★★★★★ Hot stuff!

Spice: The History of a Temptation

Jack Turner

Columbus, when he set out on his journey west, was hoping to find, among other things, spices. At that time there were two routes by which spices could be brought from India and the Spice Islands to Europe: the older land route and the sea route around Africa pioneered by the Portuguese. In his Introduction to Spice: The History of a Temptation, Jack Turner writes

The Asian empires of Portugal, England and the Netherlands might be said with only a little exaggeration to have sprouted from a quest for cinnamon, cloves, pepper, nutmeg and mace, and something similar was true of the Americas.

Spice is a book in a nonfiction genre I call "History of Substances", which I find absolutely fascinating when well done. My three favorite examples are A Perfect Red, by Amy Butler Greenfield, which is about the red dye cochineal, The True History of Chocolate, by Sophie D. Coe, and this work. Unsurprisingly two of the three concern stuff that people put in their mouths and swallow -- indeed, it could be said that all three do, since some folks put cochineal in food to make it brighter red. Indeed, cochineal is still used to color foods today.

Some of these precious spices came from very few places. For instances, cloves grow naturally on only a few small islands, the Maluku Islands. Those who knew the locations kept them secret. Black pepper comes from a vine native to Africa now cultivated on the Malabar Coast of India. Although Turner tells the interlinked stories of several different spices, the 800-pound gorilla of the five is black pepper. Even today it is the world's most traded spice.

Columbus, of course, hoped to find a new sea route to India, which could have been used to bring pepper to Europe. He failed for two reasons -- first, he had grossly underestimated the size of the Earth -- India was much, much farther to the West of Europe than Columbus supposed. Second, of course, was the bloody continents in the way. But Columbus also succeeded in an unexpected way. In the Americas grow a series of plants of the genus Capsicum, which are now called red peppers. They are easy to cultivate and share the hot taste of black pepper (although the chemical responsible is different).

This was a fun book. I learned a lot and had fun in the process.

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