In our current diet, spices have significantly declined, but they still have an unshakable role. Think about it, if Chinese Sichuan cuisine lacked chili peppers and peppercorns, and Indian cuisine lacked curry, would such a cuisine still be so popular? Will it still have such a rich taste? I believe that the results will disappoint us.
And what about in ancient times? The role of spices is much more important, because in ancient times, cooking techniques were more scarce, food preservation conditions were poorer, and the role of spices was indispensable to make less fresh food more flavorful.
And in some major events in history, spices also play an important role. The adventures of the Age of Discovery in Europe are actually inseparable from spices, and the purpose of Columbus's adventures was actually to go to China to find spices, because at that time, spices in Europe and the East were more expensive than gold. The same is true for the mainland, where spices account for a large proportion of the large number of materials that Zheng He brought back from his trip to the West, alleviating the shortage of spices in the Ming Dynasty of China.
So what are the aspects of the role of spices, which play such an important role in human history, in each specific stage of human history? How has it shaped and changed our society? What impact does it have on our human food culture and even social structure? These are all topics that require a deep understanding. In fact, if we understand the history of spices, we can also understand the history of the development of human civilization, and the two have a complementary relationship, which can be described as two sides of the history of human civilization.
Fred Chara, a well-known international education consultant in the United States, has created a number of culture-related works, and his work "Spices" has been included in the "Food Biography" series of books, which is the most used, the most widely circulated and the oldest of the five spices used by us as an entry point, combing through the historical events and stories related to these spices presented in different periods of human history. It satisfies our purpose of exploring the interesting history of food and increasing our knowledge.
The author divides the time nodes of spice history into the ancient world, the medieval world, the Age of Discovery, the era of industrialization and the entry into the 20th century. What impact will it have on society as a whole and on humanity itself?
Let's take a look at the changes that have taken place in the spice market in the 20th century, in the era of globalization. In this book, the author also tells us that the most important social situation after the 20th century is global trade, so spices will inevitably spread all over the world in this process, and there will inevitably be some large companies and trading groups to play a role in this.
Of course, in the new era, with the attention of human beings to health, the health of spices will inevitably be put on the agenda, and this involves the use of pesticides in the process of spice planting, the chemical changes produced by spices in our bodies, and so on.
Of course, more interesting stories about spices are still in the past history, or in the past development of human beings, so let's read this "Food Biography: Spices" carefully to start a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the history of spices.
This book is still a Chinese-English version, which allows us to read the original English text after reading the Chinese version, and compare them with each other to understand more accurately the author's knowledge and stories about the historical exploration of spices. #食物历史##香料##谈谈香料#