Full name: Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination

Author: Paul Freedman Year: 2008 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: History, Non Fiction Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780300111996 9780300151350 0300111991 0300151357

The demand for spices in medieval Europe was extravagant and was reflected in the pursuit of fashion, the formation of taste, and the growth of luxury trade. It inspired geographical and commercial exploration ,as traders pursued such common spices as pepper and cinnamon and rarer aromatic products, including ambergris and musk. Ultimately, the spice quest led to imperial missions that were to change world history.   This engaging book explores the demand for spices: why were they so popular, and why so expensive?  Paul Freedman surveys the history, geography, economics, and culinary tastes of the Middle Ages to uncover the surprisingly varied ways that spices were put to use--in elaborate medieval cuisine, in the treatment of disease, for the promotion of well-being, and to perfume important ceremonies of the Church. Spices became symbols of beauty, affluence, taste, and grace, Freedman shows, and their expense and fragrance drove the engines of commerce and conquest at the dawn of the modern era.   Similar books: Life on a Medieval Barony by William Stearns Davis The Taste of Conquest by Michael Krondl Medieval Households by David Herlihy Medieval Life by Andrew Langley Food in History by Reay Tannahill Food by Jean-Louis Flandrin Life in a Medieval Village by Frances Gies Tastes of Paradise by Wolfgang Schivelbusch Feudal Society, Volume 1: The Growth of Ties of Dependence by Marc Bloch Inventions of the Middle Ages by Chiara Frugoni The Medieval Machine by Jean Gimpel The Making of the Middle Ages by R. W. Southern Medieval Technology and Social Change by Lynn White Jr. Life in a Medieval City by Joseph Gies Near a Thousand Tables by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto Dead Wake by Erik Larson The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson Go Like Hell by A. J. Baime