The history of herbs and spices reaches right back to the origins of man. Scrolls have been found from the Sumerian epoch, dating back more than 5,000 years, which refer to the use of spices. In Ancient Egypt the dead were embalmed using mixtures of spices. Traditional Chinese medicine produced early herb almanacs and Hippocrates the doctor used medicinal plants. The Ancient Greeks even dedicated certain herbs to their gods.

As good as gold

Spices played an important part in the economic and political life of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Europe – comparable to the major global importance of oil today. It was not just their flavours that made them so valuable. They were used as food preservatives, and as such were necessary for survival, and also provided the basis for many medicaments.

The spice trade flourished and made many Arab states very rich, as well as the Italian city-states and later the colonial powers. They therefore defended their monopolies literally to the death. The secret export of spices cost many a smuggler their head.

The most expensive spices today are saffron, followed by vanilla and cardamom. And even pepper, now one of the most everyday spices, used to play an important part and was weighed out in gold pieces. From those days we get sayings like “worth his salt” and “salt of the earth”. Cinnamon was also one of the valuable spices. In 1530 the merchant Anton Fugger burnt the promissory notes from Emperor Charles V in front of him on a fire of cinnamon sticks, which he used to demonstrate how very rich he was.

How herbs were discovered

Archaeology shows that Stone Age man was already adding cumin to his food, and chimpanzees, close relatives of humans, also search out medicinal herbs with anti-biotic properties. The uses and effects of herbs and spices can be traced back to Celtic and Germanic tribes and also in particular to ancient Greece and Rome.

Pliny the Elder, a soldier and Roman intellectual, described in detail in the first century AD the effects of herbs for almost all known illnesses. And Lucullus, the Roman general and gourmet much appreciated the advantages of herbs. The healing powers of spices was demonstrated as early as the 12^th century by the “first German doctor” Hildegard von Bingen, in her treatises.

Via Roman soldiers, and later via Christian monks, herbs found their way across the Alps. Charlemagne issued a decree that a herb garden was to be planted in every royal residence and crown property. The plants were used to flavour, to heal and to preserve, and also to get rid of pests. For a long time the knowledge of how to use herbs in healing was a well-kept secret of the monasteries and convents. The knowledge was transmitted aurally, until printing finally made it available to large numbers of people. Finally, it became seen as modern to have a herb garden. In the last hundred years it seemed that modern medicine might have driven out the herbal witches once and for all. But in the last few decades there has been another renaissance. Which is a good thing.

Superstition moves mountains

Alongside the ancient beliefs in the healing powers of herbs, other applications evolved, which didn’t necessarily have anything to do with human health. Which is the case of herbs and spices which apparently work as aphrodisiacs. Often the belief in the effect derives from old legends from the ancient world or the Middle Ages. For example, the nymphs in Homer’s “Odyssey” were said to have used parsley to seduce Odysseus. Today we know that parsley contains the essential oil apiol, which supposedly increases potency in men because it stimulates the urinary tract. The only question is, how much of the herb is needed in a meal for it to work!

Other spices, such as vanilla, supposedly excite us by their aroma, which is similar to human pheromones. That is probably also the reason why vanilla used to be banned from monasteries and convents: it apparently led to unchaste behaviour.

As desire has a lot to do with smell, it is perhaps understandable that many intensively aromatic plants are regarded as aphrodisiacs, such as nutmeg or fennel. The substance they contain, estragol, is also to be found in aniseed, basil and lemon grass.

Other candidates for the list of aphrodisiac spices are saffron, ginger, myrrh, coriander. Ginger, chilli, mustard and cinnamon are other members of the plant world which stimulate body, mind and soul, and not just in erotic ways.