Pricy Spices

The order Asparagales is one of the larger and most varied groups of flowering plants and includes several flavourings such as onion, garlic, leek, saffron and vanilla. These two latter are the world’s most expensive spices.

Saffron is derived from the stigma and styles of crocus flowers (Crocus sativus, Iridaceae family). It is the most expensive spice, unsurprisingly, as it takes an awful lot of crocus flowers to produce 1kg of saffron, which is worth about $5,000 or more. The flower has an exquisitely beautiful lilac-to-mauve colour with vivid crimson stigma and styles (‘threads’). The taste is delicate and slightly bitter, and it has an earthy or even tea-like aroma. It is also a powerful colourant and is commonly used in rice dishes, soups, cheese and egg dishes, and in many sweets and baked goods.

Saffron-based pigments have been found in Upper Paleolithic cave art from 50,000 years ago in Iraq, though these pigments were derived from wild plants. The saffron crocus has been cultivated for over 3,500 years – its wild precursor may have been Crocus cartwrightianus, which originated in Crete or Central Asia.¹ Iran, Greece and Mesopotamia are all possible candidates for its domesticated origin. It was used in the Mesopotamian cities of Mari and Nuzi, probably in the second millennium BCE, and the saffron crocus was documented in a seventh-century BCE Assyrian botanical reference.² It was also well known in pre-classical Greece; the first expansive plaster murals at Knossus on Crete date from Middle Minoan II age (starts 1850 BCE) and include the partially extant ‘Saffron Gatherer’ illustrating the gathering of crocuses by young girls and monkeys.³ In Egypt, it appeared as a remedy in the 1550 BCE Ebers Papyrus, and Cleopatra used a quarter-cup of saffron in warm baths for its colouring and cosmetic properties; she used it before encounters with men in order to enhance the erotic experience.⁴ Its reputation as an aphrodisiac persisted through the Roman era.

The Greeks and Romans used it mainly as a dye, in medicine and as a perfume, even in powdered form, to impart a pleasant aroma to Roman theatres, but it was also used in cooking. Apicius made use of saffron in spiced salts, sauces for choice cuts/tidbits of meat, for roast boar, and broiled Moray eel; he also used it as an ingredient in spiced wines (common for the period) and in Roman vermouth or absinthe.⁵

Saffron’s importance in Europe collapsed in parallel with the fall of the Roman Empire and it only appears to have become popular again in later medieval times, possibly having arrived in Britain (and Europe) with returning Crusaders. An Anglo-Norman recipe (soutil brouet d’Angleterre) consists of chestnuts, hard-boiled egg yolks and pork liver ground into a paste and cooked with spices and saffron.⁶ It was the most used late medieval spice in England, as it was highly favoured for its flavour and golden yellow colour. The fourteenth-century cretoyne was a thick soup or stew made with chicken, milk, breadcrumbs, and egg yolks among other ingredients, and coloured a vivid yellow with saffron.⁷ Typical medieval dishes using saffron as a colourant are frumentie and mawmenny. It was also used to endore pie crusts, i.e. paint with a mixture of eggs, ginger and saffron and cook to a golden colour.⁸ Fifteenth-century recipes abound with saffron, as in this yummy example from the Harley 5401 manuscript: ‘Cenellis. recipe braynes of calvis heds or piges heds and put it on a pan or in a pott; & put therto raw eggs & peper, saferon & vinegre, & stir it wele tyl it be thyk, & serof it forth.’⁹

The price of saffron in medieval times was always high and increased quite steeply over time. In England, the price per lb ranged from a low of around 40d in the early 1300s to 384d in 1535, this latter being exceptional; nonetheless, prices in the later 1500s were commonly greater than 200d.¹⁰ The town of Saffron Walden became a centre for cultivation of the saffron crocus in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, for use in condiments, dyes and medicines.

Saffron has long been used as a medicine, e.g. Hippocrates (460–377 BCE). In the first century CE, Celsus used saffron in medicines to treat numerous complaints.¹¹ Hedodt, a seventeenth-century German physician, said that there was no sickness, from toothache to the plague, that saffron could not eradicate.¹² It was also considered in other European countries to be a remedy for measles, dysentery and jaundice (yellow curing yellow), as illustrated by this remedy from The English Huswife of 1615:

take two-penny worth of the best English Saffron, drie it and grinde it to an exceeding fine powder, then mixe it with the pap of a rosted apple, and give it to the diseased party to swallow downe in the manner of a pill; and doe thus divers mornings together, and without doubt it is the most present cure that can be for the same, as hath beene often proved.¹³

The fourteenth-century dietician to the Chinese court, Hu Sihui, said that saffron had the power of banishing sadness and rejoicing the heart.¹⁴ Nicholas Culpeper also praised the virtues of saffron in treating a variety of illnesses (including those of the heart, lungs, epidemical diseases, jaundice and ‘hysteric disorders’) but warned against using too much: ‘However, the use of it ought to be moderate and reasonable; for when the dose is too large, it produces a heaviness of the head and sleepiness; some have fallen into an immoderate convulsive laughter, which ended in death.’¹⁵

Even as far back as the first century CE, saffron was adulterated with cheaper substitutes. Pliny bemoaned: ‘There is nothing so much adulterated as saffron.’¹⁶ It was commonly sold moist to make up the weight with water. Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius) is a common substitute and adulterant today.

Azerbaijanis use saffron to colour their ‘plov’ rice dish and the Spanish to colour paella (though turmeric can also be used); it is also used in some biryanis and risottos. It is an important ingredient of the Provencal bouillabaisse. Iran and Spain are the largest modern-day producers of saffron, though it is cultivated in many other countries.