The smell of sweet cinnamon on your morning oatmeal, the
gentle heat of gingerbread, the sharp piquant bite from your
everyday peppermill. The tales these spices could tell: of
lavish Renaissance banquets perfumed with cloves, and flimsy
sailing ships sent around the world to secure a scented
prize; of cinnamon-dusted custard tarts and nutmeg-induced
genocide; of pungent elixirs and the quest for the pepper
groves of paradise.
The Taste of Conquest offers up
a riveting, globe-trotting tale of unquenchable desire,
fanatical religion, raw greed, fickle fashion, and
mouthwatering cuisine–in short, the very stuff of which our
world is made. In this engaging, enlightening, and
anecdote-filled history, Michael Krondl, a noted chef turned
writer and food historian, tells the story of three
legendary cities–Venice, Lisbon, and Amsterdam–and how their
single-minded pursuit of spice helped to make (and remake)
the Western diet and set in motion the first great wave of
globalization.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, the world’s peoples were irrevocably brought
together as a result of the spice trade. Before the great
voyages of discovery, Venice controlled the business in
Eastern seasonings and thereby became medieval Europe’s most
cosmopolitan urban center. Driven to dominate this trade,
Portugal’s mariners pioneered sea routes to the New World
and around the Cape of Good Hope to India to unseat Venice
as Europe’s chief pepper dealer. Then, in the 1600s, the
savvy businessmen of Amsterdam “invented” the modern
corporation–the Dutch East India Company–and took over as
spice merchants to the world.
Sharing meals and
stories with Indian pepper planters, Portuguese sailors, and
Venetian foodies, Krondl takes every opportunity to explore
the world of long ago and sample its many flavors. The spice
trade and its cultural exchanges didn’t merely lend kick to
the traditional Venetian cookies called peverini, or add
flavor to Portuguese sausages of every description, or even
make the Indonesian rice table more popular than Chinese
takeout in trendy Amsterdam. No, the taste for spice of a
few wealthy Europeans led to great crusades, astonishing
feats of bravery, and even wholesale slaughter.
As
stimulating as it is pleasurable, and filled with surprising
insights, The Taste of Conquest offers a fascinating
perspective on how, in search of a tastier dish, the world
has been transformed.
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