[Sca-cooks] Spices in England

[Wanda Pease]

Susan,

	The trouble with making statements about an era and place that you are not
familiar with ("I only dabble with the 16th Century...) is that it is likely
to rise up and bite you!
	Sugar, or sucre has been around for a long time and used by everyone who
could get their hands on it.  These were far more numerous than just Queen
Elizabeth and her Court in England.  Since my computer is set up in the
little dining nook where I also keep my cookbooks I reached over and grabbed
my copy of Curye on Inglysch, an Early English Text Society reprint cleaned
up with a modern typeface by Constance Hieatt and Sharon Butler, 1985
edition (I believe there are earlier editions out there, but this is the one
I happen to have.)  This book includes English Culinary manuscripts of the
14th century (including the Forme of Cury possibly put together for the
cooks of Richard II in about 1390.  You can browse through it at
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/foc/FoC071small.html or
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/8102 )  These books and many others were put
out for the general public, not just the King or Queen's household.  The
direction to "strew with sucre" and serve it forth is actually fairly
common.  Sugar seems to have been used as a flavor enhancer than a candy.
It was usually bought in a "sugar loaf" and rubbed against a scraper rather
like a nutmeg grater.
	You might enjoy (since 16th Century isn't really your "thing" :-) a book I
got not long ago:  Medieval Gentlewoman: Life in a Widow's Household in the
Later Middle Ages_  by ffiona Swabey.  The author uses the Household Book of
Alice de Bryene, a Suffolk heiress of the late 14th Century.  Lady Alice
provided her cook with sugar when necessary for a dish (probably kept locked
up with the other spices and doled out  as needed along with pepper, saffron
cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, salt, honey, soda-ash or sandres (cedar-wood
which I get the impression was used more for it's coloring capacity than
taste.
	Dame Alice lived at Acton quite far from court, although she seems to have
had connections who visited frequently.  She kept a liberal table and being
in her home at dinner time meant an invitation to stay.
	http://www.sucrose.com/lhist.html a history of sugar site gives: "The first
sugar was recorded in England in 1099. The subsequent centuries saw a major
expansion of western European trade with the East, including the importation
of sugar. It is recorded, for instance, that sugar was available in London
at "two shillings a pound" in 1319 AD. This equates to about US $100 per
kilo at today's prices so it was very much a luxury."  Just because
something is a luxury doesn't mean that the Crown was the only one to afford
it.  A Kilo equals 2.2046 pounds.  If you are using it as a spice rather
than a food group (Caffeine, sugar, salt, fat and chocolate) this is a fair
amount.  Before you go off in a fit about the cost take a look at the spices
in your local market where they give you the price of that little bottle of
cloves, and show you how much it would be if you bought 1 pound of it.
Spices still aren't cheap in large amounts!  Sugar is presently cheap
because we have found ways to extract it from sugar beets and have planted
sugar cane everywhere in the world where it will grow.  The Tudors and
Elizabethans may have been getting most of their sugar loaves from the
plantations in Cyprus.
	Still, putting out $100 for 2 pounds of sugar would seem pretty impossible
for the middle class merchant's wife.  It would be if that was the way she
normally bought it.  More likely she went to the local apothecary and bought
the ounce or two that she needed at the time and went home.  A small kitchen
might not have the ability to keep a full sugar loaf safe from mice, damp,
etc.  Better to let it stay with the apothecary so if it melted away or got
rat chewed, you weren't the one to lose.  It is the same way when you buy
fresh produce, you usually don't stock up but buy as much as you want at
that particular time (exceptions happen of course)
	Now, as for Elizabeth having blackened teeth at the end of her life.
Certainly she liked sugar comfits AND she could afford them if far greater
numbers than most people.  However, I want you to give up brushing your
teeth with toothpaste (she did brush either with a wintergreen stick chewed
to make the end fibrous, or rubbed them with a rough woolen cloth every
morning.  Next, no fluoride in your drinking water.  No visits to the
dentist to clean your teeth.  How long do you suppose your teeth would last
before they discolored and decayed?  	Granted refined sugar seems to be a
main culprit for dental decay, but it isn't the only one.  I remember
reading that Amenhotep III, Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty died with terrible
dental abscesses as shown by x-rays of his mummy.
	Piers Plowman may not have had access to lots of sugar sweets, but he
certainly did have access to sweets made with honey.  My Housemate makes
wonderful gingerbread using bread crumbs, ginger, and honey from one of the
many Medieval cookbooks now available.  The ones originally written in
English aren't all that hard to redact yourself with the help of a decent
dictionary.  She makes them as small round balls and they are known by our
present Royalty as "medieval breath mints".  In period they might have been
pressed into gingerbread molds and colored or even gilded and sold at fairs
(Nuremberg has a lovely collection of such molds going back to the
beginnings of their Christmas Market).
	Since Queen Elizabeth's subjects weren't used to having massive amounts of
sugar sweetening everything (or high fructose corn syrup) they probably
didn't miss it.  Since lots of refined sugar isn't particularly good for us
that may have been for the best.  At the same time, it was probably much
like today.  If you can afford it, you can have it.  If you can't afford it,
you shouldn't have it (credit cards have made inroads on things that you
can't afford, but still buy).  I rather imagine that Elizabethan markets
were much like our own a century ago.  Pay cash or do without unless the
grocer was willing to run a tab for you.
	As for other spices they were not used in incredibly large amounts by
anyone.  Do you use a lot of non-capsicum spices in your day to day cooking?
I know I have salt and pepper near the stove, but my ginger, nutmeg, and
cloves live in dark bottles inside my pantry where they aren't exposed to
light.  The saffron (still the most expensive item I ever buy) is wrapped in
a paper envelope inside a bottle, and then wrapped in foil to make it even
more light and air tight.

Regina


>
>   I stand to be corrected. Now I too find no evidence that Protestants
> prohibited spices. Stefan I believe it is in Robin Howe's, edited
> version of Mrs. Groundes-Peace’s Old Cookery Notebook (which I do not
> have at hand) in which he states that her 15th Century household
> received something like a spoonful or less of sugar per month while
> Americans in the 20th Century were consuming ? lbs per person per month,
> the figure is extraordinary in comparison. Perhaps Queen Bess had all
> the sugar she wanted but I doubt her subjects saw much of it . . .
> Certainly that was not the case of Iberia where sugar cane flourished in
> the south and the Canaries.
>