Why did middle-age Europe go full Dune when it came to spices?
Why was it so valued? Was there a gold rush for New World spices as well as those from Asia? What's was their deal?
>>1255754
Spices make food taste really good.
>>1255754
Spices, especially nutmeg, was valued as an anti plague amulet. It also made shitty, rotting meat and produce taste somewhat passable. Napoleon's Buttons has a very interesting chapter on the chemistry of spices and what made them coveted in Europe.
Status symbol, and taste, and food preservation.
This isn't isolated to spices, England got half of China addicted to heroin because they weren't getting their fucking tea.
>>1255754
>Why was it so valued?
It's one of these things modern people who also think that meat comes from the grocery store just take for granted. But that doesn't make them any less valuable.
Also, spices played in important part in medival medicine.
>>1255754
This isn't unique to medieval Europe. One Roman politician, Cato the elder iirc bitched about how the Romans wasted so much money on spices from the east. In the Middle Ages people believed the spices had medicinal properties which some admittedly did especially considering medieval medicine.
>>1255754
Yeah there was a gold rush. Portugeuse got in first. "The last crusade" is a good read on that. "A Splendid exchange" gives a good recounting of the spice trade from antiquity to Byzantium to Venice to the Portuguese to the Dutch to its decline
It made things taste good when Every thing they ate was bland trash
>>1255754
A lot of power and prestige was displayed at the dinner table, where spices were shown as a measurement of wealth. One reason was that their primitive medicine was heavily reliant on herbs, spices, potions, and tinctures made from them for a gamut of health reasons up to and including curing of plague.
Wealth of kingdoms could be built upon it.
>>1255798
>It also made shitty, rotting meat and produce taste somewhat passable.
Anyone that could afford the insane cost of spices imported from halfway across the world could definitely afford the cost of fresh meat.
>>1255798
Meat was far too expensive to just let it rot.
>>1255829
Pretty sure Cato ranted against silk.
>>1257863
n o
o
>>1255754
They cared about good food much more than we do since they had few other joys in life. Seriously, it was insane. Some cooks would put live birds inside their dishes so they would fly out when served just for the sake of making feasts more exciting. Or un-pluck roast birds to make them look cool, one feather at a time.
>>1255802
Don't you mean opium?
>>1255754
They didn't. More than one company was involved in the acquisition and transport of spice. There was no monopoly.
Spices are rare and thus expensive
Expensive goods make good profits for merchants
Merchants keep trading spices because profitable
Nobility wants spices because it's rare, expensive and tasty
there you have it
>>1258018
Mmmm, bird feces
If a medieval peasant could be brought to our times and taste one of our meals they would be blown away by the sheer power of the taste, abundance of meats and lavish helpings of spice and exotic vegetables. He would be further shocked by the fact that any jackass could obtain a lordly meal for such a low price.
For you this is Tuesday Lunch
>>1258018
>this meme
And yet you're more miserable than they were
>>1259553
this. GMO has changed our world so much. Back then peasants were lucky if they got more than two bowls of week old cabbage stew a day. Now the poor have a dispositions of being overweight.
>>1255802
They already got their tea via the Indians, niqqa.
