Since the sixteenth century, and especially since the nineteenth century, many Europeans and Asians have migrated to the Americas, taking with them their culinary traditions, including their knowledge of spices and how to use them. Because such knowledge was subsequently exchanged among different cultural groups, the use of particular spices became increasingly less identified with the cuisines that had originally incorporated them.
First iceboxes and then refrigerators diminished the risk of food spoilage, and thus erased the importance of spices in masking the taste of food going bad - the paramount reason for seeking them in the first place. But if spices were less necessary in cookery for covering up unpleasant tastes, they did provide pleasant flavors of their own, which strongly established them in cookery traditions. And this, coupled with the mass production and marketing that has made them so inexpensive, has ensured their continued widespread usage. Indeed, it is possible today to buy virtually any spice in the supermarkets of the world at an affordable price.
Of course, some national or regional cuisines can still be identified by their traditional spices. Restaurants that specialize in various types of international cuisine have proliferated - especially since the end of colonialism. North Africans who migrated to France established Algerian and Moroccan restaurants in Paris. Many Indonesian restaurants can be found in the Netherlands. Chinese and Indian restaurants have become popular in Great Britain and in the United States - to provide merely a few examples.
Somewhat later, a different development took place in Germany. During the 1950s and 1960s, a labor shortage in Germany induced many southern Europeans to venture northward seeking employment. And because of this migration, Italian, Balkan, and Greek restaurants with all their accompanying spices are now common in Germany.
Spices are so widely employed today that we scarcely notice their presence. Most understand and would agree that spices improve the taste of food and even aid digestion. But largely forgotten is the fact that the original purpose of spices was to mask bad tastes, rather than provide good ones; and almost completely forgotten is the role that the spice trade played in stimulating scientific thought during the Renaissance and the explorations and the empire building that followed.
Hansjorg Kuster
Bibliography
Foster, Nelson, and Linda S. Cordell. 1992. Chilies to chocolate: Food the Americas gave the world. Tucson, Ariz.
Kucan, Dusanka. 1984. Der erste romerzeitliche Pfefferfund - nachgewiesen im Legionslager Oberaden (Stadt Bergka-men). Ausgrabungen und Funde in Westfalen-Lippe 4: 51-6.
Kuster, Hansjorg. 1987. Wo der Pfeffer wachst. Ein Lexikon zur Kulturgeschichte der Gewurze. Munich.
Nabhan, Gary Paul. 1985. Gathering the desert. Tucson, Ariz.
Stobart, Tom. 1977. Herbs, spices and flavorings. Har-mondsworth, England.
World History
