Demystifying A Change in Taste Spices, Space, and Social Hierarchy in Europe, 1380-1750 Author(s) Stefan Halikowski Smith

Demystifying a Change in Taste: Spices, Space, and Social Hierarchy in Europe, 1380-1750
Author(s): Stefan Halikowski Smith

Source: The International History Review, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Jun., 2007), pp. 237-257
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STEFAN HALIKOWSKI SMITH
Demystifyinga Changein Taste:

Spices, Space, and Social Hierarchyin Europe,
1380-1750
Old English saying cHe hath no pepper' describes people who
are 'nobodies'. Spices made one somebody. A set of naturalproducts of shifting constitution, they helped to relieve the monotony
for medieval man of the flavourless staples of his diet and bestowed upon
him the pleasures of tastes and smells, an aestheticization of his existence;
they helped to preserve the bodies of his ancestors, to sacralize social and
religious rites, and, as heir to a rich pharmacopaeic tradition stretching
back to pre-Galenic Alexandrian physicians, they gave him hope of conquering ailments and the will to live. Such products that commanded the
highest marketprices were in every sense luxuries, and their use was a hallmark of elevated taste and a ritual of civilized life from ancient Rome
through Renaissance Europe.
The attributes of value and luxury may explain why spices have been
ignored by historians. Edward Gibbon dismissed cthe objects of orient
traffic'as 'splendid but trifling', a view echoed by post-war Annaliste historians, whose quantitativestudies of the early modern economy focus on
necessity and availability {devoir et avoir), and for whom even the Baltic
grain trade was 'infinitesimally small ... in relation to the number of
mouths ... to feed'.1 Robert Lopez, for example, advises us not to allow
'the glitter and glamour of trade in luxuries ... to overshadow the heavy
trade in cheap bulky goods'.2 Readings of spices' role as consumer goods
were relegated to their functional uses: to preserve meat - in obscure histories of the Visigothic sausage - or, as Franco Borlandi maintains, to disguise the failure.3The disparagementof what Michael Pearson refers to as
1 E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1909), i. 62. Otherwise, K. Glamann, 'European Trade, 1500-1750', in The Fontana Economic History of Europe, ed. C.
Cipolla (London, 1976), i. 466. For the principles of dever e haver, see B. Bennassar, 'A funcao do
come*rcioe a teoria dos circulos de comunicacao', in Histdria Econdmica e Social do Mundo, ed. P.
Le*on(Lisbon, 1984), i. t. II; N. Elias, The Civilising Process: The Development of Manners: Changes in
the Codeof Conductand Feeling in Early Modern Times, trans. E. Jephcott (Oxford, 1978).
2 R. Lopez, Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World (New York, 1955), p. 116.
3 See R. Wernick, 'Men Launched 1000 Ships in Search of the Dark Condiment', The Smithsonian,
The International History Review, xxix. 2:June 2007, pp. 237-472.

cn issn 0707-5332 The International History Review. All International Rights Reserved.

238
Stefan HalikowskiSmith
the 'mystique of the spice trade, its glamour, its aura' may have reflected
the commercial downturn after the Second World War, perhaps a side
effect of the economic dislocations affecting the global economy in the
wake of decolonization. One report published by the Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in 1962 estimated a decline of
20 per cent worldwide, and as much as a half in most European countries.1
Today, following the revival of interest in ethnic cuisine and natural
sources of flavouring,the term 'spice' has shed its negative connotations. If
spicy implied 'problematic and open to various interpretations'in the late
sixteenth century, 'over expensive' in the seventeenth century, 'caustic and
mordant' in the eighteenth, and 'bawdy' in the nineteenth, its prospects
have never seemed better.2Perfumerslong restricted to descriptors such as
'sweet', 'heavy', 'fresh', 'floral', and 'woodsy', have finally overcome the
Enlightenment prejudice against traditional spice fixatives such as musk,
civet, ambergris, and castor, enabling Armani to describe his eaux pour
hommeas 'a very Italian sensation of freshness, combined with a selection
of subtle, sensual spices'.3 But if we treat human beings as creatures of
desire rather than need, we can re-examine the consumption of spices by
applying Hans Teuteberg's classification of spices as Genufimittel, or
'hedonistic goods'.4 On the basis of this assumption and classification, this
article explains the development of the taste for spices in early modern
Europe.
*****
The term taste is used to describe the aesthetic that permeated the early
modern consumption of spices. Not merely a physiological response
through the five senses, taste expresses a form of sociocultural reproduction on the basis of subjective experiences, judgement, and requirements.
In this article, the aesthetic is deconstructed into the sensory, the culturalwhich manifests itself in different patterns of taste according to one's
geographical co-ordinates on the European continent - and the social, the
articulation of tastes within a given society. The focus is on alimentary
xiv, 11(Feb. 1984), 128-48;Fatti e ideedi storia economicanet secoli12.-20.:studi dedicatia Franco
Borlandi(Bologna,1976).
1 Spicesin theIndian OceanWorld,ed. M. Pearson(Aldershot1996),p. xvii; Food and Agricultural
Association(UN), Spices:Trendsin WorldMarkets,CommodityBulletinSeries(Rome,1962).
2 A. Goosse, 4Des mots epices', in Saveurs de Paradis. Les Routesdes Epices, Caisse Generale
A
d'Epargneet de Retraite(Brussels,1992),pp. 36-7; T. Storey,'Questonegozioe aromatichissimo':
SocioculturalStudyof Prostitutionin EarlyModernRome'(Ph.D. dissertation,EuropeanUniversity
Institute,April1999),notefollowingtitlepage.
3 Armanifreesample,licenseno. EMB02340A.
4 G. Bachelard,La psychoanalyse
dufeu (Paris,1949);EuropeanFoodHistory:A ResearchReview,ed.
H. J. Teuteberg(Leicester,1992),p. 5 andTable 1.1,'Socialand PsychicFunctionsof Foodstuffsand
Luxuries'.

The Changein European Taste
239
taste, for the aesthetic of perfumes and scents, less apparentin the sources,
lacks an equivalent genre of literaryexpression to the cookbook. Works on
sensory perception suggest that the nose is a less opinionated receptor
than the mouth.1
Historians of food assert that the most startling characteristic of late
medieval cookery, from the perspective of today, was its powerful aroma
and strong taste - which may only reveal the blandness of our taste - and
that the characteristicwas ubiquitous across the culinary spectrum and the
result of elaborate and eclectic combinations.2 The Renaissance, it is
rightly held, represents the golden age of the use of spices in cooking.
Ginger, for example, figures in as many as 70 per cent of Pierre Pidoult's
(Pidoux) recipes in his Lafleur de toute cuysine of 1543,3and sauces such
as cameline - a mixture of cinnamon, ginger, cloves, grains of paradise,
mace, pepper, and bread soaked in vinegar - were commonplace.4But it is
not clear what quantities of spices were used because recipe-books list, but
do not dose, ingredients. Historians such as MargaretWade Labarge rely
on household accounts or public provisioning lists to gauge the quantities.
She is impressed with the fact that the sheriff of Sussex was ordered in the
spring of 1254 to prepare 'thirty dozen chickens, thirty dozen fowl,
and four thousand of cumin' for Queen Eleanor of England's journey to
France.5 But, as with so many such sources, the lack of a unit of measurement leaves us none the wiser.6 Thus, while Wolfgang Schivelbusch,
following Labarge, claims that Hhe dishes literally disappear under the
spices; the food is little more than a vehicle for the spices,' Madeleine Cosman, more circumspect, replies that 'rather than wildly spiced, medieval
foods were more likely mildly fragrant.'7
We are uncertain, therefore, as to how late medieval food tasted. Traditionalists maintain that the predominant tastes were hot, sharp, and tangy
(Lat. amaritudo), owing to the acidic element commonly added to sauces
1 D. Sumner,'On Testingthe Senseof Smell',TheLancet,ii (1962),895-7;H. L. Meiselmanand R. S.
Rivlin,ClinicalMeasurement
of Tasteand Smell(NewYork,1986),ch. 11.
2 M. P. Cosman,FabulousFeasts:MedievalCookeryand Ceremony(New York,1976),'Herbs and
Spices', pp. 45 ff.; L. Plouvier,'Et les epices pimenterentla cuisine europeenne',VHistorien,lxxvi
(1985),85.
3 This figureis devisedfromthe fiveeditionsof theworkprintedat Lyonbetween1567and 1604.
4 TheVivendier:
A CriticalEditionwithEnglishTranslation,ed. T. Scully(Totnes, 1997),recipeno.
6,P-355 M. W. Labarge,'The SpiceAccount',HistoryToday,xvi (1965),34.
6 See P. Aebischer,'Un manuscritvalaisandu "Viandier"attributea Taillevent',Vallesia,viii (1953),
73-100.
~lW. Schivelbusch,Das Paradies,der Geschmack

der Genufimittel
und die Vemunft.Eine Geschichte
1990),p. 15, andT. Zeldin,'WhyThere Has BeenMoreProgressin Cookingthanin Sex',
(Frankfurt,
in An IntimateHistoryof Humanity(London, 1997),pp. 95-6. Cf. Cosman,FabulousFeasts,p. 47.
A. H. de OliveiraMarquestalks,about spices, of 'a abusardo seu emprego',A SociedadeMedieval
Portuguesa. Aspectosde Vida Quotidiana (Lisbon, 1971), p. 9.

240
(typically verjus, the juice of the unripened grape); or, if not tangy, at least
strong (Lat. ardens)} This description follows the map of the sensory qualities of spices drawn by Theophrastus two thousand years previously, on
which he designated hot (0epuxx), pungent (6pi(ieia), biting (&T]ictiic&),
bitter (jtticpd), and astringent (orujrcim).2 But if tanginess characterized
the flavourof savoury dishes, sugar and honey, too, were widely used, particularly for the sick.3 There was a marked difference from later European
cuisine, which distinguished between the salted and the sweet and served
one after the other, but rarely together. In many languages, such as Portuguese, desserts, sweet by definition, are known as 'postres': that is, they are
served afterthe main dish.
Sweet and aromatic characteristics were greatly prized in comestibles.4
Chretien of Troyes (fl. 1165-82)assured his readers that 'nothing there is
sharp or sour/ Because the spices there/ Are sweet and smell good.'5 Powdered sugar was often flavoured with a spice or aromatic flower; in 1265,
Eleanor, countess of Leicester, bought powdered sugar flavoured with
mace, and between 1284 and 1286, Bogo de Clare bought jars of rose and
violet sugars.6Fourteenth-centuryCyprus achieved great commercial success from blending its home-grown sugars with spices imported from the
Levant to make sweetmeats, syrups, and jams; as did Alexandria - attributed a zenzeveratada mangiare by Pegolotti - and 'Barbary',the source of
the pot of succade the successful Antwerp merchant Erasmus Schetz presented in 1525to Desiderius Erasmus, an 'exquisite fruitjam, impossible to
find in Basel'.7European treatisesand almanacsof all kinds were filled with
recipes for spiced jams, which were a favourite present on ceremonial
occasions or, in France, given in lieu of payment to judges.8
The sheer range of spices used warns us against too monolithic an inter1 For a caricature of the qualities associated with spices, see L. de Camoes, Os Lusiadas, Canto
segundo, 4th octave.
2 Theophrastus, On Odours, trans. Sir A. Hart (London, 1917), p. 10.
3 See, e.g., the recipe for 'a great plenty of sugar' to be added to a boiled and pounded chicken in a
mould: Le Menagier de Paris, c. 1393, trans, as The Goodman of Paris: A Treatise on Moral and Domestic Economy, ed. E. Power (London, 1928), p. 295, 'coulis d'un poulet'.
4 For 'sweet spices', see B. Platina, De Honesta Voluptae, 1475, trans, as On Right Pleasure and Good
Health (Tempe, 1998), p. 225.
5 Chretien of Troyes, Cliges, in Les Romans de Chretien de Troyes,edites d'apres la copie de Guiot(Bibl.
Nat. II. 794), ed. A. Micha (Paris, 1957), ii. lines 3212-16 ff.
6 H. T. Turner, Manners and Household Expenses of the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (London,
1841); M. S. Giuseppi, 'The Wardrobe and Household Accounts of Bogo de Clare, 1284-6', Archaeologia, lxx (1920).
7 F. di Balducci Pegolotti, La Pratica della Mercatura, ed. A. Evans (Cambridge, MA, 1936); The Correspondenceof Erasmus: II: Letters 1535-1657,AD 1525, ed. A. Dalzell and C. G. Nauert, Jr. (Toronto,
1994), P- 386.
8 Excellent & moult utile Opuscule a touts necessaire ... livre de Nostradamus, 2e partie, 1555, Lyon,
Bibliotheque Municipale; M. de L'Hospital, 'Harangues', in Oeuvrescompletes(Paris, 1824-5), u- 7-

241
pretation of late medieval taste. The record of expenses (Ausgabebuchlein)

Paul Behaim of Nuremberg kept between 1544 and 1568 records 'saffron,
Zimmetsaffran [cassia or turmeric], pepper, ginger, cumin, cinnamon
rind, cloves, ginger, powdered nutmeg, sultanas [Zibeben], capers, malagueta, sugar, candied sugar, almonds from Venice and Provence [?]
[pavenzich], figs, dates, raisins [weinperlein]\ all of them at the time
classed as spices.1
Thus, even if the spicing of meat masked the taste of poor preservation
and slowed down putrefaction, there existed a conscious aesthetic that
went beyond the dressing-up of a monotonous diet of cooked meats,
boiled as well as roasted, in an effort to keep microbes at bay.2 Spices were
eaten to satisfy desire. In a sermon, Martin Luther employs spices as a
paragon of 'deliciousness'; he might have been thinking of the spiced
honey cake, gingerbread,or pfefferkuchenthat Fynes Moryson was so fond
of, and that was widespread across central Europe despite its cost.3 Spices,
even pepper, were added to desserts such as potage appele verzuse, and
stewed with fruit into confitures.They were added to all types of drinks:
hot ales, punches, liquors, mulled wine, hydromel. The ginger beer still
drunk is a relic of the practice. The water in which many of the stronger
spices had been soaked was sufficiently flavoursome to substitute in
recipes for the spices themselves. But spices were more than condiments;
they were eaten in their own right, served up on platters laden with pepper
grains, cinnamon sticks, crystallized ginger (gingebras), and perfumed
sugar, and passed around the dinner table, often as a dessert, a digestif, or
to clean one's breath, and traditionallyaccompanied by wine.4
* * * * *
Sources showing the distribution of spices suggest that pepper and the
'choleric' spices found a more ready market in northern Europe, particularlyin German- and Dutch/Flemish-speaking areas, no doubt because
this is one area of the world in which meat is king.5 That choleric spices
flowed primarily to these regions is as demonstrable for the sixteenth
century as for today, if we compare the quantities of pepper allocated to
1 [Nuremberg,] Gfermanisches] N[ational]m[useum] N[uremberg], Behaim Archiv, Schrank 102,
Fach 1/22.
2 E. and T. Cohen, Daily Life in Renaissance Italy (Westport, CN, 2001), p. 228.
3 Luther's Works:II, ed. J. Pelikan (St Louis, 1986), p. 65; F. Moryson, An Itinerary Containing His
Ten YeeresTravell through the Twelve Dominions of Germany, Bohmerland, Sweitzerland, Netherlands
Denmarke, Poland, Italy . . . (London, 1617).
4 See, e.g., F. Rabelais, 'D'un couste*sont apportez vins et espices . . .', Gargantua et Pantagruel, ed. P.
Jourda (Paris, 1962), bk. IV, ch. 14, ii. 81; Treatise of Walter of Bibbersworth, ed. A. Owen (Dissertation, Paris, 1929); other indications to be found in the Romance de la Rose, and in 'Le dit du prunier'.
5 I. de Garine, 'Modes alimentaires', in L'Histoire des Moeurs, ed. J. Poirier (Paris, 1991), i. 1586 ff.

242
various regions in 1577 by the Rott contract, or estimated in 1610 in the

memoir presented to the Spanish government, with the traded imports recorded for 1992.1 At the same time, Mediterranean countries began to
scorn the 'black deviF in favour, where called for, of the use of the Spanish
pimento, or chili pepper.2 Malaguetapepper was less popular in southern
Europe: in Italy and Catalonia,it was used mainly in recipes adopted from
France,3while in Castile and Portugal,it was not used at all.4
Conversely, sweets and fine spices were southern European predilections. Garcia de Orta asserts that 'Spaniards do not eat any of the spices
except cinnamon'; even if he exaggerates, Jonathan Israel estimates that
two-thirds of the cinnamon the Dutch imported into Europe in the midseventeenth century was consumed in Spain and its American possessions.5 The large marketfor sugar in southern and south-easternEurope is
shown in the allocations for exports from Madeira listed in the Saragossa
decree of 1498: more than half was allocated to the Mediterraneanbasin.6
Rhubarb, like cinnamon, Orta tells us, tended to be consumed in Iberia or
else flow to Venice.7
European taste was markedby a north/south differential.The protagonist of Giovanni Delia Casa's A Treatise of Manners published in 1558, II
Galateo, describes from a Tuscan perspective the habit of 'makinggame of
drunkenness' as one of 'many other plagues which have come to us from
beyond the Alps'.8 Venetians disparaged Germans' huge meals of highly
spiced meats, according to the late fifteenth-centurypilgrim Felix Fabri, an
1 See KonradRott,EuropeanmarketestimationsforAtlanticpepperin 1579-80,StadtarchivDresden,
loc. 7411;Europeanmarketestimationfor Atlanticpepperby an 'expert',in the Spanishcontractof
1611,ArchivoGeneralde Simancas,Estado2852; 'Trade,Commerce:StatisticalSynopses',FAO(UN)
(X994)itable79. Cf. P. Kaeppelin'sassertionthatFranceconstituted'thelargestmarketfortextilesand
spices broughtbackfromthe East Indies',which can only hold for the latterhalfof the seventeenth
century:Les Originesde VIndefrancaise,La CompagniedesIndesorientateset FrancoisMartin,etude
sur Vhistoiredu commerce
et desetablissements
francais dansVIndesousLouisXIV(1664-17^)(Paris,
1908),p. 3.
2 See, e.g., C. Durante,HerbarioNuovo(Rome,1585),p. 344.
3 I. Elbl,'The PortugueseTradewith West Africa,1440-1521'
(Ph.D. dissertation,Toronto,1986),p.
512;MainoDe' Maineri,'De Saporibus',in 'A MedievalSauce-Book',ed. L. Thorndike,Speculum,ix
(1934),188;MaistreChiquart,Dufait decuisine,ed. T. Scully,offprintfromVallesia,xl (1985),fos. 14,
20, 21,37.
4 TracciSnespanolade un manuscritoanonimodelsigloXIII sobrela cocinahispano-maghribi,
ed. A.
Huici Miranda(Madrid,1966); Un libro de cocina del siglo XIV, ed. J. Osset Meell, Boletin de la
SociedadeCastallonense
de Cultura,xvi (1935),156-77;'Urntratadode cozinhado seculoXVI (MS. 1E-33of BN of Naples)',ed. M.J. da GamaLobo Salema(Master'sdissertation,Lisbon,1956).
5 G. de Orta,Colloquies
on theSimplesand Drugsof India,ed. Sir C. Markham(London,1913),i. 118;
J. Israel,DutchPrimacyin WorldTrade,1585-1740
(Oxford,1990),p. 251.
6 H. da GamaBarros,Historia da AdministracdoPublicaem PortugalnosseculosXII-XV(2nd. ed.,
Lisbon,1945"54),x. 156.
7 Orta,Colloquies,
pp. 275ff.
8 G. dellaCasa(Galateo),A TreatiseofManners(Amsterdam,1969),originallypublished1558,p. 100.

243
opinion echoed by the CatalantravellerTafiir on his visit to Breslau in the

1430s: 'they fortify themselves by taking great quantities of food and drink,
a custom which to us seems strangerthan anything else. I believe that more
money is expended upon furs and spices than in half the world besides.'1
The Poles, though, were widely held to be the most extravagant race.
Giovanni Botero, the Italian traveller, described the Polish nobility between 1586 and 1600 as Very gallant,prodigall in expences, spending more
than their revenues in diet and apparell, and the seasoning of their meates
(for the Polanders use more spices than any other nation)'.2 The dinners
served to professors at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow on such
occasions as the commemorations of the college church, or the obiady
kiernaszowy,attest to this, and foreign visitors such as Damiao de Gois in
1529 were shocked by the fondness for tobacco: 'never was so much
smoked and with such passion as in Russia and Poland.'3
A line, nevertheless, may tentativelybe drawn across east-centralEurope
between Poland and Muscovite Rus, where the petty nobility were isolated
both from Western currents of taste - the 'Moscovians' were commonly
viewed as barbarians- and the monetary economy. Thus a report from the
early seventeenth century on the prospects for Dutch trade in the Baltic
lamented that 'they are not at all used to pepper, sugar, wine, and such
delicacies, and are better off with their garlic, brandy, and honey.'4
The English seem, by contrast, to have been the exception to the rule.
While heavily reliant on meat, and, according to works such as Ancient
Cookery(1381)and Form ofCury (c.1390), apparentlyconnoisseurs of lesser
known spices such as mace, cubeb, galangal, and cinnamon flowers, the
English found the German'sdiet to be overflavouredand his meals too big:
'many sauces and commonly sharpe, and such as comfort the stomacke
offended with excessive drinking'. Meanwhile, in 1596, Sir Robert
Dallington reproached the Italiansfor their 'parsimony and thin feeding', a
comment typical of Frenchmen as well as Englishmen on what they took to
be an over-consumption of 'herbage'.5 Igor de Garine suggests that the
British may have been unusual in the degree of similarity between their
1 Fratris Felicis Fabri Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae, Arabiae et Egypti peregrinationem, ed. C. D.
Hassler (Stuttgart, 1843-9), 3 vols. (1480-3); P. Tafur, Andancas e Viajes, ed. J. de la Espada (Madrid,
1874).
2 G. Botero, The Travellers Breviat (London, 1601), pp. 82-3.
3 A. Karbowiak, Obiady profesordw Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego w XVI I XVII wieku (Cracow, 1900),
p. 11;D. de Gois, Crdnica de D. Manuel (Lisbon, 1566-7), pt. I, cap. 5, 217.
4 G. V. Forsten, Akty ipis'mak istorii baltijskogovaprosa (St Petersburg, 1893), ii. 110.
5 Moryson, Itinerary, pp. 81 ff.; R. Dallington, Survey of Tuscany (1596), p. 34; see also, C. Howard,
English Travellers of the Renaissance (New York, 1968); Montaigne, in J. G. Links, Travellers in
Europe: Private Records of Journeys by the Great and Forgotten (1980), p. 144. Both Ancient Cookery
(1381) and Form ofCury (c. 1390) were published by G. Brander in The Forme ofCury: A Roll of Ancient
English Cookery(London, 1780).

244
country and elite cooking.1 Largely ignorant of southern spices such as the
pimento, and unimpressed with the traditionalculinary spices favouredby
Poles, the English sought consolation in beef with mustard.2
In conclusion, the oppositional discourses of moderation versus excess,
of subtle, 'refined', or 'natural'taste versus strong, or harsh, taste suggest
the growth in the sixteenth century of a critique of the use of choleric
spices in the culturally determining countries of Spain, France, and Italy.
The critique was to lead during the seventeenth century to the development of a distinctly new culture of taste.
*****
As Lucien Febvre emphasizes, a preponderant role in the perceptual landscape of both the ancient and early modern worlds was played by the sense
of smell.3The difficulty of attempting to summarize the olfactory prescriptions of earlier ages is increased by the gradual atrophy since the Enlightenment of the sense of smell in the West and the corresponding primacy of
visual perception in the pursuit of reason and civilization. Paul Faure goes
so far as to claim that our sense of smell is so underdeveloped in the
modern West that we can no more appreciate the importance of odour in
the ancient world than the blind can describe a colourful scene.4 Despite
our fondness for classification, our attempts at olfactory classification are
more elementary than those of most 'primitive' extant tribal cultures, such
as the Kapsikiof Cameroon or the Serer Ndut of Senegal.5
Nonetheless, we have some idea of early modern Europe's olfactory
preferences. Sweetness of smell was most admired,just as 'sharpnesse'was
admired in taste.6Sixteenth-century commentators such as Pieter Floriszoon of Gonda were encouraged to describe the savour of cinnamon as
'sweet', even if that classification nowadays might seem strange.7 Most
common were floral fragrancessuch as rosewater, most often distilled from
flowers found locally, given that flowers did not travel well. Elizabeth I of
England's 'syrup perfume', for example, was produced on a base of rosewater.8Another popular scent was calamus (or sweet flag), a plant of which
1 De Garine, L 'Histoire des Moeurs, ed. Poirier.
2 W. Thomas, The Pilgrim (1546); A. Ma^czak,Viaggi e viaggatori nelUEuropa modema, ed. Laterza
and Figlia SpA, Rome, 1994), p. 2; M. Wade Labarge, A Baronial Household of the Thirteenth Century
(London, 1965).
3 L. Febvre, Le problemede Vincroyanceau XVIe siecle (Paris, 1942), pp. 461-72.
4 P. Faure, Parfums etAromates de VAntiquite(Paris, 1987), p. 13.
5 C. Classen et al., Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (London, 1994), pt. 2, ch. 3.
6 See, e.g., the definition of 4Od[o]res' and 'Od[o]r[i]f[e]rus' in T. Thomas, Dictionarium Linguae
Latinae etAnglicanae (Cambridge, 1587).
7 Cited by J. Verberckmoes, Schertsen, schimpen en schateren: geschiedenis van het lichen in de zuidelijke Nederlanden, zestiendeen zeventiende eeuw (Nijmegen, 1998), p. 85.
8 Cited by F. Kennett, A History of Perfume (London, 1975), p. 122.

245
there were two varieties, one native to Europe, the other, the truly prized
one, calamus verus, imported from India and redolent of roses. Dried and
reduced to a powder, calamus was used in a number of the most precious
perfumes.1
II Galateo's advice to young men interested in acquiring courtly bearing
(buona creanza) was 'I do not say that at your age certain simple fragrances
made from distilled waters are not suitable.'2 Behind such water-based
scents, however, stood a range of stronger scents that probably had not
changed much since the Comediesof Plautus (254-184 bc) had eulogized
myrrh, cinnamon, saffron, and cassia. The fruit of the cinnamon, for
example, when boiled together with coarser pieces of the bark, yielded a
fragrantoil. Arnau of Villanova describes a typical perfume, constituted of
an ounce of amber(gris) mixed with cassia, three grains of lignum aloes,
one scrupolo of musk, and sixteen grains of camphor.3 Ambergris, along
with similar animal products such as musk, civet, and castor, acted as fixatives. Preparedas alcoholic tinctures, and added in small quantities to the
base fragranceafterblending, they rendered the odour more permanent.
Any survey of European taste prompts one to ask how far taste and smell
constitute a social phenomenon. We have traced elsewhere the way in
which spices were endowed with the qualities of the marvellous and, increasingly, the exotic.4 The process set the eastern pharmacopeia on a different demand footing from commonly found European substitutes, even
afterthe spirit of rationalismthat nurtured the Scientific Revolution forced
the exotic to assume different forms, as the poor record in Europe of expensive medical treatmentthrough exotics made itself ever more evident.
Spices fitted into wider social currents of taste, both owing to their civilizing associations and as objects of value, symbols of prestige. Spices, as
aromatics both rare and of inherent aesthetic pleasure, had been considered luxuries and thus a manifestation of civilization and a symbol of
high society since the age of Sumerian legend (c.3000 bc). Erasmus, for
example, lists as luxum ac delicias those goods consumed only by the rich:
'cotton, silk, dyed cloth, pepper, spices, ointments,jewels'.5
At the same time, value, if represented universally through the price
matrix, operates as a mark of social distinction and emulation, 'an eternal
1 See, e.g., The Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts Relating to English Affairs Existing in the
Archives and Collectionsof Venice&c, ed. R. Brown (London, 1854), i. 67.
2 Delia Casa, // Galateo, ch. 28.
3 Amaldo di Villanova, 'Del modo di fare un profumo', in // De Conservandajuventute (Leipzig, 1511),
trans, as // Libro sul modo di conservare la gioventu e ritardare la vecchiaia (Genoa, 1963), p. 52.
4 S. Halikowski Smith, 'The Mystification of Spices in the Western Tradition', European Review of
History, viii (2001), 119-36.
5 D. Erasmus, 'Institutio Principis Christiani' (1516), trans, and annotated N. M. Cheshire and M. J.
Heath, in CollectedWorksof Erasmus (Toronto, 1974), xxvii. 262.

246
Stefan Halikowski Smith
class struggle' in Fernand BraudeFswords.1 Spices, as luxuries, were protected throughout Europe during the Middle Ages by rigorously applied
sumptuary laws that regulated consumption by prescribing which groups
could consume which goods in a society in which the status system was
under threat from an increase in the number and availabilityof commodities.2 But sumptuary laws were powerless to prevent hoarding, especially
of spices such as pepper, with a long shelf life, which in Portugal, France,
and England were often used as ersatz currency in times of shortage of
precious metals as late as the end of the seventeenth century.3Count Guillaume de Limoges (1400-56) complained of the insolent display of wealth
by a rich commoner who piled up peppercorns in his storerooms 'as if they
were so many acorns (des glands) for his pigs'.4 The role of spices as
prestige goods was underlined by their use as gifts on political occasions:
by towns such as Bruges to visiting dignitaries such as the chancellor of
Brittany,Jean de Malestroit, in 1426, or by the town of Koloszvar to the
princely court at Gyulafehervarin Transylvania during the second half of
the sixteenth century.5
The prestige or status value of spices was expressed by means of conspicuous consumption, principally at meals. At the sumptuous banquets
Manuel Cirne gave in Antwerp between February 1537 and July 1540, he
burnt logs of cinnamon instead of plain wood.6 They were used as fashionable table and clothing accoutrements, and often were kept and presented
in expensive cases. In 1543, Francis I of France commissioned the Italian
Mannerist painter and sculptor, Benvenuto Cellini, to make him a set of
condiments. Of chased gold and enamel on an ebony base, it represented
the Sea and the Earth as a finely wrought model ship (to hold the salt) and
a richly decorated temple (to hold the pepper).7
Ambergris was stored in 'golden apples' or sculpted into crucifixes,
buttons, rosaries, encrustations on wooden furniture, and even statuettes,
while the pedra bazar, a large ovoid stomachic concretion of certain herbi1 F. Braudel,CapitalismandMaterialLife(London,1974),p. 123.
2 A. Apparadurai,TheSocialLife of Things:Commodities
in CulturalPerspective
(Cambridge,1986),
intro.
3 ForPortugal,see the king'spaymentfora seriesof Flemishtapestries,Lisbon,ArquivosNacionaisdo
Torredo Tombo, CorpoCronologico,pte. 1, m. 23, doc. 43; for France,seeJ. Racine,LesPlaideurs
(1668),actii, scene7.
4 Nobiliaire du dioceseet de la generalityde Limoges,ed. J. Nadaud, A. Lecler,J.-B. L. Roy de
Pierrefitte(Paris,1974),iii. 78.
5 Scribalentryof Heltai Gspa>,1595, Koloszva>/Cluj,
MunicipalArchives,KvSziim6/XV-XVI. I
thankEmeseBlintof CentralEuropeanUniversityforherhelp.
6 A. de MagalhaesBasto,4Notempodos feitoresda Flandres',sep. no. 2 da Dionysos,Porto.
7 BenvenutoCellini,Salt-cellar,1543,K[unst]h[istorisches]
M[useum,Vienna],www.khm.at.
J. Kybalov places Cellini'sworkin a wider genre tradition,'Nddobyna Korenf, Umenia Remesla,issue1
(1980),49-55.

247
vores, principally the Himalayan goat, which was used against poisons,
was entwined with overlapping threads of gold filigree and fixed to a ring
designed to be attached to a piece of clothing.1
If the social and exhibitive power of certain spices gradually took precedence over their acknowledged curative properties, the relationship
between social and functionalvalue was loosened. For example, the elaborate beaker of 'unicorn' horn made by Jan Vermeyen for the imperial court
at Prague around 1600 was fashioned as an exotic curio in which the goldwork, and the pair of cameos on the lid, surpassed the value of the horn,
previously highly valued as a powdered antidote to poison. The seventeenth century's obsession with spices such as nutmeg led silversmiths
across Europe to fashion pocket graters and receptacles for travellersand
gave a new lease of life to the pomander, a ball of mixed aromatics carried
as a preservativeagainst infection, and a fashionable silver accoutrement in
seventeenth-century England.2
Spices were not consumed solely in public for the purpose of exhibiting
status; they appear equally often in more intimate milieux, the private
sphere, as Spices de chambre, kept typically in a small box known as an
Spicier(-e), in the case of the niece of the last Piast king of Poland, Jadwiga
(m. 1385), even a jewel-box locked with a key.3 Thus, spices were distinguished, even in the way they were stored, from other, common domestic
goods and the distinction conferred social value. In noble households, for
example, spices were kept in leather pouches alongside the family's furs
and robes and, in the case of the royal family, with other valuables of the
royal wardrobe including arms. In both cases, spices were stored away
from the kitchen, and out of reach of thieves.4
Different spices permeated the social hierarchy to different degrees.
Eliyahu Ashtor suggests that spices entered the social hierarchy of the
medieval Levant at the level of the skilled artisan (les ouvriers spScialisSs),
whereas in western Europe, monastic and hospital records testify to the
regular purchases of spices for their members.5 Andrzej Wyczanski sug1 Fora descriptionandhistory,see A. Weixlgartner,
in Wien\ Jahrbuch
'Die weltlicheSchatzkammer
derKunsthistorischen
Sammlungenin Wien,ii (1928),267-315.See also, IndianBezoarstones,decoratedin the Indo-Portuguese
styleof the 17thcentury.Probablyfromthe stomachof the Himalayangoat
or chamois,VienneseSchatzkammer
(Inventoryof 1750)KHM,inv. P. 996, 1001.
2 Forexamples, seej. Brierley,Spices:TheStoryof Indonesia'sSpiceTrade(KualaLumpur,1994),pp.
23, 24, andP. Glanville,Silverin Tudorand EarlyStuartEngland(London,1990).
3 M. LemnisandH. Vitry,OldPolishTraditionsin theKitchenand at the Table(Warsaw,1979),p. 45;
J. Zyliftska,Piastownyi zonyPiastow(Warsaw,1967),p. 273.
4 P. Nightingale,A MedievalMercantileCommunity:
TheGrocer'sCompanyand thePoliticsand Trade
ofLondon,1000-1485(New Haven,CN, 1995),p. 74.
5 See, e.g., thoseof KlosterVinnenbergin G. Wiebe,Zur Geschichte
desi6. undi~j.
derPreisrevolution
Jahrhunderts(Leipzig,1895),p. 343, and the Hospitalof Lier'saccountsbetween1526and 1602 in
H. van der Wee, The Growthof theAntwerpMarket(The Hague, 1963),i. 533 ff., most famously

248
gests that, in Poland, sugar was reserved for the royal court and rich
nobles.1 Eastern Europe, however, which often only enjoyed some of the
benefits of a monetary economy, needs to be considered a special case; a
set of Croatianestate accounts suggests that only during the sixteenth century were sugar, salt, and oil, the standard entries, supplemented with
pepper, clove (Klynchafi),and mace (Oryskowcwyt\ a development confirmed by the prescriptions of Zrinski's cookbook.2 Even in the West,
emulation was circumscribed by the limited quantities of spices that
reached the European market in the Middle Ages, when, in England, the
royal family, ecclesiastics, and favoured nobles were given pre-emptive
rights to purchase.
By the sixteenth century, the markethad opened up in what the German
sociologist Max Weber called the universal trend to Demokratisierungdes
Luxus, a development that confirms Gabriel Tarde's theory of cultural
progress, by which luxury goods cater to the whims of an elite before
becoming a necessary acquisition by the wider public seeking respectability.3 The relative abundance of pepper, as well as ginger, cinnamon,
and saffron, all except cinnamon indispensable to medieval cooking - as
we find in the mid-fourteenth-centuryGermanBuck von guter Speise - led
to the phenomenon of their being snubbed in the households of the noblemen in favour of more exotic and expensive spices.4 The Haushaltbuch of
the successful High German merchant Anton Tucher, and the book of
expenses of Paul, nephew of the famous Nuremberg cosmographer Martin
Behaim, show that between 1544 and 1568, approximately 4-8 per cent of
their household expenditure went on spices.5 Does the large sum reflect
Societes.Civilisations,xxiii (Sept.-Oct.1968),1017-1301.
publishedin Annales:Economies.
1 E. Ashtor, 'Essai sur ralimentationdes diverses classes sociales dans l'Orient medieval', Vie
Materielleet Comportements
Biologiques,bulletinno. 16; A. Wyczanski,'Les Aspects Sociauxde la
Recherchesur la consommationalimentairea Pe"poque
FirstInternationalConference
pre*statistique',
. . . Communications
ofEconomicHistory.Contributions
(Paris,i960), pp. 474 ff.
2 Vinodoland Ozalj,Hrvatskidiiavni, Arhiv,Zagreb,ArhivobiteljiSermage,Kutija44-1.1 and44 1.9, 1.19.1thankNatasaStefanecforthisinformation.
3 M. Weber, Wirtschaftsgeschichte
(Munich,1923),p. 156; G. Tarde, TheLaws of Imitation (New
York, 1903).Tarde'stheoryis appliedby R. Austenand W. Smith,who considerthe desirefor respectabilityas the primummobileof expandingconsumptionof sugaramongthe poor:'PrivateTooth
Decayas PublicEconomicVirtue:The Slave-Sugar
Triangle,Consumerism,andEuropeanIndustrialisation',SocialScienceHistory, xiv (1990),95-115.
4 See L. Plouvier,cEtles Epicespimenterentla CuisineEuropeenne',UHistoire,no. 76 (March1985),
84-5;Nightingale,MedievalMercantileCommunity,
p. 74.
5 Anton TuckersHaushaltbuch,ed. W. Loose (Tubingen, 1877);Paul Behaim'sbook of expenses,
GNMN, Behaim Archiv, Schrank 102, Fach 1/22, analysed by J. Kamann,'Aus Niirnberger
fur
Haushaltungs-und Rechnungsbiichemdes 15. und 16.Jahrhunderts',Mitteilungendes Vereins
Geschichte
derStadtNurnberg,vi (1866),57-122andvii (1888),39-168. The accountsof the Hospitalof
Lierbetween1526and 1602also revealthat3-6%of expenseswent on sugarand spices:see Van der
Wee, AntwerpMarket,pp. 533ff., while the rich AntwerpmerchantGerardGramayeset aside6%of
his expenseson food forcondiments:R. VanUytven,'Herbeset Epicesdansles Villesdes Pays-Basdu

249
the amount consumed or only the high cost? If we extrapolate from the
purchasing power of an Antwerp mason's daily summer wage, we can
conclude that his salary was equivalent to 105 grams of pepper at market
price. For this sum, he could buy four and a half kilos of salted beef.1Or to
take another example, after a day's work, a manual worker in Soissons in
1543 would have been able to afford precisely three ounces of ginger, that
is, less than one hundred grams.2
*****
It remains to be explained why spices were left behind during the growth
of a mass marketfor consumption in the critical period of its development
between 1500 and 1750. Notwithstanding Peter Kriedte and David Ormrod's stress on supply, the issue of the substitution of the spice trade calls
into question the structures and motivations that originally underpinned
the demand for spices.3 First, a qualificationis in order. 'Left behind' must
be taken here to mean a relative decline in the volume of imports rather
than an absolute one for, despite the sharp fall in imports of pepper and
Moluccan spices that Anthony Reid charts from the 1670s and 1620s,
respectively, imports of spices grew slowly but surely throughout the
eighteenth century.4 If, for example, the English were importing around
1.18 million kilograms of pepper during the first half of the seventeenth
century, by 1872 statistical records reveal imports of 12.56 million kilograms, although almost 3.8 million kilograms were re-exported to continental Europe.5 The decline in the spice trade, a relative one, has to be
Sud',in SaveursdeParadis:LesroutesdesSpices(Brussels,1992),p. 86.
1J. H. Munro,'The Coinagesof RenaissanceEurope,c.1500',in HandbookofEuropeanHistoryin the
LaterMiddleAges,Renaissance,and Reformation,1400-1600,ed. T. BradyJr., H. Oberman,andj.
Tracy,I: 'Structuresand Assertions'(Leiden,1994),pp. 671-8.Munrocontinuesthis line of analysis
with respect to fifteenth-century-London
building craftsmenand their wages in his lecture 'The
Consumptionof Spices and Their Costs in Late Medievaland EarlyModernEurope:Luxuriesor
Necessities?',http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/SPICES1.pdf
(13Feb. 2006), p. 4.
2 P. Masson,Les Compagnies
du Corail(Paris,1908), p. 196;L. Febvre,Life in RenaissanceFrance,
trans.ofPourunehistoirea partentibre(Cambridge,MA,1977),p. 128n. 18.
3 P. Kriedte,'Vom GroBhandlerzum Detaillisten.Der Handel mit Kolonialwarenim 17. und 18.
i (1994),11-36;D. Ormrod,'NorthernEuropeand
Jahrhundert',
JahrbuchfurWirtschaftsgeschichte,
the ExpandingWorld Economy:The Transformationof CommercialOrganisation,1500-1800',in
Prodottie tecniched'oltremarenelle economieeuropeesecc. XIII-XVIII:atti della ventinovesima
settimanadistudi, [Prato]14-19aprile1997,ed. S. Cavachiocchi(Florence,1998),pp. 671-701.
4 A. Reid,'The Systemof Tradeand Shippingin MaritimeSouthand South-EastAsia,andthe Effects
of the Developmentof the Cape Routeto Europe',figs. 1 and 2.5. in TheEuropeanDiscoveryof the
Worldand Its EconomicEffectson Pre-IndustrialSocieties,1500-1800,Papersof the 10thInternational
EconomicHistoryCongress,ed. H. Pohl(Stuttgart,1990),pp. 76-7.
5 H. Furber,Rival Empiresof Trade in the Orient,1600-1800(Minneapolis,1976), p. 236; F. A.
A Historyof thePrincipalDrugsof Vegetable
OriginMet
FliickigerandD. Hanbury,Pharmacograpkia:
withinGreatBritainandBritishIndia(London,1874),p. 523.

250
measured against the increasing trade in new luxuries such as coffee, chocolate, and tea that the marketbrought in its train.1
French historians claim that the changing aesthetic climate in eighteenth-century France led to the formulation of a set of carefully denned
practices and preferences that passed as good taste (bon gout) in polite
society.2Joan Corominas argues that their antecedents are to be found in
Spain of the Golden Age, while Luiz Diez del Corralargues that changes in
what one ate at table was only one of many cultural leads given in the sixteenth century by Italians 'emphaticallyand wholly committed to aesthetic
values' that the rest of Europe adopted to a greater or lesser degree.3The
notion of taste, intrinsically hedonistic, was symbiotic with the abandonment of the medieval preoccupation with Aristotelian dietetic oppositions
that dictated what was good for one at any moment for reasons of health.
Good taste, which was a social as much as a dietetic injunction, renounced
the 'barbaric'practices of previous eras; the 'squalid' eating habits and the
gluttony: in line with Renaissance prejudices, it self-consciously distanced
itself from the culture of the immediate past. Despite pronounced cultural
differences, most marked between North and the South, the development,
like the Renaissance, occurred throughout Europe, if at different speeds
and with many local exceptions.
The most important works published in the country that did most to
adopt Italian innovations, France, were the Cuisinierfrancais of Francois
de la Varenne (1651), Le Cuisinier of Pierre de Lune (1656), L'Art de bien
traiter (1674), and Massialot's Le Cuisinier royal et bourgeois(1691). Together with institutions such as the Ecole des officiers de bouche, they
showed that France had inherited the mantle of Florence's academy 'de la
Marmite'.4One of their reforms was the consigning of the 'choleric' spices
such as pepper, but also the favouredginger and saffron,to the rubbish bin
of defunct medieval culture. G. P. Maranareferred to them, at the end of
1 For the arrival of tea, tobacco, sugar, and coffee, see C. Stammas, 'Changes in English and AngloAmerican Consumption 1550-1800', in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. J. Brewer and R.
Porter (London, 1993), pp. 177-206; R. Perren, 'The Marketing of Agricultural Products', in The
Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. J. Thirsk: VII, Part IV: Trade, Commerce, and Industry,
ed. J. Chartres (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 959-99.
2 J.-L. Flandrin, 'La revolution culinaire du XVIIe siecle', intro. to F. de la Varenne, Le cuisinier francais (repr. Paris, 1983), p. 14, and 'La distinction par le gout', in Histoire de la vie privee, ed. P. Aries
and G. Duby (Paris, 1986), iii. 290.
3 J. Corominas, Diccionario critico etimoldgicocastellano e hispdnico (Madrid, 1954"7)>'Gusto'; L. Diez
del Corral, El Rapto del Europa, trans, as The Rape of Europe (London, 1959), p. 232. For Grecian's
role in the eighteenth-century conception of taste, see K. Borinski, Baltasar Gracidn und die Hofliteratur in Deutschland (Halle an der Saale, 1971).
4 De Garine, UHistoire des Moeurs, ed. Poirier, i. 1586 ff. For the reassessment of early modern taste
in light of Le Cuisinier francais, see M. Dembinska, 'Kuchnia srednowieczna. Nowozytna czy
Narodowa?', Kwartalnik Historii Cultury Materialnej, xxxii (1984), 549-56.

251
the seventeenth century, as those 'spices from hell' (epicerie d'enfer); according to Alexandre Dumas (1802-70), writing about nineteenth-century
country fare, pepper was 'a rude' (grossiere)spice; and, according to the
Abbe Raynal writing in the 1770s, such spices equated with barbarian
gluttony and a cult of excess.1
The path to such a position can be traced through the denunciations of
luxury and decadent consumption by spokesmen for the Reformation in
Germany, and in England by the Puritans. Although Jean-Louis Flandrin
shows that the seventeenth century's obsession with gluttony was invented
morality, to be placed alongside the censure of such practices as kissing in
public, MichelJeanneret exaggeratesin attributingthe repression and marginalization of Renaissance exuberance to the 'fell swoop of classicism'.2
Raynal's moral vocabulary was typical in contrasting good taste, paired
with honestasand civitas, with the crude instincts of the masses.
Braudel argues that the emphasis on quantity and show when eating, an
obsession with abundance and satiation evident in any description of a
medieval banquet, changed during the period to the qualitativeexpression
of taste.3 Rather than serving whole animals as large as calves at the
banqueting table, tasty morsels and favoured cuts were pre-selected for the
guests. Plates, like the tastes themselves, were changed regularlyduring the
meal: Pierre Belon declared that 'at a simple bourgeois meal you will see
two, three, or four dozen dirty dishes, enough to occupy two men for a day
in cleaning them.'4 Tastes increased in number from the Aristotelian two
(sweet and bitter) to ten and, in the rationalizing spirit of the philosophes,
were assumed into the doctrine of 'proportions in the geometry of the
spirit' (proporzioninella geometria dellospirito).5
1 Abbe Raynal,A Philosophicaland PoliticalHistoryof theSettlementsand Tradeof theEuropeansin
the East and WestIndies,trans,fromthe Frenchbyj. Justamond(London, 1777),i. bk. 1, p. 22; A.
Dumas,Le GrandDictionnairede la Cuisine(Paris,2000), p. 452;indictmentsarealso to be foundin
S. Mercier,TableaudeParis(Amsterdam,1782-3),8 vols.
2 Flandrin,'La distinctionpar le gout', p. 290. Such themeswere closely linked to the mercantilist
positionas faras the politicaleconomywas concernedandwhichsoughtto minimizethe expenditure
of nationalbullionon the profligateluxuriesof the East:M.Jeanneret,A Feastof Words:TableTalkin
theRenaissance(Cambridge,1991),p. 4.
3 F. Braudel,CivilisationmaterieUe,
siecle(Paris,1966),i. 139-44;
economie,et capitalisme:XVe-XVIIIe
B. K. Wheaton,SavouringthePast: TheFrenchKitchenand Tablefrom 1300 to 1789(Philadelphia,
1983),chs. 3-4. For an exampleof the medievalobsessionswith satiationand abundance,see G. de
Resende,Cronicade-ElReiD. Jodo//(Lisbon, 1902),ii. cap. XXIV, 88-90 andCXXV,pp. 90-2. The
orthodoxyis challengedby Flandrinwho, aftercountingthe dishespresentedbetweenthe Menagierde
Le Cuisinierroyalet bourgeois. . . ouvragetres-utile
Paris (c.1393,repr.Paris,1846)and F. MassiaJot's
danslesfamilies(Paris,1691),challengesthe claimthatquantitydiminishedandsuggeststhatmedieval
feastshad less to do with finesseor vulgarityof tastesthanwith competitionfor social prestige:'La
distinctionparle eout',p. 282.
4 P. Belon,L'Histoirede la naturedes oyseaux,avec leursdescriptionset naifs portraictsretirezdu
naturel(Paris,1555),p. 62.
5 T. E. Acreeet al., 'BasicDimensionsof Taste in Man',in Handbookof SensoryPhysiology,
ed. L. M.

252
Piero Camporesi describes the dominant aesthetic that emerged as a

'mixed repertoire of tastes orchestrated upon variety and on the play of
flavours that meet and chance upon each other but are not blended', in
which the delicate and the sensitive took precedence.1 Thus, the 'violent
flavours' (sapori violenti) of the hot spices were rejected together with
bingeing on highly flavouredpotpourris. The more esoteric spices used to
exoticize such concoctions also fell out of use: grains of paradise, long pepper (popular in the Vivendier), and galangal. The seventeenth century
recommended the consumption of 'fine', delicate spices that lingered on
the palate, in particular enlarging the repertoire of dessert recipes for
sugared pastries and intricate confectionery.2 Flandrin shows that cloves,
which figured in only 4-16 per cent of recipes from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, figure in 40 per cent of the recipes contained in Le
Cuisinier Francais. 3 From the time of the thirteenth-century Viandier de
Taillevent, cloves tended to be used with cinnamon, which figured in 1549
in 62 per cent of Messisbugo's recipes.4Nutmeg, too, appeared for the first
time in 40 per cent of recipes in Lancelot de Casteau's Ouverturede cuisine
(1694), while the subtle, sweet, aromatic flavour of vanilla spread rapidly
across Europe from Spain during the last third of the seventeenth century.
The commercial success of 'fine' spices despite the political upheavals that
marked the seventeenth century - manifest, as Heinrich Mauruschat
shows, in buoyant prices - can be traced back to the popularity exemplified in such treatises on cooking.5 It gave Nicolas Boileau (1636-1711)the
subject for one of his famous satires: 'You like nutmeg, it's put on everything!' (Vousaimez la muscade,on en a mis partout!).6
New sensibilities led to the development of cuisine au beurre,recipes for
elaborate sauces, the 'marriage'of drink with food and colour with taste,
the separation of the sugared from the salted, and a reduction in the intake
of acids. Its precepts lay strongly with 'natural' flavours. Writers like
Nicolas de Bonnefon(u)s, author of Delices de la Campagne (1654), led a
campaign against long-established practices that denaturaient, or disBeidler (Berlin, 1971), iv. pt. 2; for the pretensions of a philosophe of taste see, e.g., F. Algarotti,
'Pensieri diversi', in his Ofiere(Venice, 17Q2),vii. 57.
1 P. Camporesi, // brodo indiano. Edonismo ed esotismo net settecento (Milan, 1990), pp. 7-10.
2 See P. Gillet, Par mets etpar vins. Voyageset gastronomie en Europe, XVI-XVIII siecUs (Paris, 1985),
pp. 157-673 Flandrin, 'La revolution culinaire du XVIIe siecle', p. 16.
4 The Viandier of TaiUevent:An Edition of All Extant Manuscripts, ed. T. Scully (Ottawa, 1988); C. da
Messisbugo, Libro Novo net quale si insegna il modo di ordinare banchetti, apparechiare tavole etc.
(Venice, 1581), though the work first appeared in Venice in 1491.
5 H. Mauruschat, Gewilrze, Zucker und Salz im vorindustriellen Europa. Eine preisgeschichtliche
Untersuchung (Gottingen, 1975), tabelle 2: 'Preise in Frankreich'.
6 N. Boileau, 'Le Repas ridicule', 'Satire IIP, in Oeuvres,ed. S. Menant andj. Vercruysse (Paris, 1969),
i. line 119.

253
guised, tastes by spicing food heavily, overcooking it, or adding superfluous ingredients.1 Instead, popular texts such as Thomas Tryon's
Treatise of Cleanness (1682) and his The Way to Health (1683) promoted
'the Lovers of Wisdom and Health to the more innocent use of Grains,
The tendency towards naturalismin taste in place of
Fruits, and Herbs'*.2
the
use of local seasonings, not necessarily the ones used
spices promoted
in the medieval kitchen like mint and hyssop, but new ones like chervil,
tarragon, basil, and especially thyme, bay leaves, and chives. Parsley
became almost universally popular, as did a number of alliaceous root
seasonings (onion, shallots, Spanish garlic) and new categories such as
condiments de Provence: capers, anchovies, olives, lemons, and sour and
Seville oranges. Many of these seasonings worked better with a lighter diet:
between 1500 and 1650, the consumption of meat declined, to be replaced
as a staple by bread.3 Florate perfumes were preferred not merely to disguise unpleasant bodily odour, but as an alimentaryenhancer; extracts of
amber, iris and rosewater, orange petals, even flowers of nutmeg, were
added to stews, pastries, and sauces.4 Finally, the tradition of expressly
colouring dishes, through the use of substances such as saffron to attain a
yellowish effect, cedar a vermillion, and orchanet (also known as Bugloss
of Languedoc) a dark red, and especially the use of substances that significantly altered the flavour of the dish such as lapis lazuli, and gold leaf
and silver leaf (or tin), died out. By the eighteenth century, colour was of
interest cforwhat it revealed of the nature and taste of the foodstuffs'.5
Within the world oiaromata, or scents and perfumes, we can observe a
similar trend away from the heavy base essences of medieval Europe that
would once have been considered spices. Animal products such as musk,
civet, and ambergris, inherited from Greece and Rome, had been almost
1 A line of criticismof 'disguised', 'titivated',and 'complicated'foods can be traced throughP.
Boaistuau,Le Theatredu Monde(1558;repr.Geneva,1981),as well as L. Fioravanti,Miroiruniversel
desarts et sciencesen general,trans.P. Cavellat(Paris,1586),i. 10A;du Verdier,LesdiversesLecons:
Receuillisdes auteursGrecs,Latins, et
contenansplusieurshistoires,discours,etfaicts memorables;
Italiens(Lyon,1592),ch. 23.
2 T. Tryon, Treatiseof Cleannessin Meatsand Drinks,of the Preparationof Food,the Excellencyof
GoodAirs,and theBenefitsof CleanSweetBeds(London,1682);idem, The Wayto Health,LongLife,
and Happiness(London,1683),p. 59.
3 Foodin Change:EatingHabitsfrom theMiddleAgesto thePresentDay, ed. A. Fentonand E. Kisbdn
in
und Fleischversorgung
(Edinburgh,1986),followingW. Abel,'Wandlungendes Fleischverbrauchs
Deutschland',BerichtiiberLandwirtsckaft,xxii (1938),411-52.These are contraryto the findingsof
theVie sectionof the EcolePratiquedes HautesEtudespublishedin Annales(ESC)between1958and
1965as reportedby P. Chaunu,EuropeanExpansionin theLaterMiddleAges(Amsterdam,1979),p.
298.
4 F. Braudel,'The Declinein the VogueforPepperafter1650',CapitalismandMaterialLife,pp. 1525; Flandrin,'Larevolutionculinairedu XVIIesiecle'.
5 Flandrin,'La distinctionpar le gout', iii. 290. For colourants,see A. Grieco, TheMeal(London,
1992).

254
Stefan Halikowski Smith
completely eliminated by the late eighteenth century. They were thought

to be too strong, too animalistic;their 'excremental'odours repulsed rather
than attracted. The change was partly attributable to the new fashion that, along with culinary taste, began in Italy over the course of the
sixteenth century and was passed on to France - for delicate floral and
herbal scents to be found locally: lavender, rosemary, violet, pine, thyme,
daffodil, and rose. Eighteenth-century accounts record that mouths, feet,
and private parts were washed in rosewater, and the breath was scented
with iris paste. The most popular scent sold seems to have been poudre a
la marechale, a blend of iris, clove, lavender, rose, orange, and marjoram
concocted by the marechald'Aumont, and poudre d'oeillet, of carnations,a
favourite during Louis XV's reign.1 As one reads in the Encylopedie,
'amber, civet, and musk have fallen out of fashion ever since our nerves
became more delicate,' while Simon Barbe, a widely esteemed French
perfumer, urged the 'abundance of flowers' in the manufacture of perfumes.2Technological developments such as the invention of enfleuragecoating flower petals with fat in order to extract oils - helped reinforce the
momentum towards florate scents. As Peter Kennett explains, the picture
is complicated by a difference between the genders: men chose non-erotic
scents such as fir, pine, and lilac essences, while women chose stronger
scents such as lavender and rose thought to be sexually arousing.3
The transferof this new set of aesthetic priorities to the colder regions of
Europe, far from the centre of culinary fashion, occurred very gradually. It
took some of the new arrivals,such as chocolate, almost two hundred years
to travelfrom Spain, where it was being drunk in the 1520s, to Scandinavia
and Russia. In 1648, Jean Le Laboureur could still complain that pates at
the Polish court were call black inside from the spices and saffron' [tout
noirs au dedans d'epiceset de safran). And a hundred years later, we find
the same critique expressed in even stronger terms: Abbot Mably ate a
meal in Cracow in 1776 which he described as 'a most copious meal, and
which might have been very good had the Russians and Confederates
[Poles] destroyed all the aromatic herbs that they use lavishly here . . . and
which poison travellers'.4Differences in taste would seem to reflect, at least
1 A. Corbin, Le miasme et lajonquille. L'odorat et I'imaginaire social, i8e-ige siecles (Paris, 1982), p.
90; in the Pindaric ode of Lady Winchilsea (1661-1720): 'Now the Jonquille o'ercomes the feeble Brain
. . . faint beneath the aromatick pain': 'The Spleen', in Miscellany Poems, on Several Occasions: Written
by a Lady (London 1713),p. 90.
2 Encylopedie(1765), entry under 'parfum'.
3 Kennett, A History of Perfume.
4 Braudel, Civilisation materielle, ii. 188-91. Mauruschat, in his analysis of German cake recipes,
suggests that the application of spices diminished markedly between the Leipziger Kochbuck/vorgestellet
von SE (Leipzig, 1706) and the Neues hannb'verischesKochbuch, in zwey Theilen (3 Aufl.) (Hanover,
1803): Gewilrze,Zucker und Salz im vorindustriellen Europa, p. 162.

255
in part, a conflict between social values. While the French were cultivating
their sensibilities, sense of aesthetic, and application of reason, the Poles,
hemmed in by the Ottomans and struggling to sustain the bulwark of
Christendom (antemurale Christianitatis) boasted that their 'marshal
valour, fierceness, and prowesse' was reflected at the dinner table in what
would, to the French, have seemed to be the medieval values of impulsiveness and excess.1
The new taste not only differentiated itself spatially, but it also permeated society at different speeds. Or rather,probably we cannot understand
the discourse of refinement and savoir-vivre without allowing for its
distancing from the ignorance, and the vulgarityof the alimentaryhabits, of
the masses. Flandrin comments on the gradual segregation among diners;
servants being banished from the common table. Alfred Franklin, from his
study of civility treatises, dates the rise of the rustic {le rustre) as a figure of
contempt only from the sixteenth century.2 Boileau's satire, for example,
was aimed specifically at the cuisinefruste des auberges,the unpolished fare
supplied by inns. Thus, whereas pepper figured in only 20 per cent of
Varenne's recipes in 1661, in La Nouvelle Maison Rustique, a housewife's
handbook published in 1755,it figured in 60 per cent of the recipes.3
The new taste accompanied the rapid increase in new products imported from overseas colonies. The most notable was coffee, which from
the time of Linnaeus's Hortus Cliffortianus, published in Amsterdam in
1737, replaced the clove branch found, for example, in Peter Plancius's
Orbis Terrarum typus de integro multis in locis emendatus, published in
1594, as the preferred emblem of Asia on frontispieces. Coffee was closely
followed by tea, chocolate, sugar, and tobacco. Together, they eclipsed the
traditionalspices, and must be seen as their direct successors as luxurious,
incidental, stimulative, and comestible properties. The old and the new
were often consumed together. Pierre Pomet attested to the mixing of cinnamon with coffee and Michel Morineau to the consumption of cinnamon
with chocolate in New Spain.4 But coffee and tea were not spices: by the
l G. Botero,TheTravellersBreviat(1601;repr.Amsterdam,1969),p. 84. Attemptshavebeen madeto
linkthe aestheticsof culinarytastewith femininebeauty:thus, the pudgyarchetypalRubensmodelis
associatedwith the prevalenttastefor les saucesgrasses:J.-L. Flandrinand M.-C. Phan,4Lesmetamorphosesde la beautefeminine',L'Histoire,lxviii(1984),50-7.
2 A. Franklin,La viepriveed'autrefois:
arts et metiers,modes,moeurs,usagesdesParisiens,du XHeau
XVIIIsiecles(27 vols., Paris,1887-1902);Flandrin,'La distinctionpar le gout', p. 270. P. Freedman
tracesboth contemptfor rusticsand a link to their consumptionof pepper in the fifteenth-century
medicalwritercommentingon the Regimen
poetryof EustacheDeschampsand a fifteenth-century
sanitatisSalernitanum,'Spicesand Late-Medieval
EuropeanIdeasof Scarcityand Value',Speculum,
lxxx (2005), 1215.
3 Flandrin, cLa revolution culinaire', p. 16.
4 R. K. Miiller and O. Prokop, 'Geschichte der GenuBgifte', in Gifte. Geschichteder Toxicologie, ed. M.
Amberger-Lahrmann and D. Schmahl (Heidelberg, 1988), p. 266; M. Morineau, Ces incroyables

256
sixteenth century, spices had become a closed group.1 With the diffusion
of new commodities across Europe following the Discoveries and European expansion, former categories were reformulated, and new ones invented. But coffee, tea, and chocolate were not given a group name. In
discussing them historically, we have to devise our own typology: works in
German use the term Genvfimittel (luxuries), while English-language
works refer to 'colonial groceries', a term derived from the grocers who
sold them.2
Can we build a bridge between the arrivalof the new commodities and
the precepts of the new culture of taste? Historians have tried to situate the
enthusiasm for coffee and tobacco during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries within the discussion provoked by Norbert Elias of the long-term
cultural changes that affected Europe and coined the civilizing process.3
Hasso Spode postulates that these commodities play their part in the emergent culture of 'sobering indulgence' (niichterneRausche), that challenged
the destabilizing influence of alcohol consumption.4 This role may explain
why commodities such as betel, chewed in the mouth alongside the areca
nut for a strong stimulativeeffect, never took off in Europe. The new commodities were not consumed at meals, but before, after, or between meals,
and often elsewhere; thereby, they created their own, new, forms of sociability. Easily prepared and swiftly consumed, they were suited both to the
new regimes of work, and to the evolving public sphere constituted of
social engagements that reunited polite society. Finally, the commodities
paired off: tea with sugar and coffee with tobacco.
* * * * *
The transition from one set of tastes to another, and the shift in paradigms, centred on the spice trade, which lost its position as the world's
foremost long-distance luxury trade to rival goods. The change is more
easily demonstrated than explained. Flandrin fails to explain why taste
should have changed so profoundly over the seventeenth century, breaking
with a deeply entrenched and centuries-long tradition of good living.
Economists focus on cthesnob effect':the formulathat when a rareproduct
gazettesetfabuleuxmetaux. . . (Paris,1983),p. 264.
1 S. HalikowskiSmith, 'Portugaland the EuropeanSpice Trade, 1480-1580'(Ph.D. dissertation,
EuropeanUniversityInstitute,2001),p. 5.
2 Consumptionand the Worldof Goods,ed. Brewerand Porter,p. 81; M. Berg,'Manufacturing
the
Orient:Asian Commoditiesand EuropeanIndustry(1500-1800)',Prodottie Techniched'Oltremare
nelleEconomieEuropee,secc.XIII-XVIII,ed. S. Cavaciocchi(Florence,1998),p. 393.
3 Elias,Development
ofManners.
4 H. Spode,'DergroBeErniichterer.
ZurOrtsbestimmung
des Kaffeesim ProzessederZivilisation',in
Trinksitten,ed. D. U. Ball(Zurich,1991),p. 219.The phraseniichterne
Kaffeeim Spiegeleuropdischer
Rduscheis thatof E. Friedell,Kulturgeschichte
derNeuzeit(Munich,1927).

257
comes within the reach of the masses, its consumption rises sharply, only
to fall off conclusively as it 'loses its attraction'.1But the formula neither
explains the unseating of several millennia of collective practice, nor accounts for the numerous exceptions. The story of paprika in eighteenthand nineteenth-century Hungary, for example, suggests that a commodity
introduced as a cheap palliative for the mealy and repetitive diet of the
poor rapidly was taken up by middle-class households, impressed with its
'irresistible taste' (ellendllhatatlan iz). It quickly became a national
institution.2
The transition may be explained best by a theory of demystification.3
Spices lost their privileged phenomenological status in the European
canon, both medicinal and hedonistic, following the revelation that there
was nothing marvellous, God-given, or paradisiacal about them.4 The
ways demystification came about were manifold. These include the outpouring of printed descriptions and ever more realistic cartographicdepictions of the world in the wake of the Age of Discoveries, as well as the birth
of botany as a scholarly discipline. Botany, which set itself the task of reinterpreting the classical world's understanding of the naturalworld, consciously distanced itself from the fancifulmedieval ascriptions attributedto
spices. Finally, the scientific breakthroughs unveiling the micro-organic
world heralded a shift to the cellular unit of scientific analysis by which the
mystification in plant research migrated to the cellular unit of botanical
study. Once spices were demystified, demand for them slumped. Such a
set of arguments might explain the paradigm shift in European taste and
sensibilities, while anchoring the collapse of the European spice trade
within the matrices of demand rather than the extractive economic
strategiesin the colonies.
Universityof Swansea
1 See Braudel,Capitalismand MaterialLife, p. 122;H. Leibenstein,'Bandwagon,Snob, and Veblen

Effectsin theTheoryof Consumers'Demand',in Quarterly
JournalofEconomics,lxiv (1950),183-207.
2 Captionin an exhibitionon paprika,Budapest,OrszagosMezogazdasagi
Muzeum,Nov. 1998.
3 The most famoustheoryof demystificationis the Entzauberungor disenchantmenttheoryof M.
Weber,Essaysin Sociology(London,1948),p. 155.
4 For the marvellous,God-given, and paradisiacalattributesof spices, see Halikowski Smith,
of Spices',passim.
'Mystification


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STEFAN HALIKOWSKI SMITH