[Sca-cooks] Period spice questions

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

> How was spice purchased by the average household in period?  whole only,
> pre-ground, both?

Primarily whole, from what we can tell. Certainly mustard seed, peppers,
and nutmegs were bought whole.

However, spice mixtures were available for purchase, and things like
mustard sauce were often bought pre-made.

Even with whole spices, the buyer needed to beware of adulteration (the
wooden nutmegs, or safflower[?] in the saffron, etc.) Guilds appointed
'garblers' to check and grade spice shipments and to inspect spice
shipments for purity, some of the time.

> Did a period spicer pre-grind packets for their clients, I would think a
> larger more efficient morter and pestle would make short work of this,
> rather than my dinky marble one or medium wood one.

Most kitchens of any size would have had a large mortar and pestle, though
perhaps not the tree-trunk ones that Henisch describes in _Fast and
Feast_.


-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa
jenne at fiedlerfamily.net OR jenne at tulgey.browser.net OR jahb at lehigh.edu
	"Index your brain."