kinds of pepper: long pepper produced from the fruit of a shrub found in
northern India; black pepper from the berries of a climbing vine cultivated
in southern India; and white pepper made from the same fruit as black
pepper but processed differently. While today’s palate prefers black pepper,
the Romans paid almost four times as much for long pepper, perhaps
because it retained its pharmaceutical use longer. Black pepper came to be
used principally as aflavoring and secondarily as a meat preservative. Pliny
could not understand the pepper craze:“It is remarkable that the use of
pepper has come into so much favour ...[since] pepper has nothing to
recommend it in either fruit or berry. To think that its only pleasing quality
is its pungency and that we will go all the way to India to get this!”Despite
Pliny’s scolding, pepper became such an important ingredient in the culin-
ary life of respectable Romans that it was not subject to the 25 percent tax,
an indication that the Roman authorities considered it less a luxury than a
staple–but always a valuable staple. When Alaric and the Visigoths were
threatening Rome in 410CE, among the ransom they demanded was 3,000
pounds of Indian pepper. Over the centuries the demand stimulated tre-
mendous production in Kerala on the southwest tip of India, where hitherto
pepper had not been used in traditional vegetarian dishes.
If pepper could be found in many Roman kitchens, this was less true for
cinnamon, which was used in medicines, perfumes, unguents, and as a
cooking spice albeit at prices that ranged from expensive to astronomical.
Actually three different products were involved. True cinnamon, the dried
inner bark of the cinnamon tree, a native of Ceylon, has a delicate fragrance
and slightly sweet taste. Cassia was the same product from the cassia tree, a
native of Burma that was extensively cultivated in southern China. One of
the oldest spices, used in China as far back as 2500BCE, cassia has aflavor
that is also sweet but stronger and more aromatic. Malabathrum was made
from the leaves of a tree that grew in the Himalayan foothills of northeastern
India. All three are closely related members of the evergreen laurel family.
The Romans thought cinnamon and cassia were the same product, with
cinnamon representing a higher grade (and, indeed, today most cinnamon
sold in the United States is actually cassia), but they had no idea that
malabathrum was related in any way.
Although cinnamon (actually cassia) had been used in Egypt since at least
the mid-second millenniumBCE, little was known about it owing to another
brilliant campaign of misinformation. In a bizarre report Herodotus recounts
the manner in which Arab middlemen claimed to have obtained cinnamon.
It was said to have been collected from an unknown source by giant birds
and brought back to their nests, which were located on inaccessible escarp-
ments. The Arabs cut the carcasses of oxen and donkeys into large chunks,
which they placed below the nests. The birds gathered the chunks but were
so greedy they always brought up too much:“The nests break and fall to the
ground, where the Arabs come and get what they came for. That is how
92 When India was the center of the world