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Book Review
| Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices. By ANDREW DALBY. California Studies in Food and Culture1. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 184 pp., 24 plates, 4 color plates. $27.50 (cloth).
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Spices were among the first products of world trade. Many routes that were originally used for the exchange of spices are today most frequently and intensively used for trade in other products. Other trading ways like the legendary Silk Route across Central Asia are no more existent. Spices are enormously important for the understanding of the relation between food and culture; therefore, it is reasonable to start a new series of publications on this topic with a book on spices. |
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Andrew Dalby, a linguist and food historian, outlines the early history of spices. He does not deal only with spices, but also with other products that should be regarded more as perfumes or aromatics than spices. He portrays single products of luxury not only originating from plants; he includes, for example, ambergris, a secretion of a whale from the Indian Ocean. Between the chapters portraying single spices and perfumes one can read about general topics such as the beginning of world trade and spices in religion. |
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At the beginning of his book Dalby does not report on a dangerous taste but on a danger to spices: Silphium is said to be the first herb on earth that was eradicated by man in the consequence of economic interest. Greek and Roman writers reported on that spice from Cyrene, and they also noted that the herb could not be found any more some centuries after the beginning of its exploitation. |
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