Spices. You could say that they’re the spice of life.
With so many cultures represented in our community, we have a huge variety of flavours available in even our average grocery stores.
There are so many that we don’t even really think much about them.
I’ve got dozens in my pantry at home and I don’t even know which ones they are.
Although they are easy to come by these days, in the not-too-distant past people died for them.
European exploration of the Americas was almost entirely based on searching for routes to Asia to find quicker routes to spices and the riches that came with them.
Entire ecologies have changed to more easily grow things such as cinnamon and nutmeg.
The Book of Spices: From Anise to Zedoary by John O’Connell tells all these stories. It’s not a cookbook.
This is more of an encyclopedia of spices, charting the history of many of the more well-known ones and more than a few of the unusual, as well as traditional uses, origins, and sometimes the impact that they had on communities, cultures and even the whole world. At some point in this book you do start to wonder how many different spices there are and if they could really possibly be that different.
In fact, a lot of the time this is addressed. There are frequent mentions of substitutions and alternatives.
Sometimes this is required: some of the spices covered are extinct, or are replacements for ones that we bred and cultivated into something completely different than they started as in the wild.
I liked this book, but like any spice you have to be careful not to overdo it.
It’s not easy to read in sequence. Sorted as an encyclopedia it’s not a book you can just read front to back.
Pick your favourites, savour them and try something new another time.
There are occasions where I feel like more information could be given, but there are many other books available on these topics.
O’Connell offers a thorough bibliography and plenty of reading recommendations throughout the text.
Anyone who loves to eat should take a look. You might discover flavours you’ve never even heard of.
Steven McCreedy is a library technician at the Cambie branch.
