Tag Medieval food

Easter and Medieval Food

Chris Woolgar– Chocolate eggs, simnel cake and a return to those things we have given up for Lent? There are resonances in all these to medieval foods. While there may have been no chocolate, Easter was marked in the countryside by the eggs the peasants brought to their lords, a

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The social economics of the spice trade

Tuesday’s episode of NPR’s Planet Money features an extended piece on the booming spice economy of the Middle Ages, which seems to hold some of the earliest lessons in global economics. Always in high demand in the West, spices were not only used to enliven the bland European cuisine of

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