The Taste of Conquest (45 page)

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M
ICHAEL
K
RONDL
is a chef, food writer, and author of
Around the American Table: Treasured Recipes and Food Traditions from the American Cookery Collections of the New York Public Library
and
The Great Little Pumpkin Cookbook.
He has published articles in
Good Food, Family Circle, Pleasures of Cooking,
and
Chocolatier,
and has contributed entries to
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America.
He lives in New York City.

www.spicehistory.net

ALSO BY MICHAEL KRONDL

Around the American Table:

Treasured Recipes and Food Traditions from the American

Cookery Collections of the New York Public Library

The Great Little Pumpkin Cookbook

Advance Praise for
The Taste of Conquest

“This is a fascinating, well-written examination of history’s spice wars…[Krondl’s] detailed description of the conditions of these once-great cities now, mere shadows of what they once were, is an eloquent reminder that the arc of justice is long and far-reaching.”

—
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Michael Krondl’s new book on the spice trade peeks behind the usual histories of Venice, Lisbon, and Amsterdam—and tells a tale that is at once witty, informative, scholarly, and as consistently spicy as its subject. In short, it’s delicious!”

—G
ARY
A
LLEN
, food history editor at Leite’s Culinaria, and author of
The Herbalist in the Kitchen

“With a dash of flair and a pinch of humor, Michael Krondl mixes up a batch of well-researched facts to tell the story of the intriguing world of spices and their presence on the worldwide table. This is a book that every amateur cook, serious chef, foodie, or food historian should read.”

—M
ARY
A
NN
E
SPOSITO
, host/creator of the PBS cooking series
Ciao Italia

“
The Taste of Conquest
is a savory story of the rise and fall of three spice-trading cities. It is filled with rich aromas and piquant tastes from the past that still resonate today. Michael Krondl serves up this aromatic tale with zest and verve. This book isn’t just for historians and spice lovers—it’s for all who love good writing and great stories.”

—A
NDREW
F. S
MITH
, editor of
The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“In common with the finest food writers—Elizabeth David, Mark Kurlansky, Anthony Bourdain—Michael Krondl shows a respect for the details of the past that never slays his appetite for the realities of food now. His love of history, travel, and food is as compelling as it is infectious.”

—I
AN
K
ELLY
, author of
Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Carême, the First Celebrity Chef

2008 Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Edition

Copyright © 2007 by Michael Krondl

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B
ALLANTINE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2007.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Krondl, Michael.

The taste of conquest: the rise and fall of the three great cities of spice / Michael Krondl.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-345-50982-6

1. Spices—Europe. 2. Spice trade—Europe—History. 3. Cookery—Europe—History. 4. Food habits—Europe—History. I. Title

TX406.K85 2007

641.3'383094—dc22      2007026737

www.ballantinebooks.com

v1.0

FOOTNOTES

^*1
Some have argued that the enormous quantities of beer consumed in northern Europe were a result of this very salty diet. One study, for example, showed that about a quarter of the cargo shipped from the German port of Lübeck to Stockholm in both 1368 and 1559 consisted of salt. Another 19 percent was in the form of hops, a critical beer ingredient.
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^*2
By the 1350s, no salt could move on the Adriatic unless it was in a Venetian ship on its way to or from the city. As late as 1578, the Republic’s navy destroyed the saltworks at Trieste. At this point, Venetians were making an 80 percent profit on salt sold on the Italian mainland.
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^*3
In Venice, almost uniquely in Europe, women retained legal control of their often considerable dowries. Moreover, it was not unusual for women to invest fairly large sums in overseas trade in spices, silks, and other commodities.
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^*4
If we can believe the doge, that would be something like ten billion dollars and four billion dollars, respectively, in today’s currency. What’s more, the 40 percent return on investment has been corroborated by modern historians. Still, even if the figures are a little inflated, they give a sense of the kind of money involved.
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^*5
Archaeologists have found a relative abundance of glass bottles from the period in Lebanon, especially near the Venetian-dominated town of Tyre. Glassware was apparently a Jewish specialty at the time. The technology the Venetians learned here would later become the basis of Murano’s famous glass industry. By the fifteenth century, the Venetians were in a position to export glass back to the Near East. They confirmed their reputation for doing anything to make a buck by manufacturing mosque lamps, decorated with both Western floral designs and pious Koranic inscriptions, which they sold to the infidel.
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^*6
According to some estimates, Moorish Palermo boasted a population of 350,000 in the year 1050 and Córdoba as many as 450,000. Other estimates would cut these numbers to a third. Still, Venice numbered maybe 45,000 at the time, and it was the biggest Christian city west of Constantinople.
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^*7
To get some sense of how much money that was, a galley captain earned some 33
lire
(a lire was worth a little more than a mark) a month, so figure just the cash part of the transaction was worth at least $8.5 million in today’s currency.
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^*8
In 2004, Pope John Paul II arrived in Istanbul bearing the remains of Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, part of the relics looted in 1204. The bones came with an apology for what theologians call “sins of action and omission” by Roman Catholics against Orthodox Christians, which, in this case, includes the sack of Constantinople. As yet, Venetians have not followed suit.
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^*9
In addition to
colombino,
there was
beledi,
or “white” ginger, which could come from Malabar or the interior.
Deli
and
micchino
were inferior grades, the former smaller and less white than the other varieties, the latter often tinted red because it had been preserved by adding clay. Ginger preserved in syrup had its customers as well.
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^*10
In later years, the Dutch East India Company would periodically burn its twenty-year-old stock of spices because they were considered unsellable. Does that mean it was sometimes selling fifteen-year-old nutmeg and cloves?
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^*11
When you read on, it turns out that the spices were meant to season six capons, which works out to some thirty pounds of meat! In other words, less than a sixth of an ounce of spice (about 1½ teaspoons) for every pound of capon. Numerous other recipes in the collection have a similar spice-to-meat ratio.
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^*12
Another oft-repeated statistic is that the Duke of Buckingham went through close to half a ton of spice in a single year (1452–53), but when you look at the actual account books, it is more like 400 pounds of spices (pepper and ginger make up more than three-fourth of this) for a household that consumed some 1,500 sheep, 250 cattle, 80 pigs, and easily 5,000 fish during the same year. What’s more, spices were typically sold in “light pounds” of about twelve ounces at the time, so it was likely a scant pound of mostly pepper and ginger feeding between one hundred and two hundred people a day.
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