(much as Turkish and Greek cooking does today), but the imperial capital could also count on supplies of grain from far-off Crimea, cheese and wine from the Aegean Islands, and oil from mainland Anatolia. As far as seasoning goes, garum ( garos in Greek), the fermented fish sauce so essential to ancient Greek and Latin cuisines, remained in favor here long after western Europe gave it up. The old Roman influence also showed up in a love of herbs, spices, and other exotic seasonings. The taste for spices, it seems, grew more pronounced over the years. Ancient Roman cooks had mostly limited their use of Asian condiments to black and long pepper ( Piper nigrum and Piper longum ), despite the fact that there was a more or less direct route that delivered spices from South India to Italy. Other aromatics were mainly used medicinally, though priests and embalmers found them handy as well. Tacitus informs us, for example, that after murdering his wife, Poppaea, in 65 C.E ., Nero used a year’s supply of Rome’s cinnamon to bury her.
In Byzantium, as the connection to ancient Rome faded, spices began to leach from the apothecary’s cabinet to the stewpot. This was remarked upon by an early Christian killjoy, Asterius of Amasea, around 400 C.E . “Becoming more elaborate as every day passes,” he notes with the usual religious ascetic’s breast-beating, “our luxury now impels us to plaster our food with the aromatics of India. Nowadays the spice merchant seems to be working not for the physician but for the cook!” Asterius was probably overstating the case so he could pep up his sermon. Spices remained important in the physicians’ medical kit, their therapeutic value appreciated perhaps even more than before as people became ever more familiar with the humoral system. If anything, the curative properties of the Asian exotics only enhanced their prominence in Byzantine cooking.
A wide range of spices was used in the kitchens of Constantinople. Apparently, at least one of the emperors, Constantine VIII, was even an amateur cook, “a highly skilled mixer of sauces, seasoning his dishes with colors and flavors so as to arouse the appetite of all types of eaters.” Our source, a contemporary chronicler, adds that the imperial gourmet was addicted to food and sex and, as usual, came to a bad end. The flavors in the emperor’s pantry would be only partially familiar to us. Mastic, produced from the sap of trees on the island of Chios, was a great favorite used in bread and cakes but also as a kind of chewing gum to freshen breath. (Turks and Greeks still add it to chewing gum to similar effect.) Storax and balsam, produced in much the same way in the southern reaches of the Middle East, perfumed soups and wines. Spikenard, an extract of a leafy Himalayan plant, and putchuk, a plant from the highlands of Kashmir, were just two of the many Indian seasonings the debauched ruler mixed into his sauces and soups. He could also turn to black pepper, long pepper, ginger, cassia, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, mace, and the equally pricey sugar to arouse those jaded appetites. It’s hard to know just how much of these imported seasonings the high-living emperor stirred into his pots, but if we can trust the few recipes that actually give quantities, the seasoning was varied but not overly prodigious.
It doesn’t seem that the fine spices we associate with medieval and Renaissance Europe were especially valued over other condiments in the middle years of the Byzantine Empire. More likely they were part of a multihued palette of local and imported seasoning. Perhaps they were not as exotic to the Byzantines, who were in constant contact with the spice-savvy culinary cultures of Persia and Baghdad. When the Byzantine army marched into the Persian palace at Dastagert in 626, we find out they looted about seventy-five pounds of aloeswood (another resinous compound used in cooking), but when it came to the silk, linen, sugar, and ginger they
In Byzantium, as the connection to ancient Rome faded, spices began to leach from the apothecary’s cabinet to the stewpot. This was remarked upon by an early Christian killjoy, Asterius of Amasea, around 400 C.E . “Becoming more elaborate as every day passes,” he notes with the usual religious ascetic’s breast-beating, “our luxury now impels us to plaster our food with the aromatics of India. Nowadays the spice merchant seems to be working not for the physician but for the cook!” Asterius was probably overstating the case so he could pep up his sermon. Spices remained important in the physicians’ medical kit, their therapeutic value appreciated perhaps even more than before as people became ever more familiar with the humoral system. If anything, the curative properties of the Asian exotics only enhanced their prominence in Byzantine cooking.
A wide range of spices was used in the kitchens of Constantinople. Apparently, at least one of the emperors, Constantine VIII, was even an amateur cook, “a highly skilled mixer of sauces, seasoning his dishes with colors and flavors so as to arouse the appetite of all types of eaters.” Our source, a contemporary chronicler, adds that the imperial gourmet was addicted to food and sex and, as usual, came to a bad end. The flavors in the emperor’s pantry would be only partially familiar to us. Mastic, produced from the sap of trees on the island of Chios, was a great favorite used in bread and cakes but also as a kind of chewing gum to freshen breath. (Turks and Greeks still add it to chewing gum to similar effect.) Storax and balsam, produced in much the same way in the southern reaches of the Middle East, perfumed soups and wines. Spikenard, an extract of a leafy Himalayan plant, and putchuk, a plant from the highlands of Kashmir, were just two of the many Indian seasonings the debauched ruler mixed into his sauces and soups. He could also turn to black pepper, long pepper, ginger, cassia, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, mace, and the equally pricey sugar to arouse those jaded appetites. It’s hard to know just how much of these imported seasonings the high-living emperor stirred into his pots, but if we can trust the few recipes that actually give quantities, the seasoning was varied but not overly prodigious.
It doesn’t seem that the fine spices we associate with medieval and Renaissance Europe were especially valued over other condiments in the middle years of the Byzantine Empire. More likely they were part of a multihued palette of local and imported seasoning. Perhaps they were not as exotic to the Byzantines, who were in constant contact with the spice-savvy culinary cultures of Persia and Baghdad. When the Byzantine army marched into the Persian palace at Dastagert in 626, we find out they looted about seventy-five pounds of aloeswood (another resinous compound used in cooking), but when it came to the silk, linen, sugar, and ginger they
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