Hidden History: Spices
It is almost comical to think that English food has a reputation for being bland when the spice trade literally fueled British imperialism for centuries. Nutmeg and cloves were once worth more than their weight in gold, and were also worth killing over. Spices were desirable in cooking at every level; in fact 75-90% of all recipes found in cookbooks from the Middle Ages contained spices like cloves, ginger, and pepper. They had always been available through routes like the Silk Road and traded through hubs in Montpellier and Nuremburg (which is still known for its gingerbread), but the demand was so great that explorers were tasked with finding faster routes and greater quantities. The search for spice led to the first circumnavigation of the world by Magellan’s crew and the “discovery” of America by Columbus.
ILLUSTRATION FROM THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FOOD BY ARTEMAS WARD, 1923
LESSHES FRYED IN LENTON
Drawe a thick almaunde Mylke wiþ water. take dates and pyke hem clene with apples and peeres & mynce hem with prunes damysyns. take out þe stones out of þe prunes. & kerue the prunes a two. do þerto Raisouns sugur. flour of canel. hoole macys and clowes. gode powdours & salt. colour hem up with saundres. meng þise with oile, make a coffyn as þou didest bifore & do þis Fars þerin. and bake it wel and serue it forth.
- THE FORME OF CURY: A ROLL OF ANCIENT ENGLISH COOKERY__Compiled, about A.D. 1390, by the Master-Cooks of King RICHARD II
This recipe for spiced fruit cakes (or "slices") would have been served during Lent and included cinnamon (canel), mace (macys), cloves (clowes), “good powder” (gode powdours), and salt.
Salt would have been easy to procure, but the rest would have made quite the journey to be in an English cook’s kitchen. Cinnamon was harvested from trees in places like Indonesia and Sri Lanka, then transported by boat to East Africa, where it made its way to Alexandria in Egypt. From there it was imported to Europe via Venice. Cloves would have been very precious indeed, as until modern times they only grew on a few islands in Indonesia, fittingly nicknamed the Spice Islands. These spices made their way to Sri Lanka and Africa with Omani sailors, and from there were traded North. Mace, which comes from the same plant as nutmeg, was also harder to obtain. It came from Indonesia to Europe by way of Constantinople.
We could not find out what constituted “gode powdours,” but we suspect it is similar to poudre forte and poudre douce, which were common spice blends at the time. Both contained pepper, ginger, cinnamon, and sugar, with poudre forte containing more pepper and less sugar, and poudre douce containing more sugar and less pepper.
So why does British food have a reputation for being bland? British Imperialism and the establishment of direct trade routes meant that spices became more affordable for the average citizen. Immigration played its part as well, as people from different backgrounds brought their cultural cuisines with them. The Upper Class, not wanting to be associated with anything the Lower Class was into, started eschewing spice in their food. Perhaps they might have cycled back to spice as the Lower Classes began to copy them, but a huge shift called the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the Middle Class interrupted this. Luckily today there are many who are rethinking “classic” British cooking and proving that it is more flavourful than it sounds.