Book contents
- The Desire for Syria in Medieval England
- Reviews
- The Desire for Syria in Medieval England
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Abbreviations
- Prologue: Robert Sturmy’s Last Voyage
- Introduction: De Sire, the Origins of English Desire
- Part I The Dispensary
- Chapter 1 Sweet Wine / The English Taste for the Blood of the Holy Land
- Chapter 2 Spices / English Digestion and Indigestion
- Part II The Treasury
- Part III The Workshop
- Conclusion: Christopher Columbus in Chios
- Epilogue: The Verdict of the Trials of the Genoese
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 2 - Spices / English Digestion and Indigestion
from Part I - The Dispensary
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2025
Book contents
- The Desire for Syria in Medieval England
- Reviews
- The Desire for Syria in Medieval England
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Abbreviations
- Prologue: Robert Sturmy’s Last Voyage
- Introduction: De Sire, the Origins of English Desire
- Part I The Dispensary
- Chapter 1 Sweet Wine / The English Taste for the Blood of the Holy Land
- Chapter 2 Spices / English Digestion and Indigestion
- Part II The Treasury
- Part III The Workshop
- Conclusion: Christopher Columbus in Chios
- Epilogue: The Verdict of the Trials of the Genoese
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Chapter 2 explores spices as recorded in medieval English recipe books, poetry and drama, in light of the legacies of the crusades. This chapter focuses on the main Mamlūk exports of pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves and sugar: the ‘dyvers spices’ on Sturmy’s ship. The Levant was a global centre for the spice trade, and for sugar production, only declining in the sixteenth century in the face of competition from the new colonial plantations in the Americas. Crusading narratives continued to shape the exoticism of medieval English recipe books and hostile representations of Syrian spice traders, coexisting with a dialogic mode of digestion which attributed scientific agency to those imported goods.
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- Chapter
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- The Desire for Syria in Medieval England , pp. 65 - 92Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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