Medieval Uses

Ginger was second only to black pepper in terms of volumes imported and consumed by the West during the medieval period. Galangal was also popular, zedoary less so, but turmeric didn’t appear (or reappear) until later.

Ginger (raw and preserved) was included in the extensive list of spices Bede left to his fellows and Leechdoms includes five references to ginger.³⁵ In the 960s, Corby Abbey bought 70lb ginger from Cambrai, among other spices.³⁶ It was certainly well known in England before the Norman conquest.³⁷

The eleventh-century physician Constantine the African was a North African who migrated to Italy and became a monk at the abbey at Monte Cassino. He produced several remedies to address flagging sex drive, most of which included ginger and galangal.³⁸ Ginger’s reputation as an aphrodisiac was widespread in the Middle Ages – which may have in part accounted for its popularity! The same appears to be true of ginger in India – van Linschoten described the habit of certain Goan women who ‘eate whole handfuls of Cloves, Pepper, Ginger, and a baked kind of meat called Chachunde, which is mixed of all kinds of Spices and hearbes, and such like meates, all to increase their leachery’.³⁹ Cardamom also has a long history as an aphrodisiac – it appears in the One Thousand and One Nights in various places: in Night 250 it is part of a fertility compound for Shams al-Din, who after forty years of marriage was unable to father a child.

Ginger and cardamom remains were found at the old trading port of Quseir al-Qadim/Myos Hormos on the Red Sea coast of Egypt dating from 1050 to 1500 CE.⁴⁰

Marco Polo noted ginger’s presence in China, Malabar and Sumatra, i.e. at that time it was certainly widespread through South and Southeast Asia.⁴¹ He also described turmeric from China, but it was clearly unfamiliar to him: ‘[it] has all the properties of true Saffron, as well the smell as the colour, and yet it is not really Saffron. It is held in great estimation, and being an ingredient in all their dishes, it bears on that account a high price.’

Colin Spencer notes that ginger was listed in the royal accounts between 1205 and 1207 in the reign of King John, together with numerous other spices, including sugar.⁴² This expansion of tastes reflects in part the influence of returning crusaders. The establishment of the London Pepperers’ Guild in the late twelfth century and the rise of pepperers, spicers and apothecaries is related. Spencer described several early recipes featuring ginger from the royal household of Edward I (around 1275 CE), e.g. sage sauce comprising ground ginger, cloves, cinnamon, galingale, sage, hard-boiled egg yolk mixed with wine or cider, served with suckling pigs’ trotters and other typically rich examples. He also describes a later medieval sauce for meat or fish called ‘gravey’, which is a puree of almonds and ginger sweetened with sugar. In 1300, the Countess of Pembroke purchased various spices, including ginger, cumin, and sugar at Winchester.⁴³ In early fourteenth-century France the kitchen of Jeanne d’Evreux (the widow of King Charles le Bel) included, among plentiful other spices, some 23.5lb of ginger.⁴⁴ Ginger was then clearly a highly favoured spice in medieval times and it was expensive: the price in England between 1301 and 1304 ranged from 2s 4d to 3s 4d per lb, though Ridley quotes 1s 7d per lb during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, i.e.

The early distribution of galangal is not very clear – it appears to have reached Europe from Asia in early medieval times. Galangal appears in The Forme of Cury of 1390. It is mainly in powdered form in ‘Sawse Madam’, an ingredient in Hippocras, in galyntyne sauce and other recipes.⁴⁵

The fourteenth-century Sir John Mandeville, a fanciful pseudonym of an unknown author, described Java and its spices so: ‘There growen alle maner of Spicerie, more plentyfous liche than in ony other Contree; as of Gyngevere [ginger], Clowegylofres, [cloves] Canelle [cinnamon], Zedewalle [zedoary], Notemuges and Maces.’⁴⁶ Despite the absurdities of much of his writing, in this case he correctly located these spices in Indonesia in an era when that part of the world was virtually unknown to the West, other than from second-hand and unreliable information.

The late fourteenth-century Menagier de Paris was written by an anonymous and probably fictional husband for his younger wife as a household guide for the times, including medieval ideas on marriage and a lot of information on cookery.⁴⁷ A small wedding feast is interesting for the volume of spices used, which included 1lb of columbine ginger (i.e. ginger from Kollam, India), ¼lb of mesche ginger (i.e. Mecca ginger, another false provenance), ½lb of ground cinnamon, ¼lb of cloves and seed of garlic, ⅛lb of long pepper, ⅛lb of galingale and ⅛lb of mace. Ginger is amongst the most frequently used spices in the numerous recipes throughout the book.

Ginger appeared in almost 35 per cent of late medieval English recipes in a 2012 study, making it the second most frequently used spice (after saffron).⁴⁸ Galangal was fairly popular, appearing in ninety-five recipes (6.9 per cent), cardamom in just one recipe, and turmeric in none, suggesting these latter two were uncommon in England before the fifteenth century.

Tostee [Toastie]

Take wyne and hony and found it [mix it] togyder and skym it clene. and see? it long, do ?erto powdour of gyngur. peper and salt, tost brede and lay the sew ?erto. kerue [carve] pecys of gyngur and flour it ?erwith and messe it forth.

Peeres [Pears] In Confyt

Take peeres and pare hem clene. take gode rede wyne & mulberes o?er saundres and see? ?e peeres ?erin & whan ?ei buth ysode, take hem up, make a syryp of wyne greke. o?er vernage [a sort of Italian wine] with blaunche powdour o?er white sugur and powdour gyngur & do the peres ?erin. see? it a lytel & messe it forth.⁴⁹

Ginger also featured in spice mixes, e.g. Blanch powder (white sugar and ginger, possibly with cinnamon), Powder fort (pepper, cloves and ginger) and Powder douce (either powdered galingale or a compound of aromatic spices, e.g. ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar); they probably varied among cooks.

Galangal appears in the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, published c. 1400:

A cook they hadde with hem for the nones To boille the chiknes with the marybones And poudre-marchant tart and galyngale Wel koude he knowe a draughte of London ale.⁵⁰

Dame Alice de Bryene’s household used 2½lb ginger in the year 1418–19, but she catered for many people.⁵¹ Hippocras was a spiced wine strained through a filter bag, and popular in that era. This is from a recipe (which includes ginger and grains of paradise) in The Boke of Nurture by John Russell (1460–70 CE), set out in a poem:

Good son, to make ypocras, hit were gret lernynge,

and for to take the spice therto aftur the proporcionynge, Gynger, Synamome / Graynis, Sugur / Turnesole, that is good colourynge;

For commyn peple / Gynger, Canelle / longe pepur / hony aftur claryfiynge …

Se that youre gynger be welle y-pared / or hit to powder ye bete, and that hit be hard / with-owt worme / bytynge, & good hete ; For good gynger colombyne / is best to drynke and ete;

Gynger valadyne & maydelyn ar not so holsom in mete … Graynes of paradise, hoote & moyst they be:

Sugre of.iij.cute /white / hoot & moyst in his propurte;

Sugre Candy is best of alle, as y telle the,

and red wyne is whote & drye to tast, fele, & see.

Graynes / gynger, longe pepur, & sugre / hoot & moyst in worchynge;

Synamome / Canelle / red wyne / hoot & drye in theire doynge; Turnesole is good & holsom for red wyne colowrynge:

alle these ingredyentes, they ar for ypocras makynge.⁵²

The amount of spices bought by the large aristocratic households could be enormous. In 1452–53 the Duke of Buckingham bought 316lb pepper and 194lb ginger.⁵³ For the 1483 coronation of Richard III, 26lb of ginger was purchased at a cost of £2 16s.⁵⁴ Four pounds of galangal was also purchased, at a cost of 13s 4d, and so was more expensive than ginger. Actually, the cost of ginger varied with quality and it could be similar to the price of pepper, or three times its price.⁵⁵ In general, the nominal price of ginger in England appears to increase from the thirteenth century to the late sixteenth century and then fall and stay low until the late eighteenth century, at which point it rises sharply again. The low-price era corresponds with the activities of the English East India Company, to be discussed subsequently, as well as new supplies from the West Indies.

The price of ginger in England between 1264 and 1786. The very low values (below 10d) are mainly wholesale purchases. Note the rapid fall in prices after the sixteenth-century spike related to increased availability and decline of Portuguese monopolies. (Data from J. E. Thorold Rogers, 1866–1902)⁵⁶