Open a cupboard and the dried spices we have sitting on the shelves are nothing to bat an eye at, but for the longest time in Europe and the American colonies, spices were more likely under lock and eye and kept under surveillance or trusted watch. Things like warming spices and pepper were commodities to be used only by the elite to flavor a variety of sweet and savory foods. Just because people of a lower class couldn’t afford spices, like those imported from East Asia, the West Indies, and the South Pacific, didn’t mean lower class people didn’t want to eat flavorful foods. Cookbooks of the 17th and 18th centuries mention spices, but these cookbooks were geared towards the rich, who were both purchasing these luxury books and consuming the mentioned ingredients. While documents on how people seasoned food is sparse, there are hints of how poor people seasoned their food.
Herbs like mint, rosemary, and sage were hearty herbs that could grow and dry out to be used later and were easy ways to inject flavor into foods.
Onions and garlic were also quite common and easy to grow and proliferate in tough climates. Leeks also were affordable vegetables to use as a flavoring agent.
Poor man spices could and would be foraged. Herbs like nettles, mustard leaves, onion grass, and dandelion were easy to find, especially during the late winter and early spring, when there was very little else growing.
The mustard plant and its seeds were considered by many to be the poor man’s caviar. While the plant could be utilized just like dandelion and nettle leaves, the mustard seeds could give people an injection of actual spicy flavor. When mustard seeds are crushed and come in contact with boiling water, a reaction occurs releasing glycosides which give vegetables a sharp, slightly bitter heat. It had the essence of peppercorns without the expensive imported cost. Grown wildly or cultivated via seeds, mustard plants only take two and a half to three months of growth before harvesting. With a moderately short growing season, mustard was a great addition to have in a home, dried as a whole plant or dried in seed form, reconstituted with water.
One of the most overlooked seasonings was salt, which was used in industrial quantities for food preservation. Whether it be coastal evaporated bay salt or salt from the mines, salt was a pinnacle ingredient to preserve food quality, and give needed nutrients. While we would consider salt as flavor enhancer, in the 17th and 18th centuries salt went hand-in-hand with certain foods in order to eat them later on. Since lots of meats were salted, the flavor could be considered neutral and not special. Using the latter-mentioned herbs would break up the salted, smoked flavors of food and would possibly be a contrast against the inevitable monotony of eating certain foods again and again in certain seasons.
These herbs and salt are a great reminder of how far simple cooking has come and how we cook our food. To use dried spices is a given, but it is important to see how people flavored their foods with accessible domestically available ingredients.