> source for Europe
> >after opening the West African trade in the first half of 
> the 15th Century.
> >
> >It is possible that the Islamic world introduced A. 
> melegueta to Europe
> >prior to the Portuguese, but Islamic contact with West 
> Africa seems to have
> >been limited until Timbuktu fell to the Berbers in 1433.
> 
> Could be--but you don't need conquest for trade. Gold was coming up 
> long before that.
> 
> David Friedman

Do you have any dates on the trade?  A lot of things came from the
Trans-Sahara in Antiquity, when the Sahara was still a grassland and travel
was relatively easy.  After it turned to desert, the trade route between
Mali and the Mediterranean became one of the deadliest in the world and it
was essentially abandoned.  IIRC, it became a major slave trading route only
in the 17th and 18th Centuries as the supply of slaves from Europe was cut
off.

Bear