The Difference Between Herbs & Spices

The other day I got a “question” pointing out that spices were usually dried, in response to my post about juicing herbs, so I thought I would address that. I am only doing this because the answer to this question leads to a discussion of class disparity which, as I am sure many of you have surmised, is one of my favorite things to go on about.

The Electuarij sold by early modern apothecaries in their shops were absolutely dry powder blends. Culpeper said he didn’t know an appropriate English word for the powder mixtures saying, “species was the word the ancients used the word for such Pouders as were ready prepared for an Electuary but not yet mixed with any liquid substance.”^[1] The word species is Latin. At this time, it meant “a commodity of special distinction or value, not an ordinary item of merchandise.” The word was eventually anglicized to spices.  

This will make more sense to you if you understand that the Society of Worshipful Apothecaries was an offshoot of a guild originally formed by the Pepperers and Spicers.  Pepperers were the medieval wholesalers of the commodities while the Spicers were the compounders and the retailers.  The influence of mercantilism on the variety of ingredients is reflected by the opulence of early modern materia medica.

The apothecaries in London worked very closely with the Royal College of Physicians. Their Pharmacopoeia Londinensis contained directions for making the medicines that apothecaries were supposed to prepare in their shops. It was written for the educated elite. The receipts usually contained as many of the spices obtained via trade as they could pack in there. Electuarij Diambrae, for example, was a mix of cinnamon, zedoary, cloves, mace, nutmeg, Indian leaf, galangal, Indian spikenard, cardamom, ginger, aloes wood, sandalwood, long pepper, ambergris, and musk. These types of formulas undoubtedly made apothecaries and their suppliers quite rich.

Although today when you look at a shop for culinary herbs and spices there is no clear distinction between an herb and a spice, at this time they were two different commodities.

Herbs were those plants that could be grown or obtained locally. Don’t confuse that though with having a native status. There had been a long-standing tradition, going all the way back to Charlemagne’s time of the wealthy establishing huge gardens to provide for their needs. Many medicinal herbs became naturalized at this point. At the risk of boring you with a lengthy list, I am going to share this because I think it’s interesting.

“It is our wish that they shall have in their gardens all kinds of plants: lily, roses, fenugreek, costmary, sage, rue, southernwood, cucumbers, pumpkins, gourds, kidney-bean, cumin, rosemary, caraway, chick-pea, squill, gladiolus, tarragon, anise, colocynth, chicory, ammi, sesili, lettuces, spider’s foot, rocket salad, garden cress, burdock, penny-royal, hemlock, parsley, celery, lovage, juniper, dill, sweet fennel, endive, dittany, white mustard, summer savory, water mint, garden mint, wild mint, tansy, catnip, centaury, garden poppy, beets, hazelwort, marshmallows, mallows, carrots, parsnip, orach, spinach, kohlrabi, cabbages, onions, chives, leeks, radishes, shallots, cibols, garlic, madder, teazles, broad beans, peas, coriander, chervil, capers, clary. And the gardener shall have house-leeks growing on his house. As for trees, it is our wish that they shall have various kinds of apple, pear, plum, sorb, medlar, chestnut and peach; quince, hazel, almond, mulberry, laurel, pine, fig, nut and cherry trees of various kinds.”

Charlemagne’s Capitulare de Villis 802

By the early modern period, people had lost track of that. I am not even sure Timothie Bright knew saffron was introduced when he started up the whole “English Herbs for English Bodies” campaign in 1617. “English” saffron plants came from the Andalusians in Spain. In the 1600s, fashionable homes all over Europe even began to add orangeries which were greenhouses large enough that they could grow citrus trees in them.

There are several books printed in the 1500s for “the poorer sort” of people who lived far away from the cities, and you will note those receipts call for more herbs and fewer spices, but they still were not talking about actual poor people. They were speaking more to the middling sort.

My guess is that each person made preparations in a manner that they could afford– if they could afford such things at all. Even less fortunate people were likely to turn to a single herb they might have access to. My favorite quote about simplers is very appropriate to this conversation.

Nothing did more conduce to recovery than Experience, wherein we finde the most learned Doctors often overcome, by silly Country old women, one of which has done more good with one single Herb or Plant, than the most famous Doctors, with all their most elaborate Receipt.”

Henry Cornelius Agrippa Vanity of Arts & Sciences 1526

I could just stop there, but you know I won’t.

Apothecaries’ shops sold most items obtained through the spice trade, including sugar which was also called a spice by virtue of the definition I gave you previously. Just because something was sold at those shops does not mean that these commodities were in common use. Spices were luxury items that were probably only accessible to about 10% of the population.

Yet their experience defines the era, because for centuries historians of the educated elite were utterly ignorant of the day-to-day experience of the poor. They only really paid attention to them when they tried to stage revolts.

It is poor reasoning to deduce customary practice based on written sources. Regardless of whether they were printed or handwritten they were compiled by people of means who made up a ridiculously small percentage of the population. Anyone who could read and write passably was relatively wealthy and the way they lived does not reflect the life of the peasantry, which was the largest demographic.

There were also different ranks of peasants. In Western Europe serfdom had declined during the worker shortages caused by the plague. By the early modern era, the rural peasantry had evolved to a tiered system of tenants (yeomen, husbandmen, cottagers) and wage laborers. Yeoman, husbandmen, artisans, and urban shopkeepers, who are sometimes referred to as “the middling sort”, had some access to more expensive ingredients, but the bulk of the laboring class probably didn’t because one needed expendable income to purchase commodities.

For example, while our domestic practitioners wrote about using honey a sizable percentage of the peasantry such as wage laborers probably did not have regular access to honey.

We know for certain that the use of honey was restricted by certain laws that seem to imply scarcity, like in medieval Ireland where only children of royalty and upper-echelon nobility were entitled to honey in their gruel.

Domestic beekeepers had to be able to navigate various challenges. Most beekeeping seems to have been done in monastic communities and so the honey they produced belonged to the church and was needed for making mead and the wax for candles. People were probably a little too afraid of God at this point to steal from the church.

In medieval Ireland there was a compilation of laws concerning beekeeping written in the 7th century. so we know that someone who found swarm on a lawful green was entitled to a quarter of the honey for a year while the owner of the green got the rest. Also, landholders could impose a honey tax or wax tax on beekeepers whose bees were feeding off their gardens. I can imagine how that went.

Beginning as early as the 12th century demand outgrew production capacity, so honey became a trade commodity. Much of the honey in Europe came from the Iberian Peninsula. England got a good deal of their honey from Portugal. Chances are that people who lived in tiny huts with their animals did not have money to buy honey or other expensive ingredients.

If peasants had access to bees, they would have been using the wax for candles instead of dipping reeds in tallow to make rush lights. I would hazard a guess that having beeswax candles was some sort of status symbol.

My educated guess is that even if they could afford it, frugality won out. Honey and sugar were not the only sweeteners, and you see alternatives used occasionally in receipts. Juice from fruits with high sugar content was boiled down to syrup.  White grape juice seemed to be a favorite for this.   I have also seen apple juice used this way and there is a specific electuary made using cherry juice. Various fruits like figs, quince, and apples could just be mashed with spices. They also had barley malt which I promise I will get to.

This was a rather lengthy post to address a simple question.

These are the kinds of things I talk about with other history nerds. Historians who try to investigate the past from the laboring class perspective do exist.

I am often speaking about the practices of an elite percentage of the population on this blog, and I know that.  It is somewhat empowering for me to play around with a breadth of Materia medica that I am quite certain no one in the long history of my family has ever been able to afford.

My lived experience is growing and using herbs for food and medicine and so I decided today that I would add a page to the website where I can share pictures of my garden and I am going to try to balance that out a little bit in future posts.

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