The Arab
which is explored in its rather wide currency in
influence on
western European
cooking
Toby Peterson
Tk importance of the spice trade to commercial
a!evelopmentin Europe in the kter middle ages has
long been recognized, although the reasonsfor tk
demandfor exotti condimentsfrom theEast bane
not been much constdered. There seems lit&
euidenceto support tk idea that spices were used
either lo mask tk taste of rotting or %dgar”
food or as preservatives. There are sources, how-
ever, which do pro&h a basis for ik unriddling of
the taste for spices. Contained within tk recipes
of the period ir evialencethat the sple of cooking
was adopted from the Arabs, and that tk kavy
use of spices was but one of a cluster of character-
istics of Arab fwd replicaied in Europe. In o&r
to establish the sbnilarities between European and
Arabic mt-dumal coom, a sampk of French,
Italian, Spanish, Flemish, English, and German
texts is drawn upon and compared with the main
features of tk several Arabic work whicA bane
ken translated into Qanish, French and English.
U&lying the uplwool in the coohing of the
&Iite in Europefrom about 1300 was a changed
attiti toward eating which was stintmUd by
the plau offd inMoslm theology
asrefiesented
in a2piction.sof the Gar&n of Delights, a concept
JournalofMcdicvJ
Hi S(l9W) 317-346. @North-Holland
Europe. I postulate that, intrigued with tk sensual
pleasures of eating as portrayed in tk Garden,
Europe began to associate iuturious dining with
thefood of tk Arabs, and thus tk passage of what
was o strange and alien cuisine was facilitated.
The following recipe was recorded in France
in about 1300 (Pichon 1892:121):
Par fere blanc brouet de gelmes, metez les gelines
cuire en vin e en tie, e prena alemandes, si les breez
e datrempez du boullon, puis cuisia en I beau
pot;e
coupeles gelines par morseaus, e les kisiez, puis
metez tout ensemble dedans ccl pot boullir; puis
prena alemandes, e girofle, e cankle, c poke lone, e
folion, e guaringal, e safren, e q~cre, puis destrempez
d’un poi de vin aigre, e metez ensemble. Si aurez bon
brouet.
How are we to account for this recipe,
typical of those which cropped up suddenly
in Europe in the fourteenth century and
which were to hold sway for more than 300
years? Post seventeenth-century views of
medieval cookery see only an indiscriminate
mass of victuals, smothered in large amounts
of spices. Thus, in 1711 the author of a
popular French cook bcok decries the era
be&ore classical cooking: Une cuisine du tems
&Jean a%Vert, ou lesgorits iloient d&we2 etpour
mieux dire, ori Pon ne scaooit pas discernerle bon
d’auec Ls maunais, l~ul~s sortes Singrediens y
itant mis suns jugement ni raison (Liger 1711:
preface). In the nineteenth century Alfred
Franklin (1888:46) laments, Ces ipices
jouaient, h&s! un grand role darts bssabominables
ragorits dont se &lectaient nos p&es. The
twentieth centuryumtinues in this con-
temptuous vein. Mulon notes that in the
recipes of the middle ages, there is. . . avant
tout rdus dt3&ices. . . ,I
Publiibing Company 317
 Further, we find eighteenth-century
rationalizations which put forward practical
justifications for the development of the
cuisines of former ages. Richard Warner in
his Antiquitds culinariae (1791: 133) explains
that :
[the] art of co&q, originated not in Luxury, hut in
Necessity. When ;he divine permission gave man the
use of animalfood, the inhibition of eating the blood
with the flesh made some mode of drrving the latter
necessary. . ..Besides this: the flesh of an animal will
bqin to putrefy, won after it is killed, under a torrid
sky; here too condiment became expedient, to make it
&ep. From this necessity then, arose the Art of Cookery,
or practice OFcombining different kinds of focd to-
gether, and seasoning, tempering, and correcting
them with various herbs, spices, oily ingredients,
etc....
Here we discern two strands of “necessitv”
at work, the one to mask tastes, the other to
preserve food. Both of these lines of ex-
planation have been continued by twentieth-
century hist0rians.s There seems, however,
little support that these were the underlying
forces behind the apparent delight in spices.
R. W. Southern (1953:42) remarks on the
extraordinary breadth of the impact that
spices had on the middle ages. “It was the
taste for spices and the charm of luxuries
which brought this whole complex of [com-
mercial] activities into existence; and it was
to satisfy this taste that merchants travelled,
sailors perished, bankers created credit and
.ueasants raised the number of their
sheep. . . .” Southern remains, though, un-
hopeful that the reason behind the craving
of spices can ever be known. He notes that
“ . . . the satisfaction of the instincts for
which the whole [commercial] cycle existed
is a thing of the past, private and incom-
municable. . . .” 1would suggest that a way
into the spice problem is still open to us.
318
The recipe manuscripts of the period lend
themselves admirably to the unriddling of
the taste for spices. Contained within these
works is evidence that the style of late
medieval cooking was adopted from the
Arabs, and that a heavy use of spices was
but one of a number of characteristics of
Arab food replicated by medieval Europe.
The extent of the Arab influence on
Europe is only slowly being appreciated.
It seems to have left some mark on most of
the major cultural facets of the civilization,
and to have pervaded every level of society.
The Moslem world was central to the con-
cems of the middle ages, and the continuous
grappling with this foreign body of ideas and
values is reflected in the popular literature
of the dav (Metlitzki 1977).
Cultural ‘borrowing always raises ques-
tions. Gibb (1955:98), in attempting to
schematize this exchange between
world and Europe, discerns:
... a faidy clear distinction to be drawn between
“neutral” borrowings from Arabic-Islamic culture
and the “shaded” influences or adaptations. In the
neutral sphere ofscience and technology, the medieval
Catholic world took over everything that it could use.
In the intellectual and aesthetic spheres, it is very
remarkable that all the elements taken over into
western culture prove to be either elements of
European origin adapted into the Arabic-Islamic
culture, or elements with very close relations in
western culture. On the whole, therefbre, the con-
tributions to the west ftom Arabic sources, although at
first some of them seemed to be alien and dangerous,
tended ultimately to reinforce the medieval Catholic
culture rather than to disturb it.
The adoption of Arab cuisine by medieval
Europe, at first sight, seems to fit neatly into
Gibb’s dichotomy. Cooking is certainly a
technology; technologies are easily trans-
ferable. But the formula becomes fuzzy
when we note in Moslem religious views the
sensuous role of food, a role with which
medieval Europe was well acquainted. These
views conflicted directly with those of the
Church in western Europe. A Christian
Europe whose ideals, if not practice, em-
phasized asceticism, became caught up in the
gratification of the senses through food. The
European ilitc absorbed into a central area
of their life a culturally ladened artifact of
Moslem society. I would argue that part
of the stimulus for the adoption was the
very temptation of going against their own
norms. The inveighing of churchmen like
Peter the Venerable against the Moslem
view of good living probably did much to
quicken the dcsire.s
This essay explores western Europe’s
acquaintance with the Moslem view of
eating, and the ambience that was thus
created for the reception of Arabic food into
Europe. Further, it seeks to indicate the
channels by which the recipes for this
cuisine reached the West. Finally, it com-
pares European and Arabic medieval cook-
ery to confirm their basic similarity, Before
venturing into these new issues, however, it
would lx useful to dispel notions held
hitherto on the reasons for the use of spice
in food in western Europe.
Consider first the i&a that spices wLre
used as preservatives. I have found very few
references to support thin theory. Le &gin
& Paris, written at the end of the fourteenth
century, notes that . . . Ic sang se gal& bien
a%uxjours, wire lrois, puts que L-s es@.zs sonf
akfetu (l&16:126). Yet the reference is so
specrfic that it can be taken to mean that
spices were not thought of generally as
preservativea. He further explaii that , . .
aucwL5 @ll espices, on1pouliall,grantsanicttc, in “an high and windy room.” Further,
ysope, marjolaine . . . , which seems to be saying
that for preserving blood, herbs may be
substituted. When a recipe is given for keep-
ing mutton over the winter, it states only
the need for salt. One . . . s& 1s moutonspar
quartiers, par b&t frotter de se1 et refrotter, et tant
et tant, et @is mettle . . . irla chemirCe.4Platina,
too, in De honesta voluptate recognizes salt
everywhere in hi book as the premier
preserving agent. He notes that it is salt
which keeps fresh meat from spoiling. Mortua
si salitura tempori fiat optime conservant: ut de
pernis et de aliis salsamentis licet cernere (Platina
1475:Book I. De sate.) Spice appears to be
used as a preservative in a sausage recipe,
but it is coupled with salt. Platina comments
that certain sausages are good only for two
days, and suggests that the keeping qualities
could be improved by adding more salt and
spice. Servari tamen in dies XV aut plures
poterunt : si pbss salis et aromatum addideris . . .
(Book VI. Farcimina). When Platina men-
tions Varro’s use of coriander to keep meat,
it is with a sense of curiosity: M. Varro
coriandro subtrito cum aceto carwm incorruptam
aestate seruari @tat (Book III. De coriandro). A
third witness is J. Baptista Porta who, in his
.h’atural magi& (1658:323), sees salt as the
universal preservative and offers the sug-
gestion that honey may be used if one is
seeking an alternative; spices are not men-
tioned.
Writing at the beginning of the seven-
teenth century in England, where spices
were still much in vogue in food, Sir Hugh
Flat, whose book of household hints con-
tains many uses for spices, does not mention
them in connection with preserving meat.
Plat (1627 :75) simply advises that freshly
killed meat can be kept for nine or ten days
319
there is nothing in the medieval spiced
recipes themselves which indicates that the
food was to be held for use at a later time
rather than consumed directly after cooking.
The recipe for Lethe Lory from fifteenth-
century England is typical of the period in
ending the recipe with the words, “And so
serve hit forth al hote” (Iwo jifteenth-
century cook books:86). I am not saying that
spices and herbs have no I;rophylactic
qualities, for they do. But in terms of the
question we are considering here, certain
domestic European herbs, such as thyme,
are more powerful antiseptics than the
imported spices which ,popular
(Dyson 1930 : 296).
There seem? to be no evidence in the cook-
books to support some historians’ explana-
tion that spices were relied upon to mask
the disagreeable tastes ofspoiled and ofsalted
meats. It is not clear that tainted meats were
much used, especially among those wealthy
enough to afford the spices to use with them.
Platina (Book VI. Pernaj advises. for ex-
ample, that a knife be pl&ged intb a ham.
If the smell proves good, cooking and
preparation might proceed; if bad, the
piece of meat is to be discarded. Power
(1928:33) notes the suggestion that spices
were used to make more palatable the meats
which had been salted down to keep over
the winter months. She queries this reason-
ing, however, because most of the dishes
in Le miagier de Paris seem to be made with
fresh meats (an observation that can be
made of medieval cookery texts in general).
Backing away from the eighteenth-century
tradition, she attributes the “. . . useof
condiments. . . to.. . a matter of taste rather
than a matter of necessity”, and concludes
that “. . . the middle ages inherited it [the
320
use of condiments] from the ancient world
and it does not seem to have died away
until the seventeenth century, which saw the
appearance of something much more like
modem cookery.” While 1 would agree that
the medieval interest in spice was a matter
of taste, the evidence points to this interest
as coming from the Arabs rather than being
a continuation of cooking in the classical
vein. Although the condiments in Apicius,
the one remaining cookery manuscript of
the Roman world, would have done very
nicely to conceal tastes, these condiments
bear no resemblance to the panoply of
spices present in medieval cookery manu-
scripts, while the similitude between the
spices of medieval European and medieval
Arabic cookery texts is striking.5
Spices are included in the imagery of a
sensuous table in the Romance of Sir
Degrebant (1949:84).
To tell pe mecis were te tere
pat was pat sopere;
pare was no dayntw to dew
Na spyces to spare. ..
Passages such as this one show these con-
diments in medieval European society to
have been dainties and luxuries, and not
kitchen expedients. Spices were valued in
European cooking because they were highly
valued on the Arab table, and I would
suggest that the desire to imitate Arab food
stemmed from its prestigious position in
Arab culture.
Central to the western conception of the
Moslem view of food was the description of
the Garden of Delights (Hortus &&zrum).
Although notices of the sensual pleasures
embodied in Moslem eschatology are found
in Europe by the ninth century (Cerulli
1949:374-5), it was the passage on Moslem
paradisical rewards in Petrus Alfonsi’s
Dialogi cum Judaeo of the eady twelfth
century that had ...unadiffusione assai vasta
e sia stuto per& integralmenle inserilo in allre
opere di scrittori occidentali sino al Jecolo XIV.6
In Alfonsi’s description of the Garden of
Delights the joys of eating are evoked
(MPL 1854:599): Omnium fructuum omnium
ciborum vescentur generibus. Quidquid appetitus
cuique suggerel, coram se confestim inveniel. . . .
Comedite et bib& in omni laetilia. . . .
His description follows a central and recur-
ring theme in the Koran, itself translated
into Latin by the mid-twelfth century. Here
I give but one example (Qur’an 1939:2,
Surah 52, The Mount, 536).
Lo, the pious are in Gardens and delight,
Enjoying what their Lord hath bestowed upon
them. and their Lord hath protected them
from the punishment of the Hoc Place,
Eat and drink with relish, for what yc have
hcen doing.
The Christian world’s uneasiness with the
play between religion and sensuality, mani-
fest in the numerous passages Enrico Cerulli
has culled, reached an apogee at the end of
the thirteenth century (1949:!%4). While
the scholarly few at Oxford were debating
the question of the real or allegorical nature
of the pleasures in the Moslem after-life
(Cerulli 1949:440&), an Arabic folk tale,
describing minutely the carnal pleasures of
paradise, and appealing to a much wider
audience, was introduced into Europe in
three translations: the Catalan, Libra Della
Scda (no longer extant), the French Livre rlr
L.eschieleMahomet (MS. dated 1264) and the
Latin L&r Scalar (MS. undated) (Metlitzki
1977:213). In the Liare &Lcschi& Mahomet
describes hi ascent to the heavenly throne;
starting in the earthly paradise, he passes
through the various other stages of paradise,
each more sensual and gratifying than the
one before. The ultimate garden is depicted
as... hzbundant de tottes de‘ikes, que cue67dome
puisse fwser. The faithful find . . . de uinr, qui
sunt de iotks colows et de tottes sauours, que par
nul horn juisseni estre pensees, and . . . une table
mise aktwt soi, que iameis ne 107faudra nulle
chose, q~il uuoillient mar-;- ?!e boiure. . . . A
tree, when asked, @ves’?. LXX. mil esquelles
de uiandes, tot&s appareillies, de tant de maniers
de chars et o!eoiseaux que nul cueor domepenser . . .
(Muiioz Sendino 1949:355-&O).
-This philosophy of gratification present
in Moslem theology not only promises joys
after death, but sanctions, indeed encour-
ages, the reaping of pleasures in this life.
I think it worth quo&g parts of the intro-
duction of two medieval Arab cookery
manuscripts to show how closely aligned
they are with the philosophy of good living
promulgated above. Copies of these manu-
scripts or others like them may have circu-
lated in Europe, or have been accessible to
Westerners in the Levant. There is reason
to believe that Europe made use of Arab
cooking manuscripts like these in the com-
pilation of their own cookery texts.7
Louangr B Dicu Unique ct Cr6ateur. qui (now)
aswrc ntr, moyem, de subsitancr, absolument digne
dc louanges! ., , Je d&avow quiconque a imerdit
aux adcrateurs de Dieu un bien qu’il leur a dispense
ct a bldmt cclui qui cn usair. Car le Tr&-Haut a dit :
“Dis: Qui a inlerdit lcs belles chows cr&%s par Dicu
pour ws adorateurs, ou la bon5 aliment5 dispcns+s
par Dieu? - dis: 11%sent aux fiddles dam wtte vie
terrestrc’ CI ils reront P eux set+, It. j,mr de la R&ur-
rection”. .,. Dicu lui accorda la plus large part de
toutc bonnc chose, lui Ii1 aima la beau@ des femmes
et l’odcur da parfums. ,,. Par aillcurs, puisque la
majeure partie des plaisirs (errcstws et c&stcs consisce
321
darts la consommation des met5 et des boissons
dtsirables; . . . quejouir des bonnes chose-s renforcc
d’aiUettrs I’adoration cbez le servitcur de Dieu, et
qu’elles tirent de son coeur la Couange la plus pure;
c’est pour cela que la mention de ces bienfaits de
Dieu a et6 rep&&r dam le precieux Livre de Dieu oli il
lcur a Cte accord6 Cloge et distinction.
The passage, which this introduction to the
recipes quotes, is from the Koran, Sura VII,
The Heights (Qur’an 1939:1, 140). A Bug-
Mad cookerybookhas a simi!at message in its
introduction (Arberry 1939 :32) :
Pleasures may be divided into six classes, to wit, food,
drink, clothes, sex, scent and sound. Of these, the
noblest and most consequential is food; for food is
the body’s stay, and the means of preserving Me.
It is not prohibited to take _‘elight in food, or to occupy
oneself and specialize in it, for indeed God says:
“Say, who hath made unlawful the adornment of
God which he brought forth for His servants, and the
wholesome things of sustenance?
The author here draws on the same passage
(Sura VII) of the Koran as used in the text
above. This ideal of gratification both in
this world and the next stands in sharp
contrast to the temperate, ascetic life de-
manded of Christians in anticipation of an
angelic society in heaven. Depictions of
sensual delights, as in the Liber Scalae,
“ . . . must have presenteti an almost irresist-
able temptation to the imagination of the
most pious and otherworldly” (Metlitzki
1977:212).
Europe responded to these portrayals of
Moslem delights with its own version of a
sensual oaradise first found in a French noem
Cocaign; of the thirteenth century (Vianen
1947:20-g). Although the usual sources
given for this piece are classical ones,
Metlitzki convincingly argues that the name
Cocaigne may well be traced to the Liber
Scaiae,and that the land of Cockayne in the
322
English poem, “fur in see, bi west Spayn-
gne,” suggests the western lands of Islam.*
The French poem depicts a country,
Coca&e, where houses are made of bass,
salmon, and shad, rafters of sturgeon, and
the lathing of sausages. Food is for the
taking. The rivers run with wine (Vaanen
1947:22-3). The abbey in the English
version is built much the same (Bennett
and Smithers 1966: 140).
Al of pasteiis bep pe walles,
Of Beis, of C&e, and rich met,
pe 1ikCitlIist pat man mai ct.
Fluren cakes bep pe schinglcs alle
Of cherch, cloister, boure, and halle.
,..
The abbey grounds are graced with a tree
bearing spices (Bennett and Smithers 1966:
141).
pe rote is gbtgeuir and galingalc,
pe siouns bep al sedwale,
Trie maces bep pe Bure,
pe rind cartel ofswet odur,
pe brute gilofrc of godc smakke.
Of cucubes per nis no lakkr.
I hese are not the prevailing spices of the
Roman world, but those of both the
medieval Levant and medieval Europe, as
is seen in the Appendix. Two of the spices
appearing on the tree are powdered on top
of a stewed dish (Bennett and Smithers
1966: 142), a characteristic of Arab cookery
which will be discussed in detail below.
Idift in stu fttl swip wel,
Pudrid wip gilofre and canel.
It was at the end of the thirteenth century,
when fantasies on the pleasures of eating
were circulating in Europe, that the first
European cookery works in the Arab style
began to appear. The new kin,{ of cuisine -
an upheaval in the cooking of the &c -
was to take rapid hold of Europe. What
accounts for the extent of the change?
Why did such a profound transformation
occur in the style of cooking, normally a
conservative cultural bastion? It is for
questions such as these that the Garden of
Delights provides a useful background. One
may postulate that, intrigued with the
sensual pleasures of the Arab world, Europe
asso&ated luxurious eating with the par-
ticuldr food of the Arabs, and thus tha pas-
sage tif what must have seemed a strange
and &en cuisine was facilitated.
Thee lands - the Levant, Spain and
Sicily - in affording extensive contact
between the two cultures provide .! the
ground from which recipes could have
moved north. There are extant contempor-
ary works on cookery from each of these
areas. Rodinson (1949) has summa&d a UORguter Speise. Toward the end of the
long tradition in cooking manuscripts in the
medieval Levant. Of these the K&b 61-
f&/z of the thirteenth century has been
translated into English by A. J. Arberry
(1939). From the same century Rodinson
has analyzed the Kitab al-wusla ila &bib
ji waJfi t-tqjbati wa-t-tib or Livrc du lien avec
l’ami OKdcsniption des bons plats et &s parfums
(Rodinson 1949 : 117ff.). From thirteenth-
century Spain we have an anonymous
Arabic text now translated into Spanish
(~rtz&u.~zimcspoliofu 1966), while from Sicily
there is the Liber & coquina, a Latin work
containing some Arabic words for recipes.’
The books from these three areas bear a
close resemblance one to another, and all
represent the general style of Arabic cook-
ing.”
At the turn of the fourteenth century
manuscripts specifically on the art of cook-
ing, similar to those mentioned above from
Spain, Sicily, and the Levant, began to
appear in France and the north of Italy.
These were no longer medical tracts with
an occasional aside on the preparation of
food.” These new works were devoted to
teaching the foreign cuisine.
In order to establishthe similarity between
the medieval European and medieval Arabic
cookery texts, I draw on a sample of Euro-
pean writings spanning the fourteenth
to the seventeenth century, and compare
the main features of these works with those
of the Arab texts mentioned above. We
may begin in France, with a text of about
1300 called simply by the title Truitt? de
cuisine (Pichon 1892). In Italy the 1300s
saw the writing of what is now known as the
Libro di cucina de1 secolo XIV. From four-
teenth-century Germany we have Ein Buch
century the most famous medieval cookery
work in France made its debut. Here WCwill
consider both a fourteenh-century manu-
script of Z..eviundirr. and the oldest known
minted edition.12 LX viandier became the
basis for the well-known cookery sections
of the late fourteenth-century Le mt%agier
de Paris, In the fifteenth century the same
genre of cuisine continued in two manu-
scripts from England (Two fifieenth-century
cookbooks 1888), as well as Platina’s De honesta
volupt& from Italy. la In the sixteenth cen-
tury Messisbugo’s Banchetti appeared in
Italy, Granado’s Libro de1 arte de cocina in
Spain, and Yenta nyeuwen coock boeck in
Antwerp. The editors of the Flemish cook
book have shown many of the recipes to
have come from, among other sources,
Taillevant and Platina. The medieval tradi-
tion remained strong in Italy in the begin-
ning of the seventeenth century with the
323
publication of Scappi’s Opera.
What kind of cooking was contained in
these writings and how did it differ from
the Apicius text? Three main character-
istics, -each having analogues in medieval
Arabic cuisine, may be discerned: sweeten-
ing with sugar, coloring with saffron, and
emphasis on spices. In addition, there are a
variety of other motifs, including the use of
rose water, oranges and lrmons, almonds,
and pomegranates, which stem from the
Arab works but play a relatively minor role
in the European texts. In the following
pages these attributes will be discussed in
terms of their importance to the food, with
some notice taken of their growing avail-
ability in Europe.
European medieval cooking is frequently
as heavy with honey.
misconceived
Eighteenth-century confusion over this point
has influenced twentieth-century views. Le
Grand d’ Aussy (1782 : 189-90) writes :
En qualite d’assaisonnement, le miel entrait dam unc
infinitt de rag&s, dam la confection. On le
prCRrait mEme au sucre; et c’etait-IL un choix de
predilection, qui doit d’autant plus nous Ctonner que
depuis fort long-tcms on connaissait le sucre en
France. Les vues d’economie n’y influaient pour rien,
comme on pourrait le croire. Un pareil motif n’est
fait ordinairement que pour le peuple; il n’arrete
gueres les gem riches, lorsqu’il s’agit des objets de
luxe et de gourmandise. Soit habitude, soit ooit reel
ou p&jug&, il par& que nos Peres ne trowaient pas
dam le syrop epaissi du roseau de FInde, la saveur
odorante et parfumee que Its Ilettrs communiquent
au bon miel. Aujourd’hui qu il [le miel] est totalement
dedaignt et reltgue presque dnns la classe des remedes,
on I’emploie encore pourtant dam les pains d’epices;
ce qui est un vestige de I’ancien usage.
Contrary to this eighteenth-century per-
ception, sugar was the major sweetener in
medieval recipes, the use being in meats,
324
fish, and poultry as well as cakes. Platina
(1475 : Book VI. Cibariumalbumcatdlionicum)
remarks that sugar spoils no dish. Pisanelli
(1596 :193-4) wmments on how pleasant
sugar is in most dishes and notes that honey
is eaten with fruits or other sour substances.
Writing in 1590 Bruyerinus in De re cibaria
notes that sugar was then being used instead
of honey, and, emphasizing the number of
dishes that contain this ineredient. he wn-
eludes with the opinion that salt was not
used more than sugar (1590 :561-2) :
Saccharum vice mellis (ut dictum nuperest) usurpatur
. . . vix explicare est ad quot condimenta opsoniaque
admittitur. Atria vero knit: acida retundit: s&a
suaviora reddit: austeritatem vincit: acerba mitescere
docet: fat& et insipidis sensum tribuit: et ut paucis
dicam, omnium saporum domitor videri potcst. ,,.
Seplasiorum officinae, quot figuras effigiesqtte ei
tribuunt; num fructuttm, olerum, animalium qttad-
rupedem, ac volucrum? quot semina eo incrustantur
ad delicias hominis. ... Nihil hodie penr sine saccharo
ventri conditur. Saccharum paniftciis additur: sac-
charum vinis miscetur: acqua saccharo suavior salu-
briorque: carnes saccharo asperguntur: Pisces, ova
non pluribus locis utimur sale quam saccharo.
He writes also that honey, although esteemed
by the ancients, is not found on lavish tables,
and cannot compete with exotic sugar (560-
1):
Non esset mellis authorhas in esculentis minor, quam
sacchari, nisi ubique nasceretur: verum quoniam
plertmque ventri ac gttlae domestica sordent. His
navigandum ad Indos, ttt saccharttm habeant: Mel
fere ultra sese port@. At exotica condimenta magis
placent: ita puto a Natura camp tratum, ttt omnium
rerum cupido elangttexat, qua*.- .I farilk sit occasio.
Vetcres in maximis deliciis hat .enmt: quippe in-
numera escarum genera melle w-tdiebant, et multa
panificia et potus concinnabant, quad hodie quoque
sit in Moschovia et vicinis ted: ubi in sylvis mel
copiosissime colligitur. ... Rura nostra &em ex
melle crude edtmt. ... Latttiores mensae rare in cibos
admittunt mellita. . ..
Figure 1420.

325
One can clearly see the dominance of sugar
from the chart In the Appendix below which
gives the comparative incidence of sugar
2nd honey.
The sugar in the recipes was not only put
in during the cooking of the dish but also
sprinkled on just before setving. Following,
are instructions from Le tixagier & Paris
(1846: 165) for making a brouet blanc.
Prenez chapons, poulets ou poucins t&s par avant de
temps convertable, ou tous entiers ou nar moitie ou
par quartiers, et du veel par pieces, et lb cuisiez avec
du Ian en I’eaue et au vin: et quant ils seront cuis, si
Is traiez, puis prenez des amandes, si les pelez et
broiez et deffaita de l’eaue de vostre poulaille, c’est
auavoir de la plus clere, sans fondrille ou trouble
aucun, et puis les coulez par Pestamine; puis prenez
gingembre blanc pare ou pelt, avec graine de paradis,
allaye comme dessus, et coulez k une bien dtliee
estamine, et meslez avec le Idt d’amandes. Et si n’at
assez espois, si coulez de la deur d’amidon ou ris qui
soit houlis, et luy donnez goust de vertjus, et y mettez
du succre blanc grant foison. Et quant I’en aura
d&it, si pouldrez par-dessus unc espice que Pen
appelle coriandre vermeille et des grains de la pomme
de grenade avec dragee et am andes friolCes, piqutes
en chascune escuelle sur le bout. Soit veu cy-apr6s B ce
propos, de blanc mengier.
Or from England less than half a century
later we have (Two ffteenth-century cook
books 1888:21):
Vyaund de cyprys bastarde. - Take gode wyne, &
Sugre next Aftyrward, & caste to-gedere; penne take
whyte Gyngere, and Galyngale, & Cane1 fayre y-
mynced; pen take luse of Percile & Plowre of Rys, &
Brawn of Capoun 8t of Chykonnys I-grounde, &
caste per-to; An coloure it wyth Safroun & Saunderys,
an a-ly it with golkys of Eyroun, & make it chargeaunt ;
an whan pou drasest it yn, take Maces, Clowes,
Quytibes, and straw a-boue, & serue for*h.
Sugar was sprinkled onto the top of the food
as in this recipe from the Libro di cucina
(1899:20):
Se tu voy fare lansagne de quaressima. toy Ie lasagne e
326
mitile a coxre, e toli noxe monde e ben pesta e
maxenate, e miti entro Ie lasagne, e guardale dal
fumo; e quando vano a tavola, mmestra e polverizage
de le specie, del zucharo.
The late sixteenth-century Spanish cook
book, the L&o &l arte dc wcina, continues the
same tradition. For a dish of pigs’ feet the
cook is directed to cast . . , actuur blunco
rasjmak en&a, y servirla al se& (Granado
1599:40). The same instructions are found
in the Arab recipes, where the cooked meat
is sprinkled with scented sugar. (Arberry
1939: 195) Or sugar is called for within the
recipe (Arberry 1939 :35) :
Cut fat meat into middling pieces. ,,.Boil, then throw
in ... coriander, ginger, pepper and cloves ground
fine: add also a few pieces of cinnamon, Now mince
red meat with seasonings, and make into cabobs:
when the saucepan is boiling, throw in the cabobs. , . .
Now take the pulp of large citrons, seeded, and
squeeze well in the hand, add about a quarter as much
of grape-juice, and pour into the saucepan on top of
the meat. Boil for an hour. Take sweet almonds, peel,
chop up fine, soak in water, and add to the saucepan.
Sweeten with sugar . ..Sprinkle with r-ater., ..
Sugar was used liberally in the cooking of
Europe. Measurements are for the most
part lacking, and we must depend mainly on
such phrases as succre b!anc grant foison as
appears in the recipe for brouet bianc given
above. But occasionally one finds specific
quantities mentioned. In the Paris, Biblio-
theqte Nationale, MS. of Le viandier, a dish
of one suckling pig calls for one pound of
sugar (Pichon and Vicaire 189266). A dish
of four hens uses a pound and a half of
sugar (Libro di cucina 1899:4). Although the
Arab cookety works likewise do not give
measurements very often, the instructions
from the Hispano-Moorish text to use three
pounds of sugar for a dish made with one
hen show the same emphasis on sweet food
(Traduccion espaiiola 1966~48).
 In contrast to the medieval recipes, sugar
does not appear in Apicius, and seems to
have been -known to ;he Romans onlv as
heresay. References in Dioscorides and Pliny
are ambiguous and if sugar was available,
it was a rarity (Deerr 1949%). This lack
of sugar in the cooking of Rome is viewed
by Platina (1475: Book II. Saccharo) as a
great misfortune. The food of the ancients,
he laments, was insipid because it had no
sugar. After the Arab capture of Persia in
the seventh century, sugar cane and the
sugar industry spread west into the rest of
their territory, and into Cyprus, Sicily, and
Spain. In the first years of the seventeenth
century the Ikrhor de sanle (1607:403)
records the production of sugar in the
Mediterranean area and its expansion west-
ward :
0” f-tica lbrce I”cmC en t’lndc Orkntale, ct en
plusieurs endroits du nouveau monde, et notamment
en I’islc Espagnole. Item en Egypte et en toutc la
Barbaric, c& la pains sent plus gros ct plus grands,
mais Ic succre plus noirastre. On en fait mesmc &
Valance en Espagne. ... Pareilicment aux isles de
I’Ocean, et de la Meditcrranee; comme en I’Lde de
S. Thomas. . _ , On en i&it aussi 4s ida de Sicilc, de
Rhodes, de Cypre, et de Candic. Le meilleur et le plus
fin quc nous ayons. vicnt des isle3 Canaries, qui sent
en I’Ocean, qu’on appelle s-e ai M&e. . .,
In the index to the commodities in
Peolotti (1936) one finds the various kinds
of iugar & thk market in the fourteenth
century. That sugar was available in both
loaf and granulated form reflecir (in part)
its use in the cooking, that is, added during
the recipe and sprinkled on at the end. Most
references. in the medieval texts simply call
fbr sugar, and not for sugar of a particular
degree of refinement, How&a, the
occasional use of the words white sugar, as
appear, fbr example, in the recipe above for
brouet blanc or in creme boylede from the 1420
English manuscript (TWO fi,fteenth-century
cook books 1888:812 ,I or the velyI occasional
use of dark brown sugar, referred to as
Blake Sugre in the same manuscript (28),
shows that sugar was available in its various
stages of refinemer,t. Yet highly refined
sugar was the most desirable - the whiter
the better (Platina 1475:Book II. Saccharo).
Here again tlze Arab taste is copied. A
medieval Arabic poem on food from the
encylopedic Meadows of gold talks of the
delight of sugar refined to ;ihe purest degree
(Arbeq 1939:29). Allan Evans notes that
the most refined sugar was withheld for the
sultan’s use (Pegolotti 1936:435).
Saffron became an indispensable ingredi-
ent to the cooking of medieval Europe, and
wasgrown as far north as England (Barden-
he&r 1914). The purpose- of its use is
peculiar. The European texts tell us in
countless recipes that saffion was included
in the dishes for color. Note, for example, the
following two recipes from Ein Buck uon
guln Speise (1844: 17) of rhe fourteenth
century.I , and from the Banhlli of the mid-
sixteenth century.
Nim frische mandrl kern und weirhe sic, und hirse
gr(ltze und gesotene L:cr und ~‘n wcnic schoenen
brotes und krut. diz mal au sammene. so du dickes
miigest. und giuz ez m fin pfannen. und laz ez sieden
unG daz ez dicke wcrde. und math c-zgel mit saffran.
und fcistmit butcm. und laz cz denne kiieln. und snide
n zu miirseln. und stark ez an einen spiz, und laz ez
braten. und bcslahe a denne mit eyern und mit
gutem krute. und gibs hin ffir gebratenc milich.
Piglia I’ucccllo o petto di vitello, e fall0 cuocere in
vino cc n ai fctte di persutto. E come aver2 boglito un
gran pczzo, pigliarai q. attro cipollc grandi monde e
tagliatc in quarto, e Ie porrai a bogdiere.
Poi pigliarai la mollcna d’un pane bianco tagliato
in fett: brustellatc. mogliare in amesto, e le Dassarai
per Is stamegna con 18; quarto csi gcngevro; e poco
327
zaffarano tanto the gli dia il colore, e dieci garofani
intieri.
E come sarA quasi cotto il detto uccello o altro, gli
ponerai sopra il detto sapore, lo finirai di cuocere.~’
Even when the taste of saffron is remarked
upon, the color is not forgotten. Saffron,
Platina (1475:Book III. De croco) observes,
is a thing apart from the other spices; its
taste and color enhance their qualities.
The manuscripts from the Levant also
exhibit this emphasis on the color of safii-on.
A Baghdad cookery book often instructs the
cook to “color with saffron.” “Cut [fish]
into middling pieces, wash, colour with
saffron, and fry in sesame-oil. Add fine-
chopped blatles de By_atue. Put into a mix-
ture of vinegar and murri, twice as much
murri as vinegar.“r6 This same advice is
found in the Hispanic-Moorish text (Traduc-
cion espariola 1966:22-3, 47-8, 78), while
from the poem in Meadows of gold comes
the line “. . . And saffron well-brayed, for
its tinting to be . . .” (Arberry 1939:29).
The medieval use of saffron seems to
stand in marked contrast to its use in
Apicius, where saffron is called for but
three times, and never mentioned as a
coloring agent (1958:45,55,223).
The coloring of food yellow seems to
have something to do with having the dish
appear li e gold. The Hispanic-Moorish
text has a recipe called ya3Jiriya: . . . por el
mucho azafran que tiene, y se parece al oroyajiri
(Traduccion espaiiola 1?66:#). The 1599
Libro de1 arte de co&a echoes this association
in one of its recipes. Use saffron specifically
. . .para qne tenga color de oro . . . (42). Perhaps
in the ingestion of gold-colored food there is
an alchemical association, reflecting the
Arab quest for the elixir. Arab alchemy
sweeps over thirteenth and fourteenth-
century Europe at exactly the time the
328
cookery manuscripts begin to appear, and
possibly acts as a reinforcement for coloring
the food golden,
The third and most important facet of
Arab and the new western medieval cuisine
is spices. The Hispanic-Moorish text stresses
the great importance of these ingredients:
Sabe qu cl conocimientoa%1aso a? Las especias es
la base prituipal en 10s plalos de co&m, porqne
es el cimiento a21 c&nary sobre il se edfiua . . .
(Tradnccion espaiiola 1966 385). So essential
were spices thought to be that a “middle
class” family in the Levant would spend an
almost equal amount on spices as on meat
(Ashtor 1975: 145). In the western texts, the
dominance of spices is stressed by frequent
instructions that the dishes be potirrti u’e
specie or ponderossa a%specie (Libra di cucina
1899:4, 58, 63). The Trait2 de cG.sine urges
that a great deal of pepper, ginger, cin-
namon, and clove be used (Pichon and
Vicaire 1892: 123), while the fourteenth-
century Viandier advises the cook that the
food should be very spicey (Pichon and
Vicaire 1892:iO). The taste of the spices
was not to become subdued with long
cooking: . . . l’en doit mettre les espices le plus
tart que Pen pnel, car tant plus perdent a? lenr
saveur commeplus lost sonl mises . . . (Lpm&agier
de Paris 1846: 147).
Although measurements do not occur in
most of the recipes, where they do occur they
give a clear idea of the predominant charac-
ter of spices. Two fourteenth-century Italian
recipes, each to serve twelve persons, call
for 3 base of one half pound of spice. One
of them (Libro di cncina 1899:3) reads as
follows :
Se to voi fare ambrosino per XII persoone, toy VI
caponi magretti e ij libre de mandole, e ona iiba de
I
ova passa, e datali, e una libra de brognole, e 1: de
genzvro fine, e una ! entra note moschate e garof. e
iafarano intrego, e m& libra de spa-u dolce
fin;, e toy
Ii capord e smenbrali c fanc septc par de I’uno, e
mitilia sotiizer in lardo dcsfato e colado in tma cita. E
quando sono hen sofriti, la prima cossa the to gli
mitti sia lo aenzewroroto c le now mowhatc raiatc ben
trite, e canella rota in bone me, e garofalli intrigi, e
mandole intriege monde. e datali intrigi ben lavati, c
meti dentro specie dolge [in] gran quantitA. e fay
coxere un pocbo; e quando e coto trai indrieto:
quando 6 coto meti le prime mandole con le gwse non
monde. e macenali e destempera con aceto pocho. e
quando C cota la vivanda, cola Ii mandole e mettili
sugo con specie e zafarano asay. Questa vivanda
vuole essere agra e dolza e vermiglia e swetta. traila
indictro e dala per scudelle e polveriza specie di sopra
le scudelle.
While not all recipes are so heavily spiced,
to a post-seventeenth-century palate the
lesser quantities of spice still Seem very
high. For example, a dish for twelve people
from the same text tails for two ounces of
(63). (In order to visualize better two
ounces, the reader might picture a typical
supermarket container of powdered spice,
which contains about 1: or 2 ounces, and
then imagine the whole to be consumed in
one dish.) To prepare for a wedding feast
of twenty covers and a supper of ten cove+
a marketing list is prepared, directing the
purchase of a pound and a quarter of ginger,
a half pound of cinnamon, an ounce of
saffron, a quarter pound of cloves and
grains of paradii m&d, and an eighth ot a
pound each of long pepper and maceX7
It seems, at least from the IWOArab texts
available to me, that the large quantities of
spices being put in some European dishes
were not being called for in the Arab works
However, the sample of Arab recipes is
smaI1 in comma&on . with the EuroDean s
sample, and alsO it should be home in mind
that the average “middle class” Gamily in
the Levant was spending as much on spices
ESon meat, as cited above. Again, - . measure-
ments are infrequent, but I give here samples
of spice quantities. In a meat dish, where the
quantity of meat is not specified, the author
nf A Bmhdad cookerv* book salls for “. . . two
:lirhams of coriander, cummin, mastic and
cinnamon. . . .‘*The dish is sprinkled with
more cinnamon before serving (Arberry
1939:192). It is impossible to tell if the
recipe is for two dirhams of each spice.
Another instanre, again with the quantity
of meat unspecified, uses “. . . fine ground
cummin, coriander, cinnamon and mastic,
about 2: dirhams in all” (195). Arberry gives
one dirham as equal to 0.13 ounce (31).
The recipe calling lor 2 $ dirhams is using,
then, about : ounce of s$ce. (Arberry does
not specify whether his ounce equivalency
to a dirham is a medieval weight, and I have
no further information on Arabic weights
of the period.) The Hispanic-Moorish text
sometimes employs somewhat larger quanti-
ties. For a roast bird, one uses three dirhams
each of coriander, cinnamon, ginger and
cumin (Traduccian espaiota 1966 :35) ; for a
dish of one hen, four dirhams of pepper and
four dirhams of cinnamon are employed
(172). Each of these recipes thus uses more
than an ounce of spice.
Spices, like sugar, were put into the food
during the cook&g process, and just before
serving, as can be seen from the recipes given
above. We find similar practices amongst
Arab cooks (Traduccion espatiola 1966:29) :
Se tOma on corder0 gorc.0 y se le sacan ras entratias,
estando con so piel, por un sirio profimdo y sc pone en
on lebrillo o marmita, se vierte en tl agua hervida y se
la arranca la lana hasta we no quede nada de ella en
la pid; Iwgo se cage lo hoe hasalido de so interior,
se limpia y se hate con dlo un relleno que se cuece
con apccils aromiticas, accite y algo de almori
macerado y se vuelve a meter en so interior, desputs
329
de batirlo con buevo y plantas aromitic 3s y lo que
quieras. Se case so vientre y cl cue110 yId aberturas
que hay en Cl hasta que no quede par donde se corra
so grass; se mete en cl homo de tierra - funnur - y se
deja hasta quc se sazone; entonces se saca y se corta
en pedazos coo on cuchillo afdado y se espolvorea coo
sal molida, pimienta y canela.
Rodinson (1949:147) notes in the Arab
cookery texts of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries the use of pepper, ginger, cin-
namon, cloves, cardamon: mace, nutmeg,
betel and musk. These are by and large the
spices found in the Hispanic Moorish text
and A Baghdad cookery book, and look very
much like the list of spices with which
Le viandier closes. The last lines of the
fourteenth-century mL nuscript read, Espices
qui appartiennent en test present Viandier:
premi&ement, giugembre, car&e, girofe, graine
de pa&is, poivre lone, macis, espices en poudre,
fleur de car&e, saffran, garingal, noys muguites
(Pichon and Vicaire 1892 :34). The fifteenth-
century edition closes with E&es apparten-
antes a ce @sent viandier. Gingembre, catzlle,
girofi’e, graine de paradis, poyvre, mastic, garingal,
noix muscade, saffran, canelle, sure, agnis et
pouldre fine (Pichon and Vicaire 1892:96).
Except for pepper and an occasional use of
ginger, these are not the spices of Apicius.
The striking difference between the condi-
ment array of the medieval European and
Arabic texts and Apicius is made clear in
the spice frequency chart in the Appendix.
Much has been written on the spice
trade, which began to l-‘,ourish in the latter
part of the thirteenth century. But it should
be. recalled here that there was also a thriving
trade in spices in the Roman Empirk
(Miller 1969). Further, there is evidence
that a wide variety of spices continued to
come into western Europe after the Arabs
dominated the Mediterranean (Dennett
330
1948: 175-7). But to what purposes were
these spices put? The answer&m&t because
of the paucity of evidence from before the
thirteenth century. Except for the Apicius
text, there is no other &tant man&ript
devoted to cookery, although some medical
works exist which deal with the preparation
of fd for purposes of health (see note 20).
Until further evidence is uncovered, it is
plausible to assume that spices such as
nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon were not in
general use in food until about the end of the
thirteenth century, but were probably used
as drugs, perfumes, and perhaps in embalm-
ing procedures.
Sugar, saffron, and spices, we might say,
were the three defining_.Darameters of med-
ieval European cooking. Other ingredients
from Arab cookery, though not so important,
maybe seen scattered through our texts,
and provide links with the cuisine of the
Levant. Particularlv noteworthv are al-
monds, rose water, ditrus fruits, and pome-
granates. Of these, the crushed almond
was the most extensively employed.
The almond is by no means an ingredient
used only in the medieval period. It is
found seven times in the Apicius text
(1958:229), yet in all cases it is employed
there whole, as a garnish. In medieval
Arabic cookery the almond is usually ground
fine and added to the sauce as a thickenrr.
Alternately, water is poured through or
mixed with the ground nuts and the liquid
gained is called almond milk. In a dish for
fat meat the dir,c.?ms are: “Peel sweet
almonds and grind, then mix with a little
water: flavour to taste with the water and
milk of the almond . . .” (Arbeny 1939:
37-8). A chicken dish in the Hispanic
Moorish text is made thick with ground
37-38,41,44,46,51,62,69, 72, 74, 77,79).
It makes an occasional appearance in
medieval texts all over Europe. Instances of
its use are in the Libro di cucina (1899:4, 5,
28, 30, 44), the fifteenth-century Le uiandier
(Pichon and Vicaire 1892:57, 66, 671, Le
mt?nagierde Paris (1846:183, 232), the 1420
Enghsh cookery MS. (Two fifteenth-century
cook books 1880:27), the Libro de1 arte de
cocina (Granado 1599:24, 45, 57, 61, 79, 83,
108), and MeAsbugo’s Banchetti (1549:
178-9, 190, 214, 216). The index to Eenen
J$wen coock boeck records rosewater
four times throughout the sext.t8
While citrus trees were grown in Italy
by the twelfth century and probably by this
time also in France’s southern region,,, they
had been brought to Spain earlier under the
.Moslems (Tolkowski 1939:269-70). The use
of citrus fruit, usually in the form of juice,
is for the most part confined to texts from
the south. Platina writes Ihat citrus is used
all year long on roasted foods. Assir et calidis
obsoniis adhitentur omni tempore (&ok II.
De citro). SW.+- examples of the use 3forange
juice may be found in Libro di cucina (1899:
23, 38, 68), in Banchtti (Messisbugo 1549:
176, 198, 200), in the Opera 3f Scappi
(1610: 15,20,22,26), and in Lib/- aY arte de
cocina (Granado 1599:31, 53, 65, lo’s). in
the north citrus fruits were almost un-
available, and when they were, at exorbitant
prices (Tolkowski 1939:154, 269). In Le
minagicr k ParL (1846: 183) we find a rare
northern recipe calling for orange juice; it
calls also for rose water: Item. perdrix se
doiuent plum0 fi set, e6 copper 1s o&es et la
teslc, yjaire en eaue boulant, puis bo&mer de
wnoison qui en a, OU larl, et mengier au se1 menu,
ou i Peaue froide cl eaue rose et un petit & vin,
ou en ti& rose ks troi5 pars, jtG a% pomme

331
d’orenge et vin, le quart. The Arabs also made
use of citrus juices in their cooking, though
they were not as frequent ingredients as
rose water. It was the bitter or sour orange
(now known as the Seville orange) that was
used like vinegar or lemon, as a souring
agent.‘@ Likewise, the Libro di cucina calls
for a dish to be made . . . agro a? naranza o de
limia . . . (1899:23). Neither orange nor
lemon juice is used in Apicius, but one
recipe is given for preserving citron (1958:
53).
Pomegranates rarely appear in the recipes.
They are of interest, however, because of the
medieval European association of them with
the Moslem world to Lhe extent that granata,
the Latin origin of their name, was lost to the
idea that the pomegranate (Grenade [?-n
Fraqais] . . . Gram&en en Italien, ei Granirda en
Espagnol, Pisanelli 1596:24) was so called
after the Moorish kingdom of Granada.
Pisanelli (1596:24), returning to the Latin
meaning of granatum, takes issue with this
seemingly widespread perception. Les Cren-
ades, ont receu ce nom de la multitude des grains
qu’elles jrroduisent, et non du Royaume & grmnde
en Espaip comme plusieurs pensent; ains ce
Royaunt: pour estre en ces fruicts tres-fertile, a
pins r:‘iceux le nom et armoyries,faisant pour son
enseigne et merque particuliere une grenade. Two
centuries earlier in Italy, the use of pome-
.,ranates was closely connected with Moslem
cooking. Rodinson (1950:434-7) has des-
crihed how the word rumman, Arabic for
pomegranate, came to give 3ts name to the
dish Romania, which appears in a fourteenth-
century Italian cook book. ShP;compares the
Italian dish with a recipe in A Baghdad
Cookery Book called Rummaniya and finds
them very similar. Roth contain pome-
granate seeds. Derivatives of the word
332
rumman are later lost in medieval Europe,
in the same way as are the names sommachia, a
dish with summac, and limonia, a dish with
lemons, both Arabic-based words found in
Italian cookery texts of the period (1950:
434-7).
The pomegranate was used both for its
juice, as iu the Libro a21 arte a2 co&a (1599 :
31), and its seeds as in the recipe tbr brouet
blanc reproduced above in the section on
sugar. Pegalotti mentions the pomegranate
only as grana de pomegranate, and Evans
suggests a tentative translation of “pome-
granate seeti’ in his index to the com-
modities (Pegolotti 1936:420). The pome-
granate was, perhaps, skinned and set to
dry with the seeds still enveloped in their
juicy pulp. Once dried, the seeds at this
stage resembling raisins, could be shipped
north.
We should now have a feeling for the
kinds of recipes circulating in the Levant
and Europe. Let me end by giving just two
recipes from Apicius to make clearer how
different was the food of Europe in the
classical period. Perhaps food like this was
still current in the early middle ages. At
present we may only speculate.” Note the
dependence on liquamen, the fermented fish
sauce.
Patina cotidiana: c.-rebella elixata teres cum pipere,
cuminum, laser cum liquamine, carocno, lacte et
ovis, ad ignem hem vel ad aquam c&dam coques
(Apicius 1958:94).
Patina de apua: apuam has, ex oleo maceras, in
Cur.~ana compones, adicies ohm, liquamen, hum,
alligas fasciculos rutae et origani, et subinde faxiculos
apa babtidiabis. cum wcta fuerit, proicia fasciculos.
et piper asperges et inferes (Apicius 1958%)
I have tried to show that the accepted
reasons for the sudden upsurge in the use of
spice in late medieval Europe - the preserva- fort impertinent, et fort ridicule, vous le pourrb
tion of food and the masking of taste - are satisfaire en faisant boiiillir du vin roughe ...
not adequate explanations in view of evi- avec sucre, gerofJe, canelle . . . (Robert
1674:
dence cited here. Furthermore, the drop in 58). As to saffron, Boncer‘ons (1655 : 156)
the price of spice in the thirteenth century notes its use only in the v&ages where it is
answers the question of “how” rather than put in for tht color and taste to which the
“why” this vogue was adopted, and might provincial inhabitants have become accus-
even be better understood as a result rather tomed over a most lengthy period, but which
than a cause (compare Lopez 197 1:41). The habit he finds is now in bad taste. With
continued use of heavily spiced cooking in respect to spices, Bonnefons (110) proudly
Europe after the general abatement of claims parsley LO be . . . nostre espice
interest in Arabic cultural forms can pri- Fra&se. . . . In the eighteenth century the
marily be seen as part of the history of hbuveau dictionnaire (1776 ~664) under the
fashion, a style remaining dominant until rubric cuisine sums up the new paradigm in
displaced by a new mode, itself ushered in eating: . . . aujourd’hui en France, comme l’on
with a change in the intellectual or cultural boit trk peu de vin, I’on exige que l’assaisonnement
milieu. This did not happen until the des mets soit presque insensible; l’on a pro&t les
seventeenth century, when the medieval ipices, le sucre, le sajfran, etc.
taste for heavily spiced, sugared, and colored The 1651 Cuisinierfraqoti by La Varenne
cuisine was displaced by a taste shaped by is our first written testament of the new
the classical tradition, As the author of the cuisine in Europe. In rapid succession there
i 739 Dons de Cornus mused, IL seroit sur@nant followed a series of cook books21 which set
que les Modernes dent 12s Grecs et les Romains the stage for France to become, in the late
sont deuenus 1s mo&&s dons tous les al::, ne seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,
dksent rien i I’antiquitipar rapport i la Cuismne.. . the source for the new standard of cuisine in
(Marin 1739: preface. XV). Again the Europe in much the same way as the Levant
change was stimulated by the position and had been four centuries earlier. With little
prestige of food in .he culture being emula- modesty Bonnefons (1655:216) proclaims
ted. Renaissance Europe was attentive to, in 1655 that good food is French food; . . .
and aroused by, the stories of the great meals laissant aux Ikngers beaucoup de ragoits
and delicacies of Rome. The sixteenth- tiprave<, lesquels ne font jamais bonne chke que
century Italian cook books, like those which quand ils ont des Cuisiniers de France.
have been examined in the course of this
paper, began to bring in mot% from Roman Appendix: The relative incidence of
cookery, but it was France where the great selected ingredients in certain MSS. and
transformation took place, for it was there
books of the fourteenth to sixteenth
tt t the food was stripped of its essential
century
medie-val garb. Seventeenth-century corn-
merits, such as the following, are found on In the table which follows, the numbers indicate the
the medieval ingredients. If . , , quefqu’n
number of instances
an ingredient is called for in the
part’cular text. expressed as a percentage of’ the
aimeet abat& wu sautsedeuce, ce qui me parok; number of imtanccs pepper is called for in that text.

333
 Be
oc
Par1 of text
$ 6 $
WWyed* Place and Title or
g 0
(pages) date author I c 9 .z 0

part; Apicius - 62 - - - 3
141-56
entire: 13th century Baghdad 93 29 96 187 2 51 108 -
34-47; 189-214 cookery book
part; 13th centuty Hispanic- 10 4 52 66 25 17 r;) -
K-80 Moo&n text (77)
entire; France Train? de 14 - 43 100 24 119 100 -
115-28 about 1300 cuisine
entire; Italy Libro di 463 ’ “C 388 263 350 338 I’ob’) 100
1-74 14th century cucina (8)
entire; France Leviandier 80 - 400 230 190 460’ 100 190
3-34 14th century MS. (10)
entire: France Le mtnaeier 115 10 285 195 230 420’ 100 225
125-241 14th cent uy de Paris - (20)
entire; Germany Ein buch von 54 54 73 8 46
l-29 14th century
England
guter Speise
Cookery 149 54 187
iii!)
108
-8
pan; 133 103 162
5-34 about 1420 hook1 g)
entire; England Cookery 88 14 107 83 53 136
69-106 about 1450 book II (58) -
part ; Italy De honesta 64 - 91 100 45 55
Book 6 (unpag.) 1475 voluptate
entire; France Le viandicr 317 - 433 475 250 925’
45-96 15th century printed ed. ;;I
part; Italy Banchetti 77 37 70 97 50 63 3
187-206 1549 (30)
entire! Flanders Eenen nyewen 356 19 238 321 94 333 108
105-230 1560 coock boeck ;:)
part; Spain Libro de1 arte 98 4 66 121 58 32
24-110 1599 de cocina ;z) -
part; Italy Opera, Scappi 76 - 58 ‘80 58 12 160 -
13-34 1610 (50)

‘In cases where I have not analyzed the entire text, I present data from sections which represent what we may
arbitrarily call main courses, that is, recipes primarily for fish, meat and poultry dishes. ‘The numbers are
drawn from the excellent index of Eenm nycwtn mock bocck. ‘Under “Grains” I have included grains ofparadise,
catdamon, and melegueta p,pper. In Sturtevant (1919:45) grains of paradise are listed as Amossam gmrwr-
pclraditi. Grain* of paradise was also a common name of Awaxaumtac&@u&,which is also called cardamon. (See
Ox&d English dictionary, under cardamon.) Further obhtscation results from Aaomam mckgwti being referred to as
melegueta pepper; see Sturtevant 1919:%. I grou them together heuuse there is no way ofdeterminlng in the
particular case which emoatamis actually meant. BThe Trtiti ak C&W memionspoimc a&e lbur times and de&es
it as ginger and cinnamon (Pichon and Wcaire 1892:126). I have, the&ore, added four atra imtanccsto the
tabulations for ghtger and cinnamon. P&e cheat is mentioned seven times but nowhere delined in the text, as is
also the case with poivrs asir, mentioned once; they are not included in the frequency count. The BN I’ieadicr
MS. mentions poimc makhtg
iwir once. Directions for @oivrra& include mixing toasted bread, ginger, and pepper
(Pichon and Vicaire 1892:34j. The one recipe calling for poimc a&r is thus counted as an instance ofpepper and

334
nutmeg

mace

CUbCbS

sumac

spices (generic
ingredient)

anise

celery seed
 2_
b ng
-u
Part ortext
surveyed’ Place and
date
Titleor
author
I
‘i
0
.E
E
e
z
z
Lo
f
cc
fjl p f g
c
0 .I
c” d zz
(Pages)

part ; Apicius 35 29 3 - - - - 100

141-56
entire; i3th century Baghdad l&1 147 4 - -
34-47; 189-214 cookery book
pat% 13th century Hisnanic- 70 32 23 - - - 45 -
16-80 M&&h text
entire; France Train? de - 10 5 IO 5 5 10 -
115-28 about 1300 cuisine
entire; Italy Libro di 13 13 50 38 125 - - -
l-14 14th century cucina
entire; France Leviandier - 30 - 10 - 20 - -
3-34 14th centuty MS.
entire; France Lemenagier 10 10 20 30 15 25 - -
125-241 14th centuty de Paris
entire; Germany Ein buch von - - - 8 31 - - -
l-29 14th centutv mar S&se
part ; England ’ -Cookery -- 3 - 59 8 5 - -
5-34 about 1420 book1
entire; England Cookery - - - 2 5
69-106 about 1450 book II
part ; Italy De honesta 9 - 55 - 27
Book 6 (unpeg.) 1475 voluptate
entire; Frame Le viandier - 17 8 50 33
45-96 15th century printed ed.
part : Italy Banchetti 10 - 30 - 30
I87-206 1549
entireb Flanders Eenennyewen 17 19 21 25 -
105-230 1560 coock boeck
ZYIO Spain
1599 de
Libro
cocina
de1 arte 2 2 22 1 13

part ; Italy Opera, Scappi - - 78 - 26

13-34 1610

pepper; see Sommt 1968: 114. Although the term ateaac~i$cti did not always include pepper (for example, the
fifteenth-century Le F&m&r defines areaacsespiccs specifically as clove and grains of paradise on pp. 49,59,63), the
Vatican Library MS. of Le viandin shows that, indeed, peppcr was sometimes considered a metsacrsprcc; as when
“racamces/&s such as grains of paradise, clove and long pepper” are called fbr (Pi&on and Vicaire 1892:257).
We cannot he sure, therefore, that the Burgundian household was purchasing pepper under the rubric of rruaac~
ipiccs. I can give no satisfying explanation for this shift to ginger. We may note, though, that in the French texts

336
lovage

marjoram

mastic

mint

mustard

oregano

parsley

rosemary

rue

sandalwood

thyme
For each text, instances of pepper equal 188. The
actu~ numbers of instances for pepper are given in
parentheses.
Each ingredient has only been counted once per
recipe. For example, if cinnamon is called for within
the cooking period and again to be sprinkled on before
serving, this is tabulated as one instance.
These numbers arc imperfect because 1 have not
broken down all sauces into their components. These
sauces, however, appear only occasionally and would
not affect the general relationship between the
numbers.
I have omitted some ingredients, such as borage,
bulgktss, dill, orach, pimpemelle, savory, suikenard,
and violet, which a~ palled fo. less than five times in
any book, and by fewer than five books.
JvOi+i?S
1 Mulon 1964:937. See also the chapr . “L’ali-
mentation” in Fran+s, M. (1972:164): La cuisine
ne pouvait realiser de veritablw progr+s qu’a partir
du moment oh elle arrivait a se liberer de la tyrannie
des epices qui, depuis des siecles, ttouffait mute
tentative de creer des plats vraimrnt originaux.
I See, for example, Lopez 197196: “. .. pepper,
which was almost as important as salt to add flavor
and preserve food . . .“, and (95): “One thinks at
once of spices, that prestigious class ofwarcs which ,..
almost neutrahzcs the vulgar odor of herring and beer
with an inviting aroma of cinnamon and nutmeg.”
Southern 1953:42: “. .. the pervading flavour of
pepper, cinnamon, and ginger could cover a multi-
tude of shortcomings in the kitchen. . . .” Also Mtdon
1964:937.
* Ktitxeck 1964:135. Although Peter is here
speaking specifically about the Moslem view of
paradise, there are passages in the Koran, where good
living in this life is encouraged. These two strata of
enjoyment are interpenetrating and not distinct.
1 Lc tigier dc Parir 1846: 132. Compare similar
direction for presetving a pig i,t Platina 1475:Book II.
De succidill.
s See Appendix for table showing comparative
incidence of spices in Apicius as well as medieval
European and Arabic cookery works.
. Cerulli 1949:377. See also 377-83 for occur-
rences of Alfonsi’s description of paradise in other
works.
, Rodinson 1949:144-5 for what follows. We do
know of at least one work on Arabic food translated
into Latin in Italy in the thirteenth century - the
330
L&r drfncvrir Cl Coadimmlir. See Rodinson 1958:441;
further, Rodinson has established Arab names for
recipes in fourteenth-century Italian cook hooks.
The recipes are very similar to those with the same
name in Arab cook books of the period.
s Metlitaki 1977:213. A good discussion of das-
sical and biblical sources for the garden in mcdicval
literature appears in Giatti 1966. The discus&n,
however, sufTers from not dealing with oriental
influences, cxeept for a passing reference (67) to
E. Faral 1913.
s BN MSS. lat. 7131 and 9328. This work is
placed in Sicily because of its inscription, serenissimo
ac sapientissimo principi in&to domino R. digna
Dei provisione Ierusaiemi et Sicile regi i8ustri . , . as
cited in Mulon 1964:934. “R.” presumably refers
to Robert, who reigned from 1399 to 1343.
10 I have not had access to the Libn de coqsha.
For the inference that the Libn & coquina is in the same
genre I depend on Rodinson 19580:444, Mulon 1964:
934, Bouchon 1958:23-+, These three articles liken
the Liber a% coquina to fourtcenth-ccntury Italian
cookery works; from the discussion and quotations
in the three articles it is clear that the Libcr dc coquinais
also similar to contemporary Arabic works. Thus, the
Librr can be considered here either as an example of
intermediary works which transmitted Arab cuisine,
or as a European cookery work responding to Arab
influence. 1 choose to treat the L&r a%c~tiac in this
section, as an intermediary work, because of the
contemporary image of Sicily as a place where Arab
culture flourished.
11 R. Mandrou (!96i :38) is mistaken when he
says,. ..pas
it livresdr rr&Gt prvprtmc~~ dits, en Fmnce du
moias, ovaal Ir milicr. da XVIIe sirclt. Lcs frail& du syle
“DC rt cibaria” slat &z ~frrdcs a’zm&cins. ... Bruyerinus’
DC rc cibaria is cer:aXy not in the cook book genre.
But the 7raPl & cv&e, Lc tiuadicr, and the cookery
section in Lc nrcrurgic & Pati are cook books and
singularly di%ent from De re cibaria.
1s Pichon and Vicaue 1892. Although they date
the earliest known manturript ofLe viandierto the last
quarter of the fourteenth century, Mulon 1964
reports that a Valesian manuscript has been un-
covered which antedates the manuscripts used by
Pichon and Vicaire. Unfortunately, I have been
unable to locate the journal FaHctie (1953) 8:73-B?&
to which Mulon refers.
ts Platina 1475. This is the only work with which
we deal that has extensive passages on mediiinc.
Nevertheless, the recipes read like those from the rest
of our cook books.
t’ Messisbugo 1549: 191. See, for further examples,
the English MS. of about 1420, TwoJ@tcnth-cdurg
cook books 1888:6, 7,12, 13, 14, 18, 19,23,24,26, etc.;
L&o aU arlc & co&, 25, 31, 49. 50, etc.; Lr m&gin
0% Paris, q&aUy 210-24. See also the Appendix
for frequency of use of saffron.
1s Arbeny 1939:203. For other rxamples, see
Arberry 1939:36,38,40-l, 44.
1‘ Lr n&a+ dr Paris 1846:lOE. rhere is a
question whether at this time the number of covers,
or bowls, signified the number of guests, or half the
number of goes&, as there is a possibility that two
guests shared the same bowl. Compare L.e rninogin
&Poti l&16:105.
87 Ls &Ragin& Paris l&16-1 1l-2. The fourteenth-
century ounce was in the range of 25-31 grams, and
the twentieth-century 0mx.e is equivdent to 28
grams. The ounce in Paris the”, as now, was one
sixteenth of a pound, and it has bee” calculated that
the oIlida! patnd in Paris (la livre poids offiddle de
Paris) in the Gntrteenth century was equal to nearly
580 grams, while the pound widdy used in commerce
in the south of France. (la livre poids de tzble) was
equal to nmre than 400 grants. See Guilhiermox 1906:
sections 24 and 68.
” Le Grand d’Am.sy distorts when he says.. , ad Theodoricum regum franaxum epistula. Corpus
on Gait entrer du sucre . . . mais plus souveut encore
on y mdait de I’eau-rose .,. (1782:221). This
passage further illustrates the confusions contained
in this early history of cooking; we have previously
noted his saying that sugar was Looked down upon.
I, Lenmnjuice~ybefoundinAB4ghd0d~
ti (Arberry 1939:39-N, 47), and citron juice in
the Hispanic-Moorish text (7r&cion #u,GoO
K&6:59-60). Chaptsr 3, De lap@arattan drrp a&&~
et & viaa&, d the L&W h lin aavdPami on dcscn’plion
&S bmu @I& et &s pm/imu, ac d&bed in Rodinson
(1949:132). deals with th adlance preParation of
the iuices oftbe citron and bitvi orawe for use in the
kit&e”.
w We do have a sixth-century medical work which
teaches the preparation ofl%od fix health purposes.
ThoughitistenuoustomakeinEere”cesabmtttbc
cuisine from wntentporvy medical works, for our
purpovritisuseftdtonotethatf~isstillbeing
mentioned in the sixth century. Lk poru, domes&
et elhuc et assatae; quantum tame” rexentiores runt.
turNbIIkUiOrCJSUIIt... et se dttriora fucrht quaudo
manducautttr, mdius est. sic tames. ut in sale pure
intingatttur. turn liquamco cx omni partc probibemus
(Antbimus 1928:7). The arkt matmscript we have
of Apicius data hm the ttintb century. Whether it
wassliUb&lgcopkdinEuropcEunopcuscisnotknowtl.
oneortheutnamtscriptswur~~toItalgitt
the mid-fifteenth century and the first printing
occurred ir. 1498. See Apicius 1958: Introduction,
9-11.
11 Besides the books already t&d there were, for
example, Massialot, Lr cuisinio rod et bourgeois.
Paris 1691, and Pierre de Lune, Lc MUUC~U cf parfail
at&n tfhosk/ rqzl, Paris 1662. These and others
like them went through many edidons. The seven-
teenth-century spurt of publishing recalls the sudden
fourteenth-century appearance of many cookery man-
uscripts. The analogous activities suggest a” ans~rer
to the question posed by Mulop (1964:933) as to
why such a long gap seems to have existed between the
production of the Apicius text and the new works on
cookery in the fourteenth century. In both cases, a
spate of new works on couking appeared with a major
change in style.
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