On Food and Cooking

the ancient world they were more than mere
foods: they were thought to have medicinal
and even transcendental properties. Sacrificial
fires wafted the fumes of aromatics upward to
please the gods, and at the same time offered
earth-bound humans a whiff of heaven. Spices
came from the ends of the earth, from Arabia
and legendary lands to the east. The growing
hunger for the aromas of paradise helped
drive the European exploration of the globe,
the discovery of the Americas, and the
biological and cultural exchange that helped
shape the modern world.
Few people today think of herbs and spices
as emissaries from paradise or to heaven. Yet
they’re more popular than ever: because herbs
and spices do indeed bring other worlds to our
table. They mark the foods of different
cultures with distinctive flavors, and provide
us a taste of Morocco at one meal and
Thailand the next. They help us recapture the
kind of sensory variety that our ancestors