Far and near
Technology and economics, fruit and spices, and a nutmeg-grater.
These thoughts were prompted by one of our consultants grating nutmeg into his tea. Nutmeg, of course, is one of the spices of the fabled Spice Islands. Along with cloves, pepper and other products of that part of the world, it fueled the creation of the great trading empires of the early modern period. Many daring and courageous deeds were done, and many cruel and brutal also, to gather spices from the Far East and bring them back to Europe. It made some people very rich, enslaved others and changed the pattern of political power.
It must also have changed the home lives of many of the more humble Europeans. Spices that had once been extremely expensive and rare, when they had to cross deserts on camel-back, were now available by the shipload in Lisbon and Amsterdam. Of course the rich and noble had always been able to afford nutmeg and pepper; we have accounts of Medieval households buying bulk quantities; but now the less prominent could afford them. And, in the days before refrigeration, much of their use was in the simple preservation of food. We’re looking for a study (it must exist) of how this transformed the diet of a whole class.
Much like, we think, the post-World War II growth of supermarkets and long-distance food transport. The transformed economics and technology of the 1950s allowed the suburban family to eat foods they had only heard of before. Bananas and oranges, for example, had been exotic tropical products; now they were commonplace. It would probably be difficult to disentangle the effects of a different diet from that of the general prosperity of the period, but certainly the children of the fifties ate better than their parents had. There were even little glass jars of those things people had built empires on, years ago: ground pepper, grated nutmeg, powdered cinnamon.
Better except in some ways. When the supermarket must rely on large production from far away, it has to choose products that will travel well. We remember having only three types of apples to choose from. They were no doubt healthy eating, but not to be compared with the dozen varieties in our present-day local Farmers’ Market. Local-sourced products are not always better, and it may be better economics and even more environmentally-friendly to grow certain things elsewhere, but sticking to large-production, distant sources does limit one’s options.
And doing one’s own traveling can bring surprises. A few years ago one of our consultants visited Tanzania on business. He picked up a packet of Zanzibar spices on his way home in the airport. Therein were a number of hard, dense flakes of cinnamon. Now, what’s sold as “cinnamon” can come from at least three different species of plant; that from Zanzibar, it seems, is unique. When he had found a machine that could grind these flakes into usability, he discovered something different from any store-bought powder. It sent him back to the nutmeg grater and his mortar and pestle. Glass jars of powder are convenient and travel well, but now he’s investing the time and effort to look into fresh-ground spices.
