Why did Europeans go crazy for spices?
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When your regular diet is very boring and bland, a little bit of spice feels incredible, like you’re eating something amazing. It’s easy to take them for granted now, in a world where we eat spices all the time, but if you never ever got to have pepper with your meat, you’d freak out over the chance to have even a bit of it.
Spices are delicious?
Actually it’s far from clear that Europeans are the most spicy-oriented folks. Indian food has a very wide spectrum of flavors, as does a lot of Central and South American cuisine.
Because if made food tastes better.
It was also a way to show you had money by spending it on expensive luxury products. Using expensive products to show that you are rich is something that is done today too, fashion brands, sports cars, expensive clocks, etc are in many ways produce that are used to show you can afford it.
Everybody is crazy for spices. They are still a worldwide deal. European imperialism just happened to control global spice trade for the most significant part.
To cover off meat (think pre refrigeration) as an alternative to smoking, curing etc. It was a bit of a status symbol too.
[Alternatively…](https://y.yarn.co/cc9de5ae-df62-4a39-bbda-186f36c68375_text.gif)
Eat a traditional plate of corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes and that should answer your question.
Aside from the fact that it makes for a more diverse experience with food, spices are pretty shelf-stable and have very high *value density*.
Those elements —high consumer demand + high value density— together were key to driving early global trade.
People want spices and they are easy to transport at good shipping fees/rates.
Spices not only bring a wealth of flavors, but can release endorphins that can reduce pain and bring on a euphoric feeling. Also, the combination of spices can create flavors and experiences that you’re not use to, and if you’re used to a more limited spice palette, this can be exciting.
Same reason we do, basically! They taste good. People have always wanted to spend money on luxuries, basically as long as there has *been* money. There’s also the status symbol angle: *look at me*, you’re saying, *I have spices from Formosa and Barbary and nutmeg from the Nutmeg Islands and I have personally chosen to spend these things on you*.
You don’t waste spices on spoiled meat, by the way – if you can afford pepper in quantity, you have *herds* at your disposal, and you very likely ate huge amounts of very fresh and decent quality meat (although the breeds were lower yielding than today’s, because we’ve had hundreds of years to improve them).
Slightly lower on the wealth scale, you can’t afford to let meat spoil either! You salt it and dry it and smoke it and cure it and use absolutely every bit. And if you’ve managed to *get* spices, your smoked or dried sausage tastes better – you can use an inch or two in your pease pottage and honestly it’ll rock your socks off – it’s a pretty efficient use of what luxuries you could get. I’d cheerfully serve that to my family in 2022. But everyone has herbs and onions and garlic and salt and wood for smoking.
This idea that mediaeval food was bad isn’t necessarily very correct. Not much survives of the art of cookery, because a lot of it was oral tradition, but the traditional peasant grub of Europe is a direct inheritor of that tradition and it’s pretty diverse and excellent.
We wouldn’t like a lot of their rich food today, I think, because even allegedly savoury dishes were very often *loaded* with sugar. But they absolutely adored spices when they were to be had.
Apart from the “It tastes good” many spices were considered medical treatments, for example cloves were thought to cure plague.
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