What We're Reading

Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice

Author: Michael Krondl
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Cloth $25.95 (304 P.)
ISBN: 9780345480835
B&T        MAJORS       YBP


Reviewed by Marcia A. Lusted, Statusing

Most of us in the modern world take spices for granted, since they are readily available and comparatively cheap in every grocery store. But if you take a close look at those "unit price" shelf tags and the actual cost of a pound of pepper or ginger, you can get an idea of what it was like when spices were one of the most heavily sought after and lucratively traded commodities in the world.

In his book The Taste of Conquest, Michael Krondl explores the history of the spice trade by looking at three great cities whose economies once revolved around spices and the search for their sources. Beginning with Venice in the sixteenth century, and followed by Lisbon and Amsterdam, these three cities were heavily involved in seeking spice markets in Asia and then bringing these valuable cargoes back to Europe where they were sold to feed the insatiable appetites for spices, both as a food and a status symbol.

Krondl doesn't just chronicle the histories of these three cities and how their spice fortunes rose and eventually fell. The search for spices was a framework and an excuse for acts of invasion and brutality. At the peak of the spice trade, men went on crusades, killed each other in battle, destroyed spice crops in order to limit supplies, and went to other extraordinary lengths just to access spices and the riches that could be earned by selling them. Krondl explores why Europeans used so much spice, and how the popularity of spices waxed and waned with fashion and economies. He gives examples of recipes using spices, and dispels the myths that spices were used to disguise the taste of rotting meat and that they were used in much larger quantities than they are in the present time. He also visits modern Venice, Lisbon, and Portugal, looking for vestiges of their great spice days and exploring local cuisine to see how spices are still used today.

All in all, this is a fascinating book, very readable, and not at all a dry historical account of these three cities or the spice trade as a whole. It reads as part travelogue, part cookbook, and part history book, and the mix makes it much more engaging than it might have been if approached differently. Not only will it make the reader want to visit these three cities, but perhaps it will also encourage them to be more adventurous using spices in their own cooking. After all, the age of spices is not by any means over: in fact, the world now uses more spices than it ever did in the past, and they are just as important as ever in both cooking and in trade.