[Sca-cooks] Re: (Period cookery questions)

[Decker, Terry D.]

Ginger is from southeast Asia rather than Oceania.

While there is no doubt spices reached England (and probably other parts of
Europe), the quantity and availability are open to question.  The great
surge in the spice trade was during the 1st Century BCE when Hippalus, an
Egyptian Greek, opened the blue water sea route to the Malabar coast.
During the next several hundred years, a large number of Europeans and North
Africans were active in the Red Sea-India-Southeast Asia trade.

The nexus of the trade was in Cairo and Alexandria and they traded primarily
with Rome and Byzantium.  After the Western Empire fell apart, most of the
trade into Western Europe probably went through Byzantium.  How much went
into Europe from there is difficult to tell.

And if you are interested in the grains of paradise discussion, let me
direct you to the Florilegium at:

http://www.florilegium.org/files/PLANTS/idxplants.html

Bear

>
>    Pg. 183:  "The spices Bede left to his brethren are said to have
> included lavender, aniseed, buckwheat, cinnamon, cloves, cubebs,
> coriander, cardamom ('grains of paradise' so called because they were
> thought to float down the Nile from the earthly paradise),
> cypress roots
> (galingale)  ginger (raw and preserved) gromic, liquorice,
> and sugar (as
> well as pepper)."
>
>    Hagen footnotes the parenthetical aside on grain as being
> from Kuper,
> *The Antropologist's Cookbook*, 1977, and footnotes the end of the
> sentence referencing  *The  Seven Centuries' Cookbook*, by Maxime
> McKendry.
>    My little *Golden Guide Herbs and Spices*  (1976) lists grain of
> paradise (Aframomum melegueta, native to West Africa)
> cardomom (Elettaria
> cardamomum, native to India) and galangal (Alpina galanga native to
> western India) as being members of the ginger family
> (Zingiberaceae) and
> by noting where the spices are native to, they are clearly as
> accesible
> to England as pepper (Malabar coast of India) cubeb (East Indies) and
> ginger (Oceania).
>
>    Elizabeth