The Grammar of Spice
Tom Verde
Caz Hildebrand
2017, Thames & Hudson, 978-0-50051-967-7, £16.95 hb.
If every picture tells a story, so does every spice, as this enlightening and handy (all entries include menu suggestions) volume points out. Medieval Arab merchants made a fortune shipping nutmeg from Banda Islands—part of today’s Indonesia—“to cater to the luxurious tastes of European aristocrats,” writes Hildebrand. Sailors approaching Banda reportedly smelled the spice “before they even saw the islands.” Ginger will make fish “flock to the hook” when its juice is applied to bait, according to fishermen’s lore. Carob is also known as St. John’s bread, after John the Baptist, whose puzzling diet of locusts and wild honey may have really consisted of the pods “also known as locust beans.” Molasses made from carob remains “a traditional sweetener in the Levant.”
You may also be interested in...
In the Aftermath of Rome's Collapse, These Communities Shaped the Mediterranean
Three regions of the post-Roman Mediterranean, from 400 CE to 1000 CE—the Latin West, Byzantium and the early Islamic world—are the focus of this work.
Omani Author Zahran Alqasmi's Story About Life, Land and Honey
In his third novel, about a beekeeper living in Oman’s mountainous interior, local author Zahran Alqasmi grapples with a changing landscape around him.
Dissolved Monopoly’s Legacy Hinges on How India Honors Its Political Architecture
From the first fortified trading post in northeastern India, historian Rosie Llewellyn-Jones tracks the physical changes wrought by the English East India Company.