[Sca-cooks] Spices in England
Daniel Myers
edoard at medievalcookery.com
Sat Dec 30 22:27:37 PST 2006
Just some notes to put some perspective on this.
I've got numbers for the occurrence of various spices in medieval
cookbooks online at the following:1
http://www.medievalcookery.com/statistics.shtm
While these don't directly indicate the quantities of spices
consumed, they're useful on a conceptual level. Since sugar and
nutmeg were specifically mentioned, I'll take a moment to extract
their entries. The values are the percent of the total recipes in
the source containing the substance in question.
Sugar
27% - Forme of Cury (England, 1390)
14% - Liber cure cocorum (England, 1430)
39% - Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books (England, 1450)
46% - A Proper newe Booke of Cokerye (England, 1550)
57% - The Good Housewife's Jewell (England, 1596)
Nutmeg
0% - Forme of Cury (England, 1390)
0% - Liber cure cocorum (England, 1430)
< 1% - Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books (England, 1450)
0% - A Proper newe Booke of Cokerye (England, 1550)
10% - The Good Housewife's Jewell (England, 1596)
It's worth noting that nutmeg appears in 22% of the recipes in Du
fait de cuisine (France, 1420).
As for the cost of these spices, Prof. John H. Munro of the
University of Toronto has a wonderful source online.
http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/SPICES1.htm
In it he lists the cost of spices in Antwerp, London, and Oxford from
1438-1439. While these costs are indeed higher (relatively) than
we'd pay now, they aren't so high as to be out of reach of anyone
other than the poor.
A pound of sugar is listed anywhere from 1.24 to 4 days wages for a
skilled laborer (carpenter). Yes, this is a lot, but very few people
go through a pound of sugar a day.
Nutmeg isn't one of the spices he lists, but he does list mace for
Oxford. A pound of mace cost 6 days of wages for a skilled laborer.
Now maybe you guys like mace more than I do, but I really doubt that
I've come anywhere close to using up a pound of mace in my life. I
think it took me several years to go through a two ounce jar.
A carpenter or mason in 15th century London may not have been able to
afford as much sugar as he'd want, but I suspect he'd buy a little on
the rare occasion. For other spices though, he was able to afford as
much spice as he was likely to use (with the exception of saffron, of
course).
- Doc
-=-=-=-
334. Take Bete, pyke hem clene, an stere it wyl, an whan thou schalt
serue hym forth, caste in-to the potte powder gyngere, salt, safron,
an loke that it be poynaunt an dowcet. [The Boke of Swyllyng]
-=-=-=-
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