[Sca-cooks] olive oil too expensive to be used as a cooking oil?
Daniel Myers
dmyers at medievalcookery.com
Mon Jan 30 14:01:39 PST 2012
> -------- Original Message --------
> From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at att.net>
> Date: Mon, January 30, 2012 4:07 pm
>
> You aren't factoring in the cost of transportation. Olive oil is a large
> bulk
> commodity which was most easily transported by water. Most of Europe was
> accessible by water. Hauling it overland to Baghdad and beyond would have
> been more expensive than transporting it to Northern Europe.
>
> From what I see in this discussion, Miller is saying that olive oil was so
> expensive in Baghdad, that other oils more readily available and less costly
> were used. While Goitein and Miller make the point that locally available
> oils were the most commonly used in given regions.
>
> Also, the use of olive oil in Northern Europe was driven by Christian
> religious doctrine that was not present in Islamic religious doctrine,
> therefore there was not the need to import olive oil to olive oil poor
> Islamic states as there was to Christian Northern Europe. I'm sure the
> Northern Europeans would have been happy to use lard and butter with olive
> oil as a rare treat, just as the people of al-Islam used fat tail sheep and
> local vegetable oils with olive oil a rare treat in some locales.
>
> Miller may be in error, but I don't think he is whacked.
That makes sense - I misunderstood the initial premise. I stand
corrected.
- Doc
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