As more and more spices reached markets in the Western world, cooks and housewives realized their range and scope and the fact that a little spice “would go a long way,” while herbs often had to be used in quantity to have the desired effect. However, spices remained the favourites of the rich; because of their scarcity and expense, they were, for the most part, beyond the financial grasp of the middle class or the peasants. The Family Dictionary; or, Household Companion by Dr. William Salmon, 1695, gives us one of the medical recipes using spices:
Usquebaugh To make this the right Irish way, who were the first Inventors that we can hear of: Take two gallons of rectified Spirit * , half a pound of Spanish Licorice, a quarter pound of raisins of the Sun, three ounces of Dates sliced, the Tops of Thyme and Balm, of each a pugil ** ; the Tops or Flowers of Rosemary two ounces, Cinnamon and Mace well bruised, of each an ounce; Annis-seed & Corriander-seeds bruised likewise, of each two ounces; Citron, or Lemon, and Orange-peel finely scraped, of each half an ounce: Let these infuse in a warm place forty eight hours, with often shaking together, and somewhat, if it may be, increasing the heat; then let them stand in a cool place for the space of a Week, sweeten it with Sugar Candy, and so draw off the Liquor, and press out the Liquid part that remains in the Ingredients. For a weaker sort, put other Spirits to them, and do as before.
This is not only pleasant to drink, but moderately taken greatly preserves the Lungs against cold Distilations of Rheums, and other Defects that afflict them, and incline them to Consumption. It lengthens the Breath, cheers the Heart, and keeps out ill Airs occasioned by Damps and Fog, &c.
* Rectified spirit: a pure distilled alcohol, for which an inexpensive vodka could be substituted.
** Pugil: a pinch
Early explorers from Great Britain and Europe, like Vasco da Gama, Columbus, Cabot, Magellan, and others, risked their lives and fortunes by sailing west in search of a new route to the pepper-, cinnamon-, clove-, and nutmeg-rich Indies, and in so doing found instead the Americas, where the First Nations had been cultivating something the new arrivals called peppers (capsicums) for centuries. Those new peppers, along with beans, corn, squash, potatoes, and tomatoes, were taken back to the Old World as curiosities and soon transformed their cuisine.
In addition to the search for easy access there were attempts to monopolize spices so that they would maintain their allure, as described by William Rhind in A History of the Vegetable Kingdom, 1842:
The nutmeg is a native of the Moluccas, and after the possession of these islands by the Dutch, was, like the clove, jealously made an object of strict monopoly. Actuated by this narrow-minded policy, the Dutch endeavoured to extirpate the nutmegtree from all the islands except Banda; but it is said that the wood-pigeon has often been the unintentional means of thwarting this monopolizing spirit, by conveying and dropping the fruit beyond these limits; thus disseminated, the plant has been always more widely diffused than the clove.
The East India Company had opened up trade with those faraway lands where spices were grown, and in time, it became easier and cheaper to purchase the once elusive and exotic spices and introduce them into the recipes for puddings, dumplings, and flummery (a favourite food in Britain and Ireland for centuries, it was a sweet pudding seasoned with spices).
The first explorers, traders, trappers, and settlers reaching North America would have brought with them the knowledge of how to use both herbs and spices and of the strengths and weaknesses of both.
Mrs. Clarke’s Cookery Book Comprising a Collection of About Fourteen Hundred Practical, Useful and Unique Receipts Including “Sick Room Cookery” and a Number of Excellent Receipts Entitled “The Doctor” also What to Name the Baby is typical of the Canadian cookery books of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that included a great variety of spices and herbs in recipes. Published in 1883, the recipe for Soup Made From Bones is a case in point:
Ingredients: Bones of any freshly roasted meat, remnants of any poultry or game, fresh livers, gizzards, necks, combs of any poultry, 1 slice of lean ham, salt, 1 onion, 1 turnip, 1 leek, 1 head of celery, 4 carrots, 3 tomatoes, 1/4 of bay leaf, 3 or 4 cloves, 6 peppercorns 3 all spice, 1 bunch of parsley and chervil, tapioca, sago, vermicelli or semolina.
As the nineteenth and twentieth centuries progressed, spices became more and more available and easier and cheaper to obtain, and modern medicine gave us the “wonder drugs” of the twentieth century; with this, the use of spices and herbs as medicines almost vanished in many parts of Canada. Only in recent years have we seen a revival in their popularity and an interest in the centuries-old recipes to prevent and cure ailments of the body, mind, and spirit.
Memories live on in the minds and hearts of Canadians whenever spices are mentioned. Memorabilia live on in their homes: collectors of Canadiana rejoice in the details of the spice cabinets of the nineteenth century, those intricate little tin or wooden boxes, often gaily decorated, with tiny drawers or compartments to hold each individual whole spice. Often the cabinet contained its own grater to be used when a pinch of one spice or a dash of another was needed. How many Canadians have nostalgic memories of cinnamon toast to tempt their appetites when they had been sick in bed or as a special treat for Sunday morning breakfast? As our mothers toasted the bread, spread it with lots of butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon, and cut it into little triangles or fingers and placed it front of us, visions of those faraway places that we would never see filled our minds. Even today when we make gingerbread cookies or our Christmas puddings and cakes, the East meets the West on our kitchen counters. Herbs and spices have contributed a great deal to our Canadian food traditions and are going to continue to do so for a long time to come.
Gone to Seed
The Kingdom of Heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed …
Holy Bible
As we reach for that little container of mustard to add to a favourite recipe or to spread on a hot dog, few of us remember this plant’s historic past. There are many references to mustard in the Holy Bible, but the parable “The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof ” is the best known, as it is mentioned by three of the apostles in the Books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
Mustard was well known and popular with the Greeks and Romans, not only as a flavouring and condiment for food but for its medicinal properties as well. Pliny the Elder, writing in Rome in the first century A. D., reported that:
mustard could be used to cure hysterical swooning females affected by either lethargy or epilepsy or any person affected by a deep seated pain in any part of their body.
The ancients obviously tried mustard as a remedy for many ills, for by the late Middle Ages we find it described in Herbarium, a collection of natural remedies compiled by Franco Moria Ricci in 1980 from medieval manuscripts, as “a sure cure for gout of the big toe” (podagra), but it also warns that mustard affects the brain and should always be taken with almonds to avoid this side effect.
John Evelyn, a seventeenth-century Englishman, was an enthusiastic supporter of mustard as a medicine, stating,“it is of incomparable effect to quicken and revive the Spirits, strengthening the Memory, expelling heaviness, and preventing the Vertigenous Palsie.” In his treatise on Sallets (salads) he insisted that it was so “necessary an ingredient to all cold and raw Salleting that it is very rarely if at all to be left out.”
Settlers coming to North America from Great Britain and Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries brought the knowledge and skill of transforming mustard seeds into a powder that could be used to great advantage