[Sca-cooks] Spices in England

[Daniel Myers]

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

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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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