Читать книгу Nothing More Comforting - Dorothy Duncan - Страница 9

In this island there are many spices … their Highnesses may see that I shall give them all the gold they require, spices also and cotton, mastic and aloes. I think also I have found rhubarb and cinnamon.

Christopher Columbus

Canadians seldom stop to speculate about the seasonings they add to their food, for we are so conditioned by habit, tradition, or availability that we do it automatically. With a full spice rack in the kitchen and an herb garden at the door (or sometimes in flowerpots on the windowsill) there are endless possibilities for flavouring the dishes that we prepare.

In our modern homes we often use the terms herbs and spices interchangeably when actually they refer to quite different ingredients. An herb is defined as a seed-producing annual, biennial, or herbaceous perennial that does not develop woody tissue, dies down at the end of a growing season, and is valued for its medicinal, savoury, or aromatic qualities. Spices are usually the seeds or the bark of trees or plants originating in tropical climates and have a much stronger and more pungent odour and flavour than herbs. Many herbs can be grown in Canada, while spices cannot survive in our climate and must be imported.

There are no records to tell us when the first person experimented with a seed or a plant and tried adding it to a joint of meat or a bowl of food or simply tried munching on it to soothe an ailment (perhaps having watched an animal do the same thing to cure a problem). Delving into the past only confirms that people have been using both herbs and spices for centuries for seasoning and flavouring food and for their aromatic and medicinal qualities in everyday life.

Legend tells us that it was the fourteenth-century writings of Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller, trader, and author of The Book of Marco Polo, that gave Europeans a first-hand account of the wealth of spices to be found in the Far East. Attempts to find and profit from the spices Polo described led to some of the great voyages of discovery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Pepper, first domesticated in India, was one of the first trade items between Europe and the Far East, and like many of its counterparts at that time it was widely used for medicine as well as for seasoning and preserving food. Nutmegs, from a tree native to the Molucca Islands in the East Indian Archipelago, were highly prized for their seeds, which when pulverized produced the spice nutmeg, while a second spice, called mace, was produced from the seed’s covering.

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.