Scurvy, seadogs and spices

You may have heard of the Spice Islands as if they were a legend, part of pirate lore and secret treasure maps.  In fact the Moluccas (now the Malakus) are a province of Indonesia. They form a tiny, scattered archipelago hundreds of miles from the nearest coastline of Australia. These remote places were, until the nineteenth century, the only source of nutmeg and cloves.

At the height of the spice trade in 1590 – 1670, the fastest sailing ships from England and Holland would take over nine months to reach the nearest edge of the string of islands, and then could spend as many months again in harbour, waiting for the monsoon winds to turn in their favour so they could reach the smallest islands such as Banda and Run.  Many merchant fleets took over two years to reach a port. Crossing the Pacific Ocean, many sailors died of scurvy – lack of vitamin C -, infectious diseases and starvation.  Ships ran aground in the strong currents around the islands, and the native inhabitants, and other country’s traders, were usually less than friendly. So what made these men risk everything for spice?

The spice must flow

The answer lies in the value of their fragrant cargoes in Europe. Back in London Plague gripped the city, and spread death throughout the country. The only remedy that could save you was nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves, powdered and eaten, worn in a pomander or drunk in wine. Faith in this remedy pushed the price of spices beyond all imaginings.  It was the desire for spices that pushed the first circumnavigation of the globe; Seeking a western route to the Spice Islands, Spain financed Ferdinand Magellan on a historic voyage.  Magellan was killed in the Philippines, but his second in command, Sebastian del Cano, completed the momentous journey and made landfall at the Spice Islands en route. In 1522 Magellan’s ship Victoria returned to Europe with a ton of spices on board; the largest cargo yet. The king rewarded del Cano with coat of arms embellished with two cinnamon sticks, three nutmegs and twelve cloves.

As the spice flowed, so did the gold. The East India Company records show that a ship’s hold full of spices, bought from Banda for £300 was worth £30,000 in London. In 1666 the diarist Samuel Pepys recorded taking inventory of a captured Spanish galleon, amazed at the riches it held.

“The greatest wealth lie in confusion that a man can see in the world. Pepper scattered through every chink, you trod upon it; and in cloves and nutmegs I walked above the knees, whole rooms full.”

 A sailor returning from a five –year journey around the Spice Islands would find that his small sackful of nutmeg, smuggled ashore against Company orders, yielded a profit that could set up the returning adventurer for life – enough to buy a house, hire a servant and live off the rest of the proceeds.

This incredible value caused terrible sea battles between the trading fleets of England, Holland, Spain and Portuguese, who found it easier to plunder each other’s ships out at sea than to trade with the locals.  Each country has an uneasy history of atrocities against the long-suffering natives of the Spice Islands, who had their world literally re-drawn by the invasion of the barbarous Europeans, intent on getting by direct trade what had previously come through many pairs of hands.

The Big Nutmeg?

After holding a band of English traders to siege for over four years, fighting with the English army at home, and holding off the Portuguese ships, the Dutch managed to gain possession of the tiny island of Run, causing the remaining few inhabitants to flee. This island is so small that only one boat can anchor there at a time, and yet it held an untold wealth of nutmegs. The entire island from shore to peak was covered in nutmeg trees, and as each mature tree can produce up to 2,000 nutmegs per year, the Dutch were determined to hang on to it. So vital was Run to the Dutch that in 1667 they exchanged with the English a promising young colony on the other side of the world to secure it. That small colony was New Amsterdam, now better known as Manhattan.

Cinnamon birds and mace trees in Eden

Until the East India Companies of Holland and England began to trade directly with the Spice Islands, spices reached Europe via Venice, from Constantinople. Venice specialised in trading every kind of luxury desirable, from silk, furs and Chinese porcelain to glass jewellery and Berber carpets. Spices became associated with luxurious living, and their appeal increased by association. Of course the traders ‘talked up’ the difficulty of harvesting spices, telling tales of the giant birds who brought cinnamon down from the skies, using it to make their nests, which must then be harvested from terrifying cliffs.  The nutmeg tree bears two spices at once – the nutmeg (the kernel) in the middle of the fruit, wrapped around with mace, the red seed membrane. This botanical truth did not stop the spice merchants vowing that mace trees were much harder to grow than nutmeg, and therefore mace was, alas, much more expensive. The mystery and price of spices increased with every tale, helped by the Christian belief that every perfumed thing – flowers, spices, scented woods, came directly from Eden, via a sacred, undiscovered river.

Grains of Paradise

In India’s southern states of Goa and Kerala, the most valuable crop for export was pepper, but it was the cardamon they grew that they prizes more highly, calling the pods ‘grains of paradise’. All over India, into Turkey and the Middle East, coffee is not complete without cardamon to sweeten and perfume it. Cardamom-flavoured coffee, a symbol of Arab hospitality, is usually prepared by grinding coffee beans and toasted cardamom pods together and boiling the mixture with sugar in a coffee pot. Bedouins carry coffee pots that hold cardamom pods in the spout; the coffee flows over the pod when it is poured into the cup. Cardamon also has sacred significance – girls in Pakistan sew a cardamon pod into their wedding shawl, to protect them from the evil eye.

Sugar and spice and all things nice.

From Medieval times, cooks that were lucky enough to have spices in their kitchens valued them as a way of livening up meat and baked goods. Spices were kept locked up in small cabinets, only to be opened by the Mistress of the house. You may have heard that spices were used to disguise the taste of meat that had gone rancid due to long storage, but spices were too precious for that. However, food scientists have recently discovered that cinammon has anti-bacterial properties, and nutmeg and cardamon both help the digestion, so using these spices as a rub on the outer surfaces of a joint would sweeten and clean it.

Spices became associated with the treats and luxuries served on special holidays and feasts. The aroma of spices cooking has become a part of our holiday traditions. Think of Easter-tide Hot Cross buns, and how bland they would taste without spices, or imagine a Christmas Pudding without the aroma of sweet mixed spice mingling with the brandy fumes. The original Christmas Pudding in the 16^th century was a sort of porridge made from meat broth, plums, wine and breadcrumbs, flavoured with mace. Over time the pudding has got sweeter, more solid and much more spiced.

Purely medicinal…

During times of Plague, when death struck so fast that a man could be ‘merrie at lunch, dead at supper’, spices were used as a defence against the sickness that wafted on the ‘naughtie air’. Whole spices were used to make pomanders; balls of scented wax and spices, now often made with an orange at the centre. Doctors wore leather masks with great beaks or bills filled with spices – this gave rise to the expression ‘quack doctor’ because they looked like rather sinister ducks.

 Spices were used in the housewife’s medicine chest, as well as in the kitchen. Clove oil is still a good remedy for toothache, ginger relieves nausea and morning sickness. Cinnamon is good to take when you have a cold (possibly it may not work so well for the Plague), as well being a good breath freshener.  Nutmeg has a reputation as an aphrodisiac – as does chocolate, of course! Nutmeg can also give you wild and vivid dreams – so don’t sprinkle too much on your bedtime hot milk.

Hot and spicy food

With the age of steam driven ships, railways and the trading stability of the British Empire, the price of spices fell, as did the price of chocolate and sugar. Victorian cooks incorporated spices from ‘the Colonies’ into a surprising range of foods, from nutmeg in sausages to cloves in apple puddings. Dishes such as chicken curry, spicy rice and meat chilli dishes were enjoyed by Victorian middle class families, who loved showing off new ingredients at dinner parties. Today we enjoy hot and spicy flavours in more authentic ways, since we can eat our way around the world in our local restaurants and supermarkets.

History and innovation in a bar

When chocolate was first introduced to Europe as a drink, the Spanish liked to flavour it with cinnamon and nutmeg, so Paul’s gorgeous bar builds on this tradition. He has gratified our taste for less familiar spices with the judicious addition of cardamon for a fresh, floral note. As I eat this bar, I’m going to use the taste associations to dive into the turquoise seas and linger on the sandy bays of the Spice Islands; the scene described so vividly by John Masefield unfolding before me:

“Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.”

 Spiced lamb?

If you ever need a change from hot chocolate, you could try drinking lambs’ wool. This Medieval drink may have been so named because of the texture of the fluffy apples, or because lambs’ fleece was used to strain it. It shows the balance of spice, sweet and sour that Medieval merry makers really enjoyed, and this recipe makes enough for a lot of merry making!

2.8 litres (6 pints) of brown ale
750 ml sweet white wine
nutmeg, grated to your taste but at least ½ a nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 stick of cinnamon
5 apples, baked in their skins until soft and fluffy (you can also microwave them for a few minutes)
brown sugar, to taste

Heat the ale, wine and spices together in a large saucepan. Take the skin off the apples and breat them down with a spoon into a smooth pulp. Remove the cinnamon stick and pour the hot liquid over the apples. Mix together, strain through a sieve. Add sugar to taste and reheat. Serve hot. This is a traditional recipe for apple harvest time.

Did you know that Geoffrey Chaucer, author of the Canterbury Tales, enjoyed beer brewed up with nutmegs?

 The cinnamon tree is as beautiful as it is fragrant. It can grow more than ten metres tall, with a bushy canopy of glossy leaves. Tiny, cream-coloured flowers form in clusters. All the new growth on the tree is bright red. The red leaves, green when mature, are fragrant when crushed and can be used as a substitute for bay leaves in Indian cookery.

© 2004 Joanna Crosby & seventypercent.com

From before the Spanish Conquest, cocoa and chocolate have been prescribed by doctors for a dizzying array of totally unrelated ailments and diseases, everything from dysentery (dissolve cocoa in water with a pinch of ground bones of your ancestors, as taken by the Aztecs) to