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1000 - 2000 A.D. As the second millennium after the birth of Jesus dawned, it was once again religion that was taking centre stage and affecting people all over the civilized world. The spread of Islam moved on apace with conquest on many fronts, until the West finally became alarmed with the conquest of Syria and Palestine by the Seljuk Turks. Other followers of Islam were making regular incursions into the Christian Byzantine Empire, until Pope Urban II called for a ‘Holy Crusade’ in 1095. The Crusades (1095 - 1270) The First Crusade began assembling in 1096 amidst great enthusiasm and congregated in Constantinople which was hoping to regain territories lost to its Byzantine Empire in recent years. The Crusade was unique in the series in that it was one of disparate groups - knights and adventurers not Kings or Popes. It had the clear target in most minds of capturing Jerusalem which it achieved amidst tales of heroism and sadistic cruelty in 1099 and the much of the army dispersed, taking with it back to Europe, knowledge of many of the foods, herbs and spices of the East. The event proved to be somewhat of a re-awakening for the Muslim powers who then experienced a period of re-unification under Imas-ad-In-Zangri who recaptured Edessa on the Euphrates in 1144. The response from the West was the Second Crusade in 1145 which was brief and, in general terms, a failure. Zangi died in 1146 and the gradual emergence of the brilliant Saladin was noted when he took control of Egypt in 1169. In 1174 he became the Muslim ruler and regained Jerusalem in 1187. This prompted the Third Crusade which is remembered in history for the involvement of Philip II of France, Frederick I (Barbarossa) and Richard I the Lionheart. They did not re-capture Jerusalem but achieved significant gains until Richard eventually left the Holy Land in 1192. The Fourth Crusade, perhaps the most infamous, was called and led by Pope Innocent III in 1202 and was beset by transport and financial problems. The Venetians, who had undertaken to transport the armies but were not paid the agreed price, persuaded the Crusaders to attack and sack Constantinople, centre of the Christian Byzantine Empire in 1204, giving the Venetians control of the very considerable Byzantine trade. Some historians claim Pope Innocent was horrified at this whilst others say he actively participated in it, but the result was an irrevocable rift between the Churches of the East and West and considerable commercial gain to Venice. Another Crusade, largely in Western Europe, was fought 1208 - 1229 and yet another in 1217 - 1221 which attacked Egypt and achieved little. Frederick II started the next Crusade in 1227 but fell ill and incurred the wrath of and ex-communication by the Pope, but tried again in 1228. His style was to negotiate the return of Jerusalem which resulted in Pope Gregory declaring a Crusade against him. The Muslims re-captured Jerusalem in 1244 resulting in yet another Crusade by Louis IX in 1248. The army was outmanoeuvred and flooded outside Cairo and surrendered in 1250. The last Crusade was declared in 1270 by Louis again but he reached no further than Tunisia before dying and ending a period that was highly significant in introducing the foods and cuisines of the East to Western kitchens. Europe In Europe the focus was on the invasion of England by the Normans, introducing new elements to a culture influenced by the Romans. The use of spices from the East became a status symbol by 1200 and the European preoccupation with the world of spice was born. In Medieval times dinner guests would select their food from ‘chargers’ full of food, which was then placed on large slices of bread, or ‘trenchers’, which were used as edible plates. These were often coloured and flavoured with parsley or saffron. Guests would arrive carrying their own knife and did not eat so much in quantity, but hospitality meant that an abundant choice should be made available. Menus were large and extensive, but small portions were deemed correct and tasting more important than gorging. Food painting and even sculpture became important. The use of spice in food meant money and power, with cinnamon the most popular, having been in use in wine dating back to the Anglo-Saxons and associated with Roman and Greek usage. Ginger was used for digestion, cloves for the sinews, mace for colic, nutmeg for colds. The coming of William the Conquerer in 1066 was a watershed in English cuisine. He used dining to appeal to people of diverse stations and instituted three new major feast days. Christmas was celebrated at Gloucester with everyone invited, Easter at Winchester and Whitsun at Westminster. The real revolution, however, came in the time of Richard I the Lionheart. The influence from France and from the returning Crusaders ensured a wide range of herbs and spices were added to those of Roman Britain and used in noble kitchens. Basil, borage, mallow, ditany, true love, fennel, ginger, cardamom, galingale, clove, sorrel, mustard seed, nutmeg, anise, mace, mint, peppercorns and cinnamon were all in use in medieval times. Salt was considered so important it was stored in the Tower of London. The result was a highly spiced cuisine for the nobility and apart from preserving and adding taste, spices were very much a sign of wealth. Frumenty was one of the staple dishes for the masses - wheat berries, long boiled in broth or milk, flavoured and sweetened. During the reign of King John, standard mixes - powder fort, powder douce and powder blanch - were created and colour became highly prized. In 1357, Sauce Blanc was first recorded as the classic ‘balsamella’, in Cesna, in Italy. As an interesting aside, the word ‘garbage’ was in common use in this period, but meant animals innards or giblets, later thrown away, hence the association. The alehouse first became popular in the thirteenth century and the first taverns opened in London in 1272. By 1309 there were 354. In feudal times a large manor had a mill for grinding, an oven for baking and gardens for growing. The feudal castle had ducks, pheasants, pigeons, geese, hens, partridges, fish, pork, beef, mutton, cabbage, turnips, carrots, onions, beans, peas, bread, cheese, butter, ale and wine. The first celebrated chef came from France to work for Edward III (1327 - 1377). Guillaume Tirel, known as Taillevent, wrote one of the first major cookbooks called ‘Le Viander’. However it was left to the reign of Richard II (1377 - 1399) for the first English cookbook to be written - The Forme of Cury (see The Origins of Curry) in 1390 with 196 recipes contributed by the Royal cooks, physicians and philosophers. In France, the first cookbooks were ‘The Little Treatise’ of 1306 and a Sion manuscript of the late thirteenth early fourteenth century, nicknamed Taillevent before Taillevent as it formed much of the backbone of ‘Le Viander’. It must also be noted that there was very little reference to sugar in these books as, up until contact with the Muslims from the eleventh century, sugar had only been used as a medicine. French cuisine was not, however, deemed to be the culinary peak of the era as a cookbook written by Muhammed ibn al-Hasan ibn Muhammed al-Karim al-Katab-al Baghdadi in 1226 in Bagdad, is generally considered to be far more varied and informative than the French works. Mesopotamia, however, where all of it started, had sunk almost to subsistance levels by the twelfth century with agriculture completely static. India The second millennium was one of continued invasion for the Indian sub-continent. It started with the challenge for Khorasan in Samarind by Mahmoud Gahazmi (999-1030) who sent seventeen expeditions into India from Afghanistan. By 1025 he had annexed the Punjab and sacked many western cities. However, the real founder of Muslim power was Muhammed of Ghur in 1173. By 1206 AD Kutbuddin was Sultan of Delhi and the power was consolidated by Alauddin (1296 -1316) who conquered the Deccan. The next to invade were the Monguls under Tamerlane who invaded in 1398 and sacked Delhi. When he withdrew he left the last of the Tughluq, Mahmud (1399-1413) in power. It was left to Babur, a descendant of Tamerlane, to found the Mughal Dynasty that was to last from 1526 - 1761. Akbar, the son of Emperor Humayun who came to power at a very young age in 1542 was perhaps the greatest in the line adding Bengal to his territories and conquering Kashmir heralding a period of tolerance but the Dynasty peaked under his grandson Shah Jahan (1626 - 1658). It was the coming of the Muslim invader followed by the considerable Mughal influence that gave India much of the wide variety of cuisine that is enjoyed in the West today. The East Muslim and Mogul power were also the dual influences in the East during the first half of the second millennium. The plundering of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204 was the beginning of the end for the Byzantine Empire and by 1354 it had been overrun by the Ottomans, disappearing entirely by 1453. Muhammed II captured Constantinople and much of Europe up to the Danube. Selim I conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Arabia in 1517 and in 1529 Suleiman II conquered Hungary and besieged Vienna. It took until 1571 for the tide to turn when John of Austria defeated the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto. The Ottoman Empire suffered continued wars throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries culminating in a disastrous war with Russia (1768-1792). China was shocked out of its complacency by the invasion of the Mongol Horde in 1206, led by Chenghiz Khan, who captured Beijing in 1215 and held sway until his death in 1227. Between 1219 and 1222 Chenghis Khan and his Mongol horde invaded Iraq, Iran, Western Turkistan, Bukhoro, Samarkand then Peshawar and Lahore in India/Pakistan and finally on to Russia. The famous Kublai Khan then swept to power, continuing their influence on China, eventually conquering the Sung Dynasty in the South and starting the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368). Kublai Khan attracted visits by adventurers from all over the world including the Polo brothers who returned to Venice after a first visit to Kublai Khan’s court in 1269 and then departed on a second trip taking his son Marco Polo who did so much to tell the West about the marvels of the East when he returned to Venice. It should be noted that one of these marvels was not the introduction of pasta to the West as legend maintained as it was known in Sicily in the twelfth century and is mentioned in documents from Genoa dated 1279 and Marco Polo did not return from his travels until 1295. Japan enjoyed the Shogun Period from the twelfth to nineteenth century. The Hojo’s, although never actually Shoguns, were weakened by continued attacks from the Mongols in 1274 and then 1281. The Hojo were pushed out by Go-Daigo in 1333 and by Ashikaga who imposed strict fuedal control. The Tokugawa Shogunate (1603 - 1867) maintained the fuedal society and kept Japan isolated from international influence. Very little meat was consumed in Japan up to the Meiji era (1869-1911 AD). An Elizabethan traveller recorded “they delight not much in fleshe, but lyve for the most part with hearbes, fyshe, barley and rice”. The Exploration Years The mid fifteenth century onwards saw the emergence of a series of adventurers and dreamers who either acted out of dreams of exotic, distant lands in the mystic East or were prompted by nationalism and commercial pressures. Christopher Columbus (1451 - 1506) started his adventuring to Chios in the Aegean in the mid 1470’s and in 1476 set out for England getting only as far as Lisbon where he settled for a while. In his first voyage of discovery seeking the Americas and Indies in 1492 he discovered San Salvador, Cuba and other islands where, amongst other things, the hot red pepper was discovered in Santa Domingo. In 1493 he discovered Domenico, Guadalupe, Antigua and Puerto Rico on his second voyage, finding paprika in Hispaniola. In 1498 he visited Trinidad then Venezuela and finally down as far as Panama in 1506. Amerigo Vespucci (1454 - 1512) explored the northern coast of South America 1499 - 1500 and the Spanish and Portuguese interest in the New World was at fever pitch. In 1499 Alonso de Ojeda discovered Curacao and in 1500 Vicente Yanez Pinza landed at Recife whilst Pedro Alvares Cabral claimed Brazil for Portugal. The Aztecs, who had been in Mexico since the thirteenth century, had spread across Mesoamerica by the mid 1400’s. The main religion was the worship of Quetzelcoatl, the plumed serpent, who was tricked and disgraced by another god Tezcatlipoca, and he left vowing to return, showing close parallels to the ancient Osiris legend. Modern archeologists in Mexico have recently made discoveries that lead them to suggest that Roman sailors reached the Americas but this seems unlikely as neither chillies nor tomatoes appeared in Roman times although both would have been very popular. If explorers did reach those shores in Roman times, it would seem they did not return to the Empire. It was left to Hernan Cortes (1485 - 1547) to ‘discover’ South America when he sailed for Santa Domingo in 1504. In 1509 the Spanish found allspice in Jamaica and in 1518 Cortes launched his expedition to Mexico, launching his attack on the Aztecs in 1519. By 1565 Saint Augustine had been founded by the Spanish in Florida and Jamestown became the first English settlement in 1607. At the time of the arrival of Spain in the New World, there was no riding of animals but squash, beans, peas and corn were part of the normal diet. The consequences of this period for world cuisine cannot be over-emphasised, introducing many, previously unknown foodstuffs to Europe, not the least of which were the tomato and chilli. The Portuguese were in Guinea-Bissau in Africa in the person of slave trader Nuno Tristao in 1446 but their most famous explorer was Vasco da Gama, who set out for India in 1497 and in 1498 landed in Calicut in the south and brought back cinnamon, cloves, ginger and pepper. The Portuguese influence which led to a trade monopoly was strengthened in1509-1515, under Dom Alfonso d'Alberqueque. It was the Portuguese who introduced or influenced so much of the Goan food which is so popular today, and such dishes as Vindaloo - nothing to with potatoes (aloo), but rather, based on the Portuguese words for wine and garlic. It was the Portuguese who introduced chillies into Cochin and Calicut in 1501 and by 1543 three varieties were successfully being grown locally. So unfamiliar were the local people with chilli prior to the coming of the Portuguese that, for many years, it was known as Goan Pepper. It was the Spanish who brought the tomato from Peru and Mexico to Spain from where it spread, initially unsuccessfully, throughout the world whilst Portugal were responsible for taking the taro, potato, sweet potato and frying in batter (Tempura) to Japan in the sixteenth century as well as castera or kasutera (sponge cake) which was new to that country as they had no history of cake making with wheat flour. As Spain and Portugal continued their exploration and exploitation of newly discovered countries, Holland, France and England looked on with envy and all three soon entered the fray. Under the influence of Elizabeth I in England, Sir Francis Drake (1540 - 1596) ranged as far as Valparaiso then San Francisco in 1578 and in 1579 visited the Moluccas and Java returning in 1580 with a rich cargo of spices. Sir Walter Raleigh (1554 - 1618) also travelled in search of riches and conquest for his Queen, visiting America in 1578 and Guyana in 1595. The East India Companies Following the example of Portugal, Denmark, England, France and Holland each encouraged private commerce to become involved in the riches the Indies had to offer. The first of these was the English East India Company founded in 1600 and arrived at Surat in 1608 and again in 1612, travelling to Japan in 1610 and 1611. English cooking at the time was heavy with cumin, caraway, ginger, pepper, cloves and nutmeg so the commercial opportunities of a cheap, ready supply were very obvious. The Dutch East India Company travelled throughout China, Japan, India, Iran, Cape of Good Hope, Malaysia, Indonesia and Malabar reaching a peak in 1669 when they finally destroyed the Portuguese monopoly. The French were relatively late on the scene not being founded until 1664 but made their presence known at Surat in 1675 and ruled supreme at Pondicherry until 1761. Other voyages of exploration also went to Africa and the Mississippi area of America. The last to enter the race were the Danish in 1729 but they were almost immediately broken by the British and had little influence. The appearance of the English East India Company at the court of Emperor Jahangir at Surat in 1612 heralded three hundred years of influence in the Indian sub-continent. The Portuguese attacked the people they saw as intruders but were defeated at sea and soon it was the turn of the Dutch to attack, only to be defeated by the end of the seventeeth century. In 1633 the Company visited Orissa founding Madras (now Chennai) in 1639. Trading privileges were given for Bengal in 1651 and the British acquired Bombay (now Mumbai) from Portugal in 1661 and were in Calcutta by 1690. This laid the whole of the Indian spice trade open to Britain and although the demand had been there since the times of the Crusades and even before, the new prices made them available to a much wider market.
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