Customer Reviews

Spice: The History of a Temptation

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a nice, well written history of spices and their effects on humanity. Much of the book deals with the spice races of the 1400s and 1500s and the impact on the world and on Europe's rising power. Other sections deal with spices and their roles in history, cooking, romance, politics, religion, and war. The book is not arranged chronologically but instead in broad categories devoted to spices' various uses.

Turner is scholarly but also witty and informal in his writing. You will learn a lot and also have a lot of fun while reading his book.

Three thousand years after one of the greatest of Egypt's pharaohs, Ramses II, was embalmed and put into his tomb, he was discovered to have a couple of peppercorns up his nose. This was in some ways unsurprising. The Egyptians used all sorts of spices to preserve the body so that the soul might wander back into it. But regarded historically, this is an astonishing use of pepper; the peppercorns were not any African species, not anything Ramses's lands had grown. The only source at the time was the tropical south of India; there must have been a previously unsuspected direct or circuitous trade route between the regions. No details about the route can now be known, except that it was part of the lucrative spice trade that for centuries powered economies and exploration. In _Spice: The History of a Temptation_ (Knopf), Jack Turner includes the story of the first known consumer of pepper along with hundreds of other facts as a way of looking at a part of human history that was vital and has been influential into our own times, but is now merely curious. Spices are high on the list of goods that have made the modern world.

Spices were costly and mysterious, and people thought that they came from Paradise itself, the place in the East from which Adam and Eve had been banished. It was to gain spices that Columbus sailed, and spices he did bring back, but they were disappointments; that did not stop the continued search for them, and the resultant expansion of the world. Turner shows that spices were not really used to help make old meat palatable; fresh meat was cheaper than spices. But they were used to improve wine, a use that became unnecessary after bottle and cork technology came in the sixteenth century. Though spices were not really responsible for warding off decomposition, they were thought vital for warding off disease. In medieval medical logic, sweet fragrances might drive off the bad vapors, and spices (most thought of as hot and dry) might drive off a cold (thought of as a disease of cold and wet). Millions of spam e-mails every day are sent to tell how to enlarge male sexual equipment; those who believe in such cures would do well to invest in the simpler, cheaper, and just as effective formulas given here from the chapter of the ancient treatise, _The Perfumed Garden_, "Prescriptions for Increasing the Dimension of Small Members and Making Them Splendid" The priapic value of spices is just one reason the church has had wildly ambivalent notions about them. There is scriptural documentation that the God of the Bible likes to be sent good smells, as have many gods before him, but Turner's quotations from theologians indignant over the eagerness of their parishioners (and, gasp, their clerics) to partake in spicy foods are among the most amusing parts of the book.

Ministers just don't care anymore about the theological implications of spicy food. The reduction of their interest in such things parallels the reduction in importance of spice as a focus of world economic effort. It became easier to import spices, and more importantly, it was possible to transplant them to places where it was easy to turn them into simple cash crops on farms. In medieval times, the rich showed off by giving feasts that had every course heavily spiced, but jewelry and houses (for instance) eventually filled the role of ostentatious consumption. When spices became cheap, it became a virtue to use just a little of them, and that to bring out inherent flavors in the main ingredients. When anyone could purchase them, spices lost not only economic cachet, but also the sort of mystical qualities that, say, Columbus sailed for. While it lasted, the fuss about spices made history and created our world as it is now; Turner's book is splendid at explaining what all the centuries of fuss were about.

There are already several very detailed reviews here about this book, so I'll avoid repeating what they said. I'll just add my four-star rating by saying that this is a surprisingly interesting and easy to read book, given the fact that the main topic is not something one might expect to be particularly captivating. But Turner's excellent writing style, combined with an amazing amount of research spanning several topics from history to religion, makes this a thoroughly enjoyable book from front to back. The only reason I didn't give it a full five stars was that, if anything, it's a bit too long and spends too much time going into excrutiating detail on minor points. I think the author could have shortened this book by nearly a hundred pages and still achieved the full effect he intended. However, he certainly does present an exhaustive discussion of this topic and I am amazed at how much I learned. One final note: Perusing through the bibliography after I finished, I was utterly astonished at the volume of research the author did for this book. I cannot imagine how much time he spent putting together this delightful book, though I'm certainly thankful for his efforts.

Spice, The History of a Temptation by Jack Turner is a very well written history of the spice trade, written in the popular history mode. A tremendous amount of research must have gone into this work as it is absolutely filled with little gems of detail and wonderful small side stories. There are a number of other books out there that deal with this subject. A recent one, Dangerous Tastes by Andrew Dalby comes to mind, but the work being reviewed here, unlike so many of the others, including the aforementioned, is not an imposing tome which reads more like a doctorial dissertation, than a readable story. If I want sleep, I can always increase my exercise or simply take some sort of pill. I read books such as this for information and to be entertained. They go hand in hand. With Spice I got just what I wanted.

With this work the author has given us a very readable history of spices and the spice trade, starting from the beginning dating back to ancient Egypt and beyond. Of course the majority of the book is rather Eurocentric, but hey, that is where the author was educated, did his research and wrote the book. I suppose if you want a history such as this that is not Eurocentric, then you should probably find a non European author! Anyway, the author has discussed at length the impact spice has had upon world civilization. It was the prime motivator during the Age of Discovery and of course an undeniable pillar of Western Civilization along with quite a number of other civilizations throughout history. Today we have oil; in days gone by we had spice!

The author's organization of the book is different, but once you get use to it, it does make sense. At times he will bounce around just a bit, from country to country; from civilization to civilization. This is good though as it allows the reader to grasp the magnitude of both time and distance in the saga of the spice trade and just what it means to us.

This book does a very nice job of covering the various uses of spice throughout the ages, some of which include being used as currency, embalming, food, in religious ceremonies, sexual aids and as excuses to start some very nasty little wars. He does address the culinary uses of spices by various peoples from around the world and at different times at length and in particular dwells in the Middle Ages which is an era of special interest to me. I found his comments and observation of the diets of various people quite fascinating and he has done well to dispel some of the myths that have grown up around this area. This is something that is long over due.

All in all, a delightful read. If I have one complaint, and it is a very minor complaint, I did not that in some of the chapters the author was a bit repetitious. This is not a major problem, as of course I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so perhaps the repetition was good for me. I very much recommend this one for a good and very informative read.

`Spice - The History of a Temptation' by historian Jack Turner is a work of cultural and culinary history which is `culinary' in much the same sense as the writings of M.F.K. Fisher are not about cooking, but about hunger or desire for food. History of food is not as useful to the average amateur cook as food science, but ignorance of food history can lead to misstatements about food as easily as ignorance of food science can lead to misstatements about how cooking works. One of my most fascinating observations in my reading of several books on Medieval and Renaissance cooking was the pervasive appearance of spices in recipes from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. And, this prevalence was not only in the Mediterranean, but also as far north as England and Scandinavia. Conventional wisdom regarding modern cuisine says that the cookie spices (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger) are common in savory dishes of the southernmost reaches of Europe such as Sicily, Crete, and Greece plus the great Renaissance trading ports such as Venice. Yet, here we have French kings and nobles in Paris using as much of these spices as the merchant kings of Venice and Genoa.

Our author and scholar answers this question and a lot more in this delightfully written and thoroughly researched book. Mr. Turner's writing may not be up to the level of M.F.K. Fisher, but it is every bit as good as the quality of writing in the typical journalism in depth pieces which appear regularly in The New Yorker. We can thank the wisdom of the editors at Knopf for giving us an excellent work of popular history on a subject which turns up now and then on food shows such as `Molto Mario' and Alton Brown's `Good Eats'.

One piece of conventional wisdom that the author dispels is the claim that spices were used to mask the bad taste and odor of spoiling food. In fact, it is much more logical to believe that food preservation by drying and salting was far advanced by 1200 CE The problem was not with spoiled food as with dull, salty, dry food in the winter. And, this problem was primarily a problem of the rich. Before 1600, the diet of the wealthy landowner was based almost exclusively on meat, preferably game. Fruits were avoided except as themselves a type of spice, since they were thought to be the source of undesirable humors. Vegetables were avoided as being the food for the common folk. This happens to be an eminent confirmation of the description of modern European cuisine, especially Italian cuisine, which is heavily vegetarian, as the cuisine of poverty.

So, the oriental spices were commonly used widely throughout Europe to liven food. And, my reading of aforementioned Medieval and Renaissance cookbooks with recipes from England and France confirms that these spices were used in virtually every dish. While much of the use was done to enliven salty, dry meats, an equal attraction of these spices, including pepper and citrus fruits was simply because they were rare and expensive. This situation is almost identical to the great interest in tulips in the 17th and 18th centuries, when people would pay the price of a comfortable house simply to own a single unusual tulip bulb. And, spices were expensive because they were almost all available from a very few south Asian islands, appropriately named the `Spice Islands'. And, as we all know, this was one of the major forces behind the Age of Discovery which opened with the voyages of Italian Christopher Columbus to the West and Portuguese Vasco da Gama to the South and East. Turner covers the relative success of these two explorers in some detail, but this book is about the spices, not about the explorers.

While my interest is primarily culinary, the book devotes two sizable chapters to spices used as perfumes and medicines as, for example, aphrodisiacs, and spices used as aids to spiritual rituals, as spices in incense censors. Both of these chapters maintain the high level of scholarship and readability. The author also covers in detail the roles of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, and the English in the struggle to control the spice trade. That the Dutch won this explains the tact that much of Indonesia was once a Dutch colony.

So, if, as the author thoroughly explains, spices have been transplanted around the world and are now much cheaper than they once were, why are they not even more commonly used than they were 500 years ago? Two reasons for the drop in spice interest are evident in their original attraction. If spices are much less rare, they are less interesting as a medium of conspicuous consumption. This interest, along with the interests of merchants, moved on to gold, jewels, furs, tea, and coffee. Also, the rise of better methods of food preservation lowered the need for spices to perk up dull meats. This was joined by a rising interest in the nobility for vegetables in their diets, prompted by Renaissance cooking writers (see `The Art of Cooking' by Martino of Como). But, the most interesting reason for the disappearance of the infatuation in the rich with Asian spices was the arrival of foods from the New World, most especially coffee, chocolate, tobacco, and the capsicum peppers or chiles. I was immensely pleased by the author's statement that the strength of heat from these little New World lovelies simply blew Asian black, white, and green peppers clear out of the water. Their cultivation spread so fast that some Europeans even thought they originated in Asia, since they grew so well in any reasonably hospitable climate.

If you are keen on having a good understanding of culinary history, you must read this book. If you just happen to like history, you will enjoy every page and wish there were more. I look forward to scholar Turner's next book!

About half way into this book, the tsunami of December 2004 hit the Indian ocean region bringing destruction to many of the places I had been reading of. Jack Turner has taken on a big topic, not merely a culinary treatise, but an overview of colonialism, folklore, religious dogma and cultural evolution. This is a feast of a book, rich with quotes from obscure (and not so obscure) sources.
Turner's ability to follow the path of spices from their earliest known beginnings to today's trendy eating is apparent from the first pages to the last.
Turner also writes with a sense of humor, something not always included in scholarly works.
For any cook, any lover of history, student of colonial power and politics and anyone just interested in the evolving perceptions of culture, this book is a must read.

Jack Turner's book has been showered with unusual advance praise ('a brilliant, original history of the spice trade'), but its content is of rather mixed quality. The Introduction alone contains numerous errors, beginning with a reference to cloves in Syria 3,700 years (briefly published 20 years ago, but never substantiated) and an incorrect description of a nutmeg (the author failed to notice that nutmeg is not 'surrounded' by the mace, but sits inside a shell). For all the hard work the author put into this, too often he falls for the spectacular and exaggerated in a 'sex-sells' history of spices. While it makes for entertaining reading, it cannot be relied on as a balanced or scholarly piece of work. In contrast, I would recommend Andrew Dalby's 'Dangerous Tastes - The history of spices' - maybe a trifle less thrilling, but written with far greater competence.

"Salt and Ground Pepper to taste." Opening cookbooks at random it isn't hard to find such variations on that theme in dozens of recipes. But in the not too distant past ground pepper and other spices were used in quantities far greater than our pinch today. Jack Turner writes in, Spice: The History Of A Temptation, an intriguing history of something that is now almost passé. Though the word, "spice" is still used to described something exotic or foreign it has more often retained its erotic overtones. Spices once represented more than mere culinary enhancers. The history of their trade and uses has been the topic of other books. But Turner brings to the table a fun and informative look at the world when spice could be found in the bedroom, the physicians medicine cabinet, the counting house, and the pantry. His sense of humor is evident even in his chapter headings - "The Regicidal Lamprey and the Deadly Beaver" and "Afterward; or, How to Make a Small Penis Splendid."

Open up nearly anyone's pantry, or cabinets, and they are likely to have at least black pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger - perhaps even cardamom and clove. It is hard to imagine that even the small quantities in the bottles sold at the typical grocery store represent year's worth of earnings to the common laborer just a few hundred years ago. Turner's book gives a sense of the hold that spices held on the imagination of ancient and medieval minds. Indeed, it was to find a new route to the Indies that Columbus and Magellan set sail - it isn't too far-fetched to suggest that the spice trade to some degree fueled the Age of Discovery. That until recently clove grew on only five volcanic islands in the Far East in some measure gives us a sense of just how exotic and foreign it once was. The journey to Europe could take as much a year, with the spices passing through many hands - Indian, Arab, Italian, etc. Clove and nutmeg inspired many myths and legends about their cultivation in fantastic lands. But even their rarity doesn't entirely explain the covetousness they inspired in many. Sometimes at odds with this rarity - the consequence being that most could never hope to afford even small quantities - is the ubiquity with which they appear in medicine, religion, sex, and cookery. Even Turner admits that it is difficult to understand all of this looking back from a distance of several hundred years, and the vast cultural divide that has opened between us and our forebears.

The value of spices to the medieval world is evident in their laws and even in the methods used to deceive buyers. Merchants adulterating their stock of spice could be executed. More revealing is that some merchants bloated their spices by adding shavings of silver. Perhaps most revealing of all is that many were willing to risk life and limb in the long dangerous trek to purchase spices at their source. Spices were even used as diplomatic incentives when suing for peace or bargaining for favors.

Though spices were used in greater quantities than at present, Turner largely dispels the myth that they were used to mask the taste of rancid food: "Anyone willing to believe that medieval Europe lived on a diet of spiced and rancid meat has never tried to cover the taste of advanced decomposition with spices" - whether from experience or research he doesn't say. Besides, spices were vastly more expensive than cheap meat. Still, there is some truth to the matter. The preservation of meat was largely accomplished by using salt, resulting in dry chewy meat that often required soaking and prolonged cooking before being eaten. Spices helped make preserved meat more edible. Wine deteriorated rapidly once the cask had been opened. Between the freshness of a just opened cask and the acidity of one opened a few days before the taste of the wine could be "refreshed" with spices. In time spiced wine was in demand no matter the freshness.

Though you wont find detailed statistics and maps of trade routes throughout history you will find an engaging look at how pervasive spices once were. Turner's history is fun to read and for those who want more information the obligatory list of sources can be found at the end of the book. He is the type of historian I wish I had been introduced to earlier in life. I'll be on the look-out for more books by this author.

I found this book while writing a term paper on the impact of spices. Spice: THoaT stands out among both popular and academic style books on spices with its colourful diction, its intense focus and most of all with its exhaustive research. Turner's bibliography was just as helpful as his other content. For the majority of readers, those who aren't doing research, I still recommend it heartily. Spices are absolutely fascinating, and Turner chows down on their history without using phrases like I have in the title of this review. Another strong work in the same vein is Nathaniel's Nutmeg by Giles Milton. Unlike THoaT, NN has a central story and a narrow focus, but it covers similar ground and is also a good read. I got an A on my paper, and Spice: The History of a Temptation gets an A+. Turner is thorough in his research, and deft in his presentation.

This is a marvellous book. Two parts cultural history, one part travelogue, and one part culinary guide -- stirred together gently. This is a very engaging chronicle of the history of spices, and the mercantile system that brought them to all corners of the world. The book is witty and informative. Turner does for spices what Mark Kurlanksy did for cod and salt.