September 28, 2022 • 32 mins
I sit down with Greta Hardin, host of the The History of American Food podcast. Greta is our conductor as we learn more about the evolution of spices in America.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jess (00:01):
Hi, it's Jess and you're watching to or listening to the
flaky foodie podcast, the onlyshow where the discussion is
delicious. And there's chatterthat you want. On today's
episode, we have with us theincredible Miss Greta Hardin.
She knows a lot about food andfood history. And she has a
wonderful podcast that Ilistened to, from time to time,
(00:24):
the history of American food,and I absolutely love it. And
today we're going to talk aboutthe history of spice in America.
And I'm very excited to learnand to listen. So welcome Greta
to the show. It's been it'sphenomenal to have you here
today.
Greta (00:42):
I'm really excited to talk to you. I mean, I found
your podcast and immediatelywanted to invite you in to
things I was doing. So I'm gladto come.
Jess (00:51):
Just excitement all around today. So tell me a little bit
about how you got into foodhistory and science, because
I'll tell you, I love the littlenuggets that she drops on her or
that you drop on your Twitterpage about food and food
history. And the way you look atit is amazing. So kind of how
did you get here.
Greta (01:11):
I mean, all my life, I knew I was going to be a
scientist, I was going to growup and I was going to be a
scientist. But I was very, veryfascinated by history as well.
And the stories that were thereand how sometimes reading about
history was either like enteringanother world. So it clicked in
with sort of all of like the SciFi and the fantasy I enjoyed.
And then also, there was allthese these hints of like
(01:33):
something's missing, something'snot there. And so it was just,
you know, just dig deeper andlit, lift up things and look at
it. But somewhere along the wayI realized and that science,
especially chemistry, which iswhat I was teaching, most of the
time is actually just thisreally weird, specialized
(01:56):
culinary education,
Jess (01:58):
food and science, especially baking and science go
hand in hand. So
Greta (02:03):
all all three of those things, you know, I just sort of
combined them together. And mypandemic, baby was this Food
History podcast, because likeeverybody else, I was listening
to a lot. And I was like,there's this one that I really
wish I could hear. So like, I'lljust make it.
Jess (02:21):
So for those who may go check out your podcast after is
kind of divided into differenttime periods. Do you care to
kind of talk about that a littlebit more?
Greta (02:30):
Sure. Um, I mean, I sort of looked at like, how one thing
that happened to me while I wasquarantined? Was I was cooking
food from literally all over theglobe. I'm like, How can I find
my own little house just likethe picking and choosing food
from here, there and everywhere,by just you know, driving up to
(02:50):
this street to this like onesection of Seattle that has food
from around the globe? How didthat happen? So I just started
diving in. And I'm like, okay,so we basically started on a
diet of chips stores, which isnasty,
Jess (03:09):
hard tech.
Greta (03:12):
And sort of figured out well, like how did we get from
there to say like Koreanbarbecue tacos? Yeah. How did
that happen? That's a big leap
Jess (03:20):
there. From no vegetables and maybe getting scurvy on the
ship, to all these fresh fruitsand vegetables and things.
Greta (03:31):
Yeah. And so just just tracing that history and
figuring out how it allhappened. It was like this great
adventure. I could go on. Andmake friends with my librarians
along the way. Definitely.
Library library Stan over herebecause this would not be
possible without it.
Jess (03:48):
Yes. So you're going to kind of serve as our conductor
on this train ride as we kind oftraveled through the history of
spice in America. So what's kindof our first stop our first
station? How did spice get here?
What was kind of the firstmilestone in history.
Greta (04:08):
So the first spice definitely came over with the
first you know, 10 boats to dropcolonists off in the colonies,
whether it was Jamestown, or inPlymouth or some of the other
non British base colonies,everybody even if they didn't
have spice, they really reallyenjoyed it. cloves and nutmeg
(04:30):
and mais, they were all a hugedeal back in England. And you
know, just were an importantpart of how people if not
prepared food on a daily basis,how they prepared and made note
of celebration food. It was ashow of power. It was a show of
wealth, and if you just don'thave that many objects in your
(04:52):
diet, having something thattastes really amazing, like
spice was an important part. Andyou so
Jess (05:00):
I'm sorry, you mentioned that it was used as currency as
well, how did how did that work?
Greta (05:04):
So at the time, you know, in those first, you know,
colonial 50 years, there justwasn't a lot of coin over here,
there wasn't, there wasn't papermoney at all. But there just
weren't a lot of coins. And soyou had to come up with things
that held their value. Andeverybody knew kind of how much
nutmeg was. Everybody wantedsome cloves, everybody wanted
some cinnamon, everybody wantedsome raisins. And these were
(05:28):
sort of like known quantities ofa somewhat known value. So you
could trade so many nutmegs fora cow, or, you know, so many
reasons to help people put upyour house.
Jess (05:38):
So these spices were they they weren't able to grow them
in America. So it was all kindof reliance on the chips, kind
of bringing it in a shipment ofspices, I'm assuming?
Greta (05:51):
Oh, yes, absolutely. In fact, the thing that knocked my
socks off was realizing that somuch that we take for granted
and how global trade works, isso rooted in the sort of
discovery of the spice tradewhen the Dutch and the French
and the British all found thesort of the sources of spices,
(06:13):
cloves, and nutmeg actually arefrom two tiny little islands in
the Indian Ocean. Which isastounding. And so there was a
lot of blood and treasurespilled either trying to keep
the monopoly of that or to tryto break the monopoly and, you
know, grow clothes elsewhere,grow nutmeg elsewhere, and sort
(06:34):
of expand this. I mean, thesethese things were so valuable.
It was sort of the one way youcould literally grow money on
trees.
Jess (06:44):
So I'm still picturing somebody selling a cow for six
nutmegs are or how fascinating,so how to kind of Native
Americans and the kind ofinteraction between those people
who settled colonists whosettled in America and Native
(07:06):
Americans, did Native Americansbring different spices? Did the
colonists kind of introducedNative Americans to different
spices that they didn't have?
How did that work?
Greta (07:17):
That's a really interesting question. As far as
foodstuffs, most of thecolonists looked looked upon the
bounty that was America, andlike, basically, if it wasn't an
animal, they pretty much kind ofdidn't bother with it. They
really weren't that interestedin a lot of American plant foods
to begin with. They imported awhole bunch of their own plant
(07:39):
foods, corn being a reallynotable exception, because it
was sort of like, okay, fine,I'll read corn or I'll die. But
other than that, there's justutter lack of curiosity unless
it was something that they kindof recognized. And so the Native
Americans definitely had theirown spices. The one exception is
(08:01):
SassaFrass. Somewhere alongthere, some of the earliest
explorers notice that SassaFrasswas being used as a tea as a
poultice, as you know, a lot ofdifferent things in different
customs. And somehow theydecided SassaFrass was the
wonder drug, it was sort of likekale and kombucha and I don't
(08:25):
know something else.
Jess (08:27):
So they had their own little t shirt presses, you will
get the Eat SassaFrass
Greta (08:36):
there is this enormous 16th century drug trade between
England and the Virginia colonyin in SassaFrass. And it was
supposed to, like, you know,help with fertility cure
syphilis, I don't know give youa better singing. You name it.
Jess (08:57):
So we know SassaFrass most commonly in root beer. So how
did that come to be the youknow,
Greta (09:04):
it was that was sort of like one of its leftover things.
I mean, even today, people willstill have SassaFrass tea and
you can if you chew on thesticks, that kind of has a
numbing thing, so it was goodfor people with toothaches. But
its widest use for a long timeis as a thickener in gumbo, the
gumbo filet is SassaFrasspowder. And so that sort of
(09:24):
became its its biggest use alongwith SassaFrass tea and that was
the way people sort of defendedagainst scurvy because there's a
there's a bunch of vitamin C andit's, you know, just sort of a
general general spring tonic.
But as, as all these other usesfor SassaFrass and Sassuolo
were, were sort of faded out,you know, some of these old
(09:46):
nostalgic things were werelifted just just to rim Okay,
Jess (09:51):
so it was kind of after the big SassaFrass Gray's just
left over flavor okay. So afterthe call the Calvinists came
over, you know, I had theclothes there nutmeg, what was
kind of the next kind of step inthe evolution of spice in
America.
Greta (10:08):
Um, so for a long time, we were really sort of stuck in
this clove, nutmeg, bay leaves,onions. And then some herbs like
thyme, parsley, you know, thosesort of got stuck for a long
time, however, you get sort ofto the end of the 18th century,
and Southern cuisine is startingto spread more into the rest of
(10:33):
the country. And the chilipepper and the tomato finally,
sort of like make their move. Sothe English colonists themselves
weren't particularlyadventurous, and they, they were
like, okay with onion soup orgarlic suspicious. And we're
(10:53):
happy when Black Pepper showedup, but Black Pepper was
expensive. And the heat of itcould be replicated by dried
ground chili peppers. And so youfind dried red, red pepper, or
long pepper sometimes in somecookbooks, when they finally
started trading those chilipeppers up and down the coast.
(11:16):
So that was sort of the nextthing that that invaded.
Jess (11:19):
So or moved around. So it was the big chili pepper craze
craze around what time period isthis? It really
Greta (11:27):
it really sort of gets going in the late 18th century.
So right around theRevolutionary War, when you have
a lot of enslaved people workingin plant patient kitchens and
sort of bringing their knowledgeof plant foods into those
kitchens. And then people comingdown and visiting as you know,
they're figuring out okay, howare we going to put together
(11:48):
this government? How are wegoing to do trade within our new
country? And the like, wow, thatonly are eating vegetables.
They're awfully tasty. How areyou doing? And so ground red
peppers started to sort of moveslowly up, but it was really
used kind of the same way we uselike black salt and pepper like
(12:09):
black pepper today. Though, itwasn't so much like we think of
like chili having like sweetnessand heat and these varieties of
flavors. It was just sort ofthis, like low level heat that
would sort of be added in andscattered in. Michael Twitty
when he talks about kitchenpepper is sort of this this
combination of like, maybe somecumin, maybe some fennel, maybe
(12:34):
some chili pepper, or maybe somesalt, maybe this, you know,
every kitchen kind of had theirown blend. And like a few
people. Yeah, exactly like that.
And so people started growingtheir own gardens, and they were
able to really sort of establishthe herbs from home. You know,
what was going on here inAmerica, all the herbs and
(12:55):
spices available here. Thecolonists just were not curious.
So I mean, ramps made becausethey were just basically onions.
But you know, what spices wereavailable in the US sort of as
native species was not ofinterest to the earlier
colonists.
Jess (13:15):
That's really interesting.
I always thought it was kind ofborrow here borrow there, but it
was just kind of reserved for asyou said meat and maybe corn.
Greta (13:25):
Yeah. I mean, cranberries became a big thing. But they
were sort of recognizable asberries. And then they are also
they became a cash crop, butjust sort of like hunting around
and doing that exploratory workof like, is this tasty? Does
this add anything that was notthat because this was a Savage
Land with savage things, andthey, they wouldn't sort of make
(13:50):
more elevated, elegant,civilized cuisine.
Jess (13:54):
So you have the chili pepper kind of coming in? What
was kind of the next bigexplosion of spice
Greta (14:01):
so the next big change that happened and it was oh my
goodness, the people who ransociety Hey, and this one, it
was garlic. Oh,
Jess (14:12):
thank you speaking my language. Things just got
interesting. Okay. So, so tellme about the garlic
Greta (14:22):
garlic sort of came in from a bunch of directions and
it had to make a bunch ofrunning starts at getting into
American food. I mean, garlicwas a huge player in South and
Central America. The Caribbeanwas all about garlic they were
happy about it their garlic wasgreat because it stored even
better than onions because youknow, onions will eventually go
(14:44):
bad. But garlic you can try andit'll just behave itself. But
when you had a Italians andEastern Europeans and people
from South and Central Asia whenyou had the Chinese coming in to
build the railroads. I mean, wewere basically being bombarded
by garlic from the east coast onthe West Coast. Everybody
(15:10):
finally gave up and they'relike, you know, this is pretty
good. But let's not go crazy. Sowhen you look at the cookbooks
from the end of the 19th centuryand early 20th century, there'll
be like one teaspoon of garlicserved. So
Jess (15:23):
Wow. Yeah. They were definitely holding back on the
garlic.
Greta (15:30):
And so it was like, This is tasty, but you know, I mean,
I was astounded. Somebodyreminded me that in the movie,
It's a Wonderful Life, you know,which came out, you know, in the
middle of the 20th century,Jimmy Stewart's wife sort of
says something disparagingabout, Oh, I bet you're gonna go
talk to the garlic. Oh, wow.
Like it was still seen as thislike, you know, dirty stinky
(15:53):
foreigner. Oh, wow. Hmm. But,but when, especially when the
Chinese came in to build therailroads and dig for gold in
California, and from the WestCoast, they brought, they
brought ginger, they broughtgarlic, they brought, you know,
a lot of sort of bitter greensthat we really appreciate today,
but we thought they were weirdand funny tasting.
Jess (16:19):
So you have garlic image, and all of these different
nationalities ethnicities comingin from each side, and they
brought garlic. Did they bringanything else? Or did it take a
little while for it to catch on?
Was garlic just like, Okay,that's enough, we'll just take
the garlic,
Greta (16:35):
I really think it was sort of like, oh, whoa, you
know, we'll just take thegarlic, somewhere kind of
between the turn of the 20thcentury and up to World War Two,
we started to experiment inspice mixes. And if you sort of
think about the the magic of thespice mix, so Kentucky Fried
(16:58):
Chicken and the 11 herbs andspices. And like one of the
secret ingredients in there iswhite pepper. You know, the
French love to use white pepper,the Chinese use a lot of white
pepper, but Americans unlesswe're like cooking something
special out of a Julia Childthing we're like and so for
(17:21):
really most of the 20th century,we sort of topped out on you
know what individual spices wewould have in our kitchens, but
we did get fascinated with spicemixes and sort of so you have
something called Beaumont whichwas sort of like a Creole
seasoning you have the CajunSpice mixes you start to get you
(17:48):
know hot sauces a little bitespecially in the second half of
the 20th century when Cajun foodand salsa start to explode. And
it gets really exciting and it'sit's really not until I would
say the 1980s or the 1990s whenAmericans discover they love
(18:10):
garlic finally and as aconsequence of our meddling
around in Southeast Asia westart to get a whole new
appreciation for new herbs andspices and for fresh herbs
(18:32):
because for a long time peoplewere buying I kid you not dried
parsley and dried chives
Jess (18:40):
which we all know turns the cardboard kind of loses a
lot of flavor we dry it
Greta (18:48):
like there's nothing there I mean a lot of things
dried are fine I mean driedginger dried and you know exact
exactly dill is great but driedparsley but the spice mix and
then you know sort of entercilantro enter lemongrass and
(19:11):
and then a whole new set ofchili peppers coming at us from
Southeast Asia you know reallyopened our eyes and then we
realize wait there's there's notjust paprika, there's smoked
paprika, there's hot paprika,there's you know we started just
getting very excited by all ofthese varieties. So the end of
the 20th century was when peoplestarted to realize that there
(19:34):
was freshness and that there wasvariety. And I think from there
with gone a little crazy.
Jess (19:43):
Yes my spice cabinet is full of everything from
everywhere from garam masala toCajun blackened seasoning mix
all the way to five spice so youknow that's Halloween cabinet
and And that just shows howglobal our pantries have
Greta (20:04):
become. And the interesting thing is, you know,
you you do you look at yourCajun spice and you look at your
curry mixture and you look atgaram masala and you realize
there's some spices there thatare in all of them like black
pepper is almost an all of themand or chili peppers will be in
most of the or you, you realizelike wow star nice is in this
(20:29):
one and that one and that one.
And it becomes very interestinghow these, it's really just kind
of a smaller handful has beencombined and recombined and
combined, again, into thesedifferent combinations. And, you
know, there's like infinitypossibilities.
Jess (20:48):
Do you have any other kind of spice related little history
nuggets, just like you had aboutthe nutmeg coming from two tiny
islands?
Greta (21:01):
Well, another fun one is so the island of Grenada was
established as sort of theCaribbean home of nutmeg. In
fact, their flag when theydeclared independence actually
has this very interestingstylized nutmeg motif on it.
It's fun to look up. But cloveshave a very close relative, all
(21:27):
spice,
Jess (21:28):
lot of Jamaican and people use all spice in the Caribbean.
Greta (21:33):
And so I find it fascinating that there's close
all the way over the IndianOcean. And practically on the
literal other side of the world.
You have is other spicy relativeall spice again, all the way
over there in the Caribbean,like how did that happen? So
whatever people are kind oflike, oh, it was Aliens who
(21:55):
built the pyramid or aliens whobuilt this other thing with
rocks stacked up? On top? I'mlike, no, no, everybody can
figure out how to lift the hill.
It's something that it'ssomething that happens when you
have enough time. But if alienswere going to metal, I'd say
putting these few spices inthese few tiny places, because
(22:17):
you know, spices cause the worldto meet itself to turn in on
itself and to create the globaltrading network that we have
now. Which is amazing, you know,for good or for ill, here we
are. And you can kind of blameit on spice.
Jess (22:39):
So can we talk a little bit about how the spice tray
kind of opened up global tradeas we know it and kind of
expanded communications?
Greta (22:49):
You know. So I started like, we've all heard of the
Spice Islands. I mean, it's it'sthe brand name. But sort of
realizing that the earliestrecords of sort of a global
style spice trade actuallyhappened with China, the east
coast of Africa and the Indiansubcontinent. And it was sort of
(23:12):
the, the Islamic empire thatreally started the overland
spice trade because, you know,they, you know, moved all over,
they moved into India with theMughal empire, they moved all
the way across North Africa. Andso it was just sort of these
long tentacles of spice. And sothat's how, you know, Europe was
(23:33):
like, hey, hey, what is this?
This is cool. And that waspartly what drove the Portuguese
to start to figure out, well,how about if we don't have to,
like, walk the whole way? Whatif we could do it by boat? The
only problem was there is thishuge Africa in the way. And so
it took them I don't know,approximately 100 years from the
(23:56):
time they started thinking aboutit to Vasco de Gama finally,
getting all the way around. Andyou know, as dark and stinky and
sour beer and uncomfortable asthat was, it was still shorter,
and less expensive, a way tomove spice than it was overland
(24:17):
by camel and donkey and humanand heaven knows why. And that
really flipped over the spicetrade. You could bring back tons
and tons of space and theseboats and it just changed the
world. And so when thePortuguese were doing it than
the Dutch were doing it theSpanish weren't doing it the
(24:37):
French and doing it in Englishor doing it and of course, they
couldn't just all be happy foreach other. They had to fight
Jess (24:45):
everything everything was war.
Greta (24:48):
Yeah. Oh, yeah. And but I do think it's interesting. That
was one of the first times a lotof Europeans you know, after the
Middle Ages shut down, peoplestop Traveling to the Holy Land
and doing crusades, and just alot of mobility ended, for lots
of reasons. But you know, thesepeople were going to these far
(25:10):
and distant lands and realizingthere are people that looked
different spoke differentlanguages had different
religions. I mean, their clotheswere way nicer. But for a lot of
people, it was this eye openingidea, like, wow, the world is a
really a lot bigger than like myhouse, my valley and this king.
And so a lot of adventurismreally started up. And the age
(25:34):
of exploration, I mean, T has alot to answer for. Suddenly,
people were drinking caffeineinstead of alcohol for
breakfast. And I swear that
Jess (25:43):
I've never thought about that before. But yeah, you read
about people drinking Mead forbreakfast, and now we've moved
to tea, which is caffeinated,never thought about that.
Greta (25:54):
Or people would would drink you know, they would
drink, you know, tea and smoketobacco to wind down in the
evening. And so, you know, theyget inspired, and they'd write
things down. Or they'd have adiscussion with someone all
around and
Jess (26:08):
caffeine and nicotine. Oh,
Greta (26:13):
absolutely. But think about it. If you have a
conversation with a friend over,let's say four cups of tea,
versus a conversation with afriend over four mugs of beer.
Which conversation are you goingto remember?
Jess (26:28):
Is that how philosophy get? Know You're, you're not
you're not Ah. So that justshows food is powerful changes
the discussion, change changesthe world in the spice tray this
fascinating,
Greta (26:46):
but yeah, the the connections that spices made the
the trails that it's left forgood or for ill, no, the way
it's made the world both biggerand smaller, I think it's you
know, it's changed how humanitysees the globe, and how we can
reach each other and touch eachother. But as another food
(27:09):
journalist has said, it's hardto make it too big of a food,
it's hard to make too big a foolof yourself,
Jess (27:14):
if your mouth I love that.
I feel like this should beprinted and put on my wall or
like over here. That's I thinkthat's going to be my philosophy
as well. I had a question too,about, you know, as England was
kind of settling America, youknow, you also have the French
(27:36):
and the Spanish did they kind ofinteract and exchange spices?
Greta (27:45):
In in sort of background ways. You know, this is this is
a thing where cookbooks are kindof cookbooks are definitely
history books, just not a lot ofpeople think of them that way.
And so you can see, you know,people exchanging recipes, but
that would usually be this cookto that cook this wife to that
(28:06):
wife. Or as you know, one familymoved from, you know, from Santo
Mang from Haiti, and broughttheir enslaved cooks and how
staff with them, and theystarted talking with the other
high society cooks in, say,South Carolina or New York. And
(28:27):
then recipes would exchange thatway, you know, these French
cooks with these English cooks.
I mean, they're all workingbelow stairs. But, you know,
they all wanted, they all wantedgood job reviews. So they're
always coming up with with newstuff. And so in public in mail
discourse, no, there, therewouldn't have been a lot of talk
(28:47):
except maybe this tobacco brandand that tobacco brand. But
below stairs, and in cookbooksand sort of female spaces. Yes,
there was a lot of interchangegoing on
Jess (29:01):
anything else in regards to spice that you would like to
share with us today, anythingthat you could think of?
Greta (29:07):
At this point, I just, you know, think we live in a
very fortunate time. And to beable to exchange ideas and use
spice and flavor as a way tosort of keep the congregate
conversation going to makeconnections with each other. And
to just, you know, make ourworld both bigger and smaller in
the most delicious ways isreally important.
Jess (29:30):
Do you have any idea of our predictions about what kind
of based on your study of thepast about what do you think the
future of American spies willbe? Because now it just seems
like wide open it's like, wheredo we go from here?
Greta (29:45):
My, my real hope would be that different regions sort of
concentrate, okay, this is whatgrows your best and we can sort
of develop a culture around itthat that would be the coolest
so I have just I have theThere's little hope in my heart
that we sort of become regionalagain as cuisine because trying
(30:05):
to do everything all the timeeverywhere. I feel like flattens
everything out and the spectacular things either disappear
or fade into the background.
Sort of the way gumbo went fromsomething of, you know, wide
variety of multiple influencesand now there's just kind of
like this one kind of gumborecipe you can find.
(30:30):
But who knows. But but that'sthat's sort of my my own
personal wish.
Jess (30:37):
It is a good one. So thank you so much, Greta, for being on
the show today. You guys won'tsee it. We have some technical
difficulties, but when it gotgoing, it got going. Good. So
yes, definitely enjoy having onthe show. If people want to
check out your show, or justkind of follow you and find out
(31:00):
more about your kind of historynuggets,
Greta (31:03):
where would they go? So on Twitter, that's where I'm
most active. And usually whenI'm researching and find strange
spellings or oh my god, I can'tbelieve it stuff. That will be
on Twitter at th o a food. Samehandle on Instagram th o a food
there. It's more picturesfinished dishes. Maybe someday
(31:26):
more recipes. We'll see movingfor it. But I love getting
questions, just sort of whatpeople are wondering about
sometimes I'll send you a pagefrom a book to answer your
question. Yeah, come along forthe journey and I promise you
won't get scurvy.
Jess (31:44):
Even orange and you'll be alright.
Greta (31:50):
Okay, I
Jess (31:50):
have been Jess. And this has been a flicky for the
podcast treat this episode likegospel the gospel and tell
someone about it. Eat somethingthat's absolutely delicious this
week, and you can always tell meabout it on any social media
platform. I'm on Facebook,Instagram, Twitter and a tiny
little bit on tick tock. So yes,make sure you get in touch with
(32:14):
me. And again, thank you so muchGreta for being here. Have a
great week, everybody.
Hi, it's Jess and you're watching to or listening to the
flaky foodie podcast, the onlyshow where the discussion is
delicious. And there's chatterthat you want. On today's
episode, we have with us theincredible Miss Greta Hardin.
She knows a lot about food andfood history. And she has a
wonderful podcast that Ilistened to, from time to time,
(00:24):
the history of American food,and I absolutely love it. And
today we're going to talk aboutthe history of spice in America.
And I'm very excited to learnand to listen. So welcome Greta
to the show. It's been it'sphenomenal to have you here
today.
Greta (00:42):
I'm really excited to talk to you. I mean, I found
your podcast and immediatelywanted to invite you in to
things I was doing. So I'm gladto come.
Jess (00:51):
Just excitement all around today. So tell me a little bit
about how you got into foodhistory and science, because
I'll tell you, I love the littlenuggets that she drops on her or
that you drop on your Twitterpage about food and food
history. And the way you look atit is amazing. So kind of how
did you get here.
Greta (01:11):
I mean, all my life, I knew I was going to be a
scientist, I was going to growup and I was going to be a
scientist. But I was very, veryfascinated by history as well.
And the stories that were thereand how sometimes reading about
history was either like enteringanother world. So it clicked in
with sort of all of like the SciFi and the fantasy I enjoyed.
And then also, there was allthese these hints of like
(01:33):
something's missing, something'snot there. And so it was just,
you know, just dig deeper andlit, lift up things and look at
it. But somewhere along the wayI realized and that science,
especially chemistry, which iswhat I was teaching, most of the
time is actually just thisreally weird, specialized
(01:56):
culinary education,
Jess (01:58):
food and science, especially baking and science go
hand in hand. So
Greta (02:03):
all all three of those things, you know, I just sort of
combined them together. And mypandemic, baby was this Food
History podcast, because likeeverybody else, I was listening
to a lot. And I was like,there's this one that I really
wish I could hear. So like, I'lljust make it.
Jess (02:21):
So for those who may go check out your podcast after is
kind of divided into differenttime periods. Do you care to
kind of talk about that a littlebit more?
Greta (02:30):
Sure. Um, I mean, I sort of looked at like, how one thing
that happened to me while I wasquarantined? Was I was cooking
food from literally all over theglobe. I'm like, How can I find
my own little house just likethe picking and choosing food
from here, there and everywhere,by just you know, driving up to
(02:50):
this street to this like onesection of Seattle that has food
from around the globe? How didthat happen? So I just started
diving in. And I'm like, okay,so we basically started on a
diet of chips stores, which isnasty,
Jess (03:09):
hard tech.
Greta (03:12):
And sort of figured out well, like how did we get from
there to say like Koreanbarbecue tacos? Yeah. How did
that happen? That's a big leap
Jess (03:20):
there. From no vegetables and maybe getting scurvy on the
ship, to all these fresh fruitsand vegetables and things.
Greta (03:31):
Yeah. And so just just tracing that history and
figuring out how it allhappened. It was like this great
adventure. I could go on. Andmake friends with my librarians
along the way. Definitely.
Library library Stan over herebecause this would not be
possible without it.
Jess (03:48):
Yes. So you're going to kind of serve as our conductor
on this train ride as we kind oftraveled through the history of
spice in America. So what's kindof our first stop our first
station? How did spice get here?
What was kind of the firstmilestone in history.
Greta (04:08):
So the first spice definitely came over with the
first you know, 10 boats to dropcolonists off in the colonies,
whether it was Jamestown, or inPlymouth or some of the other
non British base colonies,everybody even if they didn't
have spice, they really reallyenjoyed it. cloves and nutmeg
(04:30):
and mais, they were all a hugedeal back in England. And you
know, just were an importantpart of how people if not
prepared food on a daily basis,how they prepared and made note
of celebration food. It was ashow of power. It was a show of
wealth, and if you just don'thave that many objects in your
(04:52):
diet, having something thattastes really amazing, like
spice was an important part. Andyou so
Jess (05:00):
I'm sorry, you mentioned that it was used as currency as
well, how did how did that work?
Greta (05:04):
So at the time, you know, in those first, you know,
colonial 50 years, there justwasn't a lot of coin over here,
there wasn't, there wasn't papermoney at all. But there just
weren't a lot of coins. And soyou had to come up with things
that held their value. Andeverybody knew kind of how much
nutmeg was. Everybody wantedsome cloves, everybody wanted
some cinnamon, everybody wantedsome raisins. And these were
(05:28):
sort of like known quantities ofa somewhat known value. So you
could trade so many nutmegs fora cow, or, you know, so many
reasons to help people put upyour house.
Jess (05:38):
So these spices were they they weren't able to grow them
in America. So it was all kindof reliance on the chips, kind
of bringing it in a shipment ofspices, I'm assuming?
Greta (05:51):
Oh, yes, absolutely. In fact, the thing that knocked my
socks off was realizing that somuch that we take for granted
and how global trade works, isso rooted in the sort of
discovery of the spice tradewhen the Dutch and the French
and the British all found thesort of the sources of spices,
(06:13):
cloves, and nutmeg actually arefrom two tiny little islands in
the Indian Ocean. Which isastounding. And so there was a
lot of blood and treasurespilled either trying to keep
the monopoly of that or to tryto break the monopoly and, you
know, grow clothes elsewhere,grow nutmeg elsewhere, and sort
(06:34):
of expand this. I mean, thesethese things were so valuable.
It was sort of the one way youcould literally grow money on
trees.
Jess (06:44):
So I'm still picturing somebody selling a cow for six
nutmegs are or how fascinating,so how to kind of Native
Americans and the kind ofinteraction between those people
who settled colonists whosettled in America and Native
(07:06):
Americans, did Native Americansbring different spices? Did the
colonists kind of introducedNative Americans to different
spices that they didn't have?
How did that work?
Greta (07:17):
That's a really interesting question. As far as
foodstuffs, most of thecolonists looked looked upon the
bounty that was America, andlike, basically, if it wasn't an
animal, they pretty much kind ofdidn't bother with it. They
really weren't that interestedin a lot of American plant foods
to begin with. They imported awhole bunch of their own plant
(07:39):
foods, corn being a reallynotable exception, because it
was sort of like, okay, fine,I'll read corn or I'll die. But
other than that, there's justutter lack of curiosity unless
it was something that they kindof recognized. And so the Native
Americans definitely had theirown spices. The one exception is
(08:01):
SassaFrass. Somewhere alongthere, some of the earliest
explorers notice that SassaFrasswas being used as a tea as a
poultice, as you know, a lot ofdifferent things in different
customs. And somehow theydecided SassaFrass was the
wonder drug, it was sort of likekale and kombucha and I don't
(08:25):
know something else.
Jess (08:27):
So they had their own little t shirt presses, you will
get the Eat SassaFrass
Greta (08:36):
there is this enormous 16th century drug trade between
England and the Virginia colonyin in SassaFrass. And it was
supposed to, like, you know,help with fertility cure
syphilis, I don't know give youa better singing. You name it.
Jess (08:57):
So we know SassaFrass most commonly in root beer. So how
did that come to be the youknow,
Greta (09:04):
it was that was sort of like one of its leftover things.
I mean, even today, people willstill have SassaFrass tea and
you can if you chew on thesticks, that kind of has a
numbing thing, so it was goodfor people with toothaches. But
its widest use for a long timeis as a thickener in gumbo, the
gumbo filet is SassaFrasspowder. And so that sort of
(09:24):
became its its biggest use alongwith SassaFrass tea and that was
the way people sort of defendedagainst scurvy because there's a
there's a bunch of vitamin C andit's, you know, just sort of a
general general spring tonic.
But as, as all these other usesfor SassaFrass and Sassuolo
were, were sort of faded out,you know, some of these old
(09:46):
nostalgic things were werelifted just just to rim Okay,
Jess (09:51):
so it was kind of after the big SassaFrass Gray's just
left over flavor okay. So afterthe call the Calvinists came
over, you know, I had theclothes there nutmeg, what was
kind of the next kind of step inthe evolution of spice in
America.
Greta (10:08):
Um, so for a long time, we were really sort of stuck in
this clove, nutmeg, bay leaves,onions. And then some herbs like
thyme, parsley, you know, thosesort of got stuck for a long
time, however, you get sort ofto the end of the 18th century,
and Southern cuisine is startingto spread more into the rest of
(10:33):
the country. And the chilipepper and the tomato finally,
sort of like make their move. Sothe English colonists themselves
weren't particularlyadventurous, and they, they were
like, okay with onion soup orgarlic suspicious. And we're
(10:53):
happy when Black Pepper showedup, but Black Pepper was
expensive. And the heat of itcould be replicated by dried
ground chili peppers. And so youfind dried red, red pepper, or
long pepper sometimes in somecookbooks, when they finally
started trading those chilipeppers up and down the coast.
(11:16):
So that was sort of the nextthing that that invaded.
Jess (11:19):
So or moved around. So it was the big chili pepper craze
craze around what time period isthis? It really
Greta (11:27):
it really sort of gets going in the late 18th century.
So right around theRevolutionary War, when you have
a lot of enslaved people workingin plant patient kitchens and
sort of bringing their knowledgeof plant foods into those
kitchens. And then people comingdown and visiting as you know,
they're figuring out okay, howare we going to put together
(11:48):
this government? How are wegoing to do trade within our new
country? And the like, wow, thatonly are eating vegetables.
They're awfully tasty. How areyou doing? And so ground red
peppers started to sort of moveslowly up, but it was really
used kind of the same way we uselike black salt and pepper like
(12:09):
black pepper today. Though, itwasn't so much like we think of
like chili having like sweetnessand heat and these varieties of
flavors. It was just sort ofthis, like low level heat that
would sort of be added in andscattered in. Michael Twitty
when he talks about kitchenpepper is sort of this this
combination of like, maybe somecumin, maybe some fennel, maybe
(12:34):
some chili pepper, or maybe somesalt, maybe this, you know,
every kitchen kind of had theirown blend. And like a few
people. Yeah, exactly like that.
And so people started growingtheir own gardens, and they were
able to really sort of establishthe herbs from home. You know,
what was going on here inAmerica, all the herbs and
(12:55):
spices available here. Thecolonists just were not curious.
So I mean, ramps made becausethey were just basically onions.
But you know, what spices wereavailable in the US sort of as
native species was not ofinterest to the earlier
colonists.
Jess (13:15):
That's really interesting.
I always thought it was kind ofborrow here borrow there, but it
was just kind of reserved for asyou said meat and maybe corn.
Greta (13:25):
Yeah. I mean, cranberries became a big thing. But they
were sort of recognizable asberries. And then they are also
they became a cash crop, butjust sort of like hunting around
and doing that exploratory workof like, is this tasty? Does
this add anything that was notthat because this was a Savage
Land with savage things, andthey, they wouldn't sort of make
(13:50):
more elevated, elegant,civilized cuisine.
Jess (13:54):
So you have the chili pepper kind of coming in? What
was kind of the next bigexplosion of spice
Greta (14:01):
so the next big change that happened and it was oh my
goodness, the people who ransociety Hey, and this one, it
was garlic. Oh,
Jess (14:12):
thank you speaking my language. Things just got
interesting. Okay. So, so tellme about the garlic
Greta (14:22):
garlic sort of came in from a bunch of directions and
it had to make a bunch ofrunning starts at getting into
American food. I mean, garlicwas a huge player in South and
Central America. The Caribbeanwas all about garlic they were
happy about it their garlic wasgreat because it stored even
better than onions because youknow, onions will eventually go
(14:44):
bad. But garlic you can try andit'll just behave itself. But
when you had a Italians andEastern Europeans and people
from South and Central Asia whenyou had the Chinese coming in to
build the railroads. I mean, wewere basically being bombarded
by garlic from the east coast onthe West Coast. Everybody
(15:10):
finally gave up and they'relike, you know, this is pretty
good. But let's not go crazy. Sowhen you look at the cookbooks
from the end of the 19th centuryand early 20th century, there'll
be like one teaspoon of garlicserved. So
Jess (15:23):
Wow. Yeah. They were definitely holding back on the
garlic.
Greta (15:30):
And so it was like, This is tasty, but you know, I mean,
I was astounded. Somebodyreminded me that in the movie,
It's a Wonderful Life, you know,which came out, you know, in the
middle of the 20th century,Jimmy Stewart's wife sort of
says something disparagingabout, Oh, I bet you're gonna go
talk to the garlic. Oh, wow.
Like it was still seen as thislike, you know, dirty stinky
(15:53):
foreigner. Oh, wow. Hmm. But,but when, especially when the
Chinese came in to build therailroads and dig for gold in
California, and from the WestCoast, they brought, they
brought ginger, they broughtgarlic, they brought, you know,
a lot of sort of bitter greensthat we really appreciate today,
but we thought they were weirdand funny tasting.
Jess (16:19):
So you have garlic image, and all of these different
nationalities ethnicities comingin from each side, and they
brought garlic. Did they bringanything else? Or did it take a
little while for it to catch on?
Was garlic just like, Okay,that's enough, we'll just take
the garlic,
Greta (16:35):
I really think it was sort of like, oh, whoa, you
know, we'll just take thegarlic, somewhere kind of
between the turn of the 20thcentury and up to World War Two,
we started to experiment inspice mixes. And if you sort of
think about the the magic of thespice mix, so Kentucky Fried
(16:58):
Chicken and the 11 herbs andspices. And like one of the
secret ingredients in there iswhite pepper. You know, the
French love to use white pepper,the Chinese use a lot of white
pepper, but Americans unlesswe're like cooking something
special out of a Julia Childthing we're like and so for
(17:21):
really most of the 20th century,we sort of topped out on you
know what individual spices wewould have in our kitchens, but
we did get fascinated with spicemixes and sort of so you have
something called Beaumont whichwas sort of like a Creole
seasoning you have the CajunSpice mixes you start to get you
(17:48):
know hot sauces a little bitespecially in the second half of
the 20th century when Cajun foodand salsa start to explode. And
it gets really exciting and it'sit's really not until I would
say the 1980s or the 1990s whenAmericans discover they love
(18:10):
garlic finally and as aconsequence of our meddling
around in Southeast Asia westart to get a whole new
appreciation for new herbs andspices and for fresh herbs
(18:32):
because for a long time peoplewere buying I kid you not dried
parsley and dried chives
Jess (18:40):
which we all know turns the cardboard kind of loses a
lot of flavor we dry it
Greta (18:48):
like there's nothing there I mean a lot of things
dried are fine I mean driedginger dried and you know exact
exactly dill is great but driedparsley but the spice mix and
then you know sort of entercilantro enter lemongrass and
(19:11):
and then a whole new set ofchili peppers coming at us from
Southeast Asia you know reallyopened our eyes and then we
realize wait there's there's notjust paprika, there's smoked
paprika, there's hot paprika,there's you know we started just
getting very excited by all ofthese varieties. So the end of
the 20th century was when peoplestarted to realize that there
(19:34):
was freshness and that there wasvariety. And I think from there
with gone a little crazy.
Jess (19:43):
Yes my spice cabinet is full of everything from
everywhere from garam masala toCajun blackened seasoning mix
all the way to five spice so youknow that's Halloween cabinet
and And that just shows howglobal our pantries have
Greta (20:04):
become. And the interesting thing is, you know,
you you do you look at yourCajun spice and you look at your
curry mixture and you look atgaram masala and you realize
there's some spices there thatare in all of them like black
pepper is almost an all of themand or chili peppers will be in
most of the or you, you realizelike wow star nice is in this
(20:29):
one and that one and that one.
And it becomes very interestinghow these, it's really just kind
of a smaller handful has beencombined and recombined and
combined, again, into thesedifferent combinations. And, you
know, there's like infinitypossibilities.
Jess (20:48):
Do you have any other kind of spice related little history
nuggets, just like you had aboutthe nutmeg coming from two tiny
islands?
Greta (21:01):
Well, another fun one is so the island of Grenada was
established as sort of theCaribbean home of nutmeg. In
fact, their flag when theydeclared independence actually
has this very interestingstylized nutmeg motif on it.
It's fun to look up. But cloveshave a very close relative, all
(21:27):
spice,
Jess (21:28):
lot of Jamaican and people use all spice in the Caribbean.
Greta (21:33):
And so I find it fascinating that there's close
all the way over the IndianOcean. And practically on the
literal other side of the world.
You have is other spicy relativeall spice again, all the way
over there in the Caribbean,like how did that happen? So
whatever people are kind oflike, oh, it was Aliens who
(21:55):
built the pyramid or aliens whobuilt this other thing with
rocks stacked up? On top? I'mlike, no, no, everybody can
figure out how to lift the hill.
It's something that it'ssomething that happens when you
have enough time. But if alienswere going to metal, I'd say
putting these few spices inthese few tiny places, because
(22:17):
you know, spices cause the worldto meet itself to turn in on
itself and to create the globaltrading network that we have
now. Which is amazing, you know,for good or for ill, here we
are. And you can kind of blameit on spice.
Jess (22:39):
So can we talk a little bit about how the spice tray
kind of opened up global tradeas we know it and kind of
expanded communications?
Greta (22:49):
You know. So I started like, we've all heard of the
Spice Islands. I mean, it's it'sthe brand name. But sort of
realizing that the earliestrecords of sort of a global
style spice trade actuallyhappened with China, the east
coast of Africa and the Indiansubcontinent. And it was sort of
(23:12):
the, the Islamic empire thatreally started the overland
spice trade because, you know,they, you know, moved all over,
they moved into India with theMughal empire, they moved all
the way across North Africa. Andso it was just sort of these
long tentacles of spice. And sothat's how, you know, Europe was
(23:33):
like, hey, hey, what is this?
This is cool. And that waspartly what drove the Portuguese
to start to figure out, well,how about if we don't have to,
like, walk the whole way? Whatif we could do it by boat? The
only problem was there is thishuge Africa in the way. And so
it took them I don't know,approximately 100 years from the
(23:56):
time they started thinking aboutit to Vasco de Gama finally,
getting all the way around. Andyou know, as dark and stinky and
sour beer and uncomfortable asthat was, it was still shorter,
and less expensive, a way tomove spice than it was overland
(24:17):
by camel and donkey and humanand heaven knows why. And that
really flipped over the spicetrade. You could bring back tons
and tons of space and theseboats and it just changed the
world. And so when thePortuguese were doing it than
the Dutch were doing it theSpanish weren't doing it the
(24:37):
French and doing it in Englishor doing it and of course, they
couldn't just all be happy foreach other. They had to fight
Jess (24:45):
everything everything was war.
Greta (24:48):
Yeah. Oh, yeah. And but I do think it's interesting. That
was one of the first times a lotof Europeans you know, after the
Middle Ages shut down, peoplestop Traveling to the Holy Land
and doing crusades, and just alot of mobility ended, for lots
of reasons. But you know, thesepeople were going to these far
(25:10):
and distant lands and realizingthere are people that looked
different spoke differentlanguages had different
religions. I mean, their clotheswere way nicer. But for a lot of
people, it was this eye openingidea, like, wow, the world is a
really a lot bigger than like myhouse, my valley and this king.
And so a lot of adventurismreally started up. And the age
(25:34):
of exploration, I mean, T has alot to answer for. Suddenly,
people were drinking caffeineinstead of alcohol for
breakfast. And I swear that
Jess (25:43):
I've never thought about that before. But yeah, you read
about people drinking Mead forbreakfast, and now we've moved
to tea, which is caffeinated,never thought about that.
Greta (25:54):
Or people would would drink you know, they would
drink, you know, tea and smoketobacco to wind down in the
evening. And so, you know, theyget inspired, and they'd write
things down. Or they'd have adiscussion with someone all
around and
Jess (26:08):
caffeine and nicotine. Oh,
Greta (26:13):
absolutely. But think about it. If you have a
conversation with a friend over,let's say four cups of tea,
versus a conversation with afriend over four mugs of beer.
Which conversation are you goingto remember?
Jess (26:28):
Is that how philosophy get? Know You're, you're not
you're not Ah. So that justshows food is powerful changes
the discussion, change changesthe world in the spice tray this
fascinating,
Greta (26:46):
but yeah, the the connections that spices made the
the trails that it's left forgood or for ill, no, the way
it's made the world both biggerand smaller, I think it's you
know, it's changed how humanitysees the globe, and how we can
reach each other and touch eachother. But as another food
(27:09):
journalist has said, it's hardto make it too big of a food,
it's hard to make too big a foolof yourself,
Jess (27:14):
if your mouth I love that.
I feel like this should beprinted and put on my wall or
like over here. That's I thinkthat's going to be my philosophy
as well. I had a question too,about, you know, as England was
kind of settling America, youknow, you also have the French
(27:36):
and the Spanish did they kind ofinteract and exchange spices?
Greta (27:45):
In in sort of background ways. You know, this is this is
a thing where cookbooks are kindof cookbooks are definitely
history books, just not a lot ofpeople think of them that way.
And so you can see, you know,people exchanging recipes, but
that would usually be this cookto that cook this wife to that
(28:06):
wife. Or as you know, one familymoved from, you know, from Santo
Mang from Haiti, and broughttheir enslaved cooks and how
staff with them, and theystarted talking with the other
high society cooks in, say,South Carolina or New York. And
(28:27):
then recipes would exchange thatway, you know, these French
cooks with these English cooks.
I mean, they're all workingbelow stairs. But, you know,
they all wanted, they all wantedgood job reviews. So they're
always coming up with with newstuff. And so in public in mail
discourse, no, there, therewouldn't have been a lot of talk
(28:47):
except maybe this tobacco brandand that tobacco brand. But
below stairs, and in cookbooksand sort of female spaces. Yes,
there was a lot of interchangegoing on
Jess (29:01):
anything else in regards to spice that you would like to
share with us today, anythingthat you could think of?
Greta (29:07):
At this point, I just, you know, think we live in a
very fortunate time. And to beable to exchange ideas and use
spice and flavor as a way tosort of keep the congregate
conversation going to makeconnections with each other. And
to just, you know, make ourworld both bigger and smaller in
the most delicious ways isreally important.
Jess (29:30):
Do you have any idea of our predictions about what kind
of based on your study of thepast about what do you think the
future of American spies willbe? Because now it just seems
like wide open it's like, wheredo we go from here?
Greta (29:45):
My, my real hope would be that different regions sort of
concentrate, okay, this is whatgrows your best and we can sort
of develop a culture around itthat that would be the coolest
so I have just I have theThere's little hope in my heart
that we sort of become regionalagain as cuisine because trying
(30:05):
to do everything all the timeeverywhere. I feel like flattens
everything out and the spectacular things either disappear
or fade into the background.
Sort of the way gumbo went fromsomething of, you know, wide
variety of multiple influencesand now there's just kind of
like this one kind of gumborecipe you can find.
(30:30):
But who knows. But but that'sthat's sort of my my own
personal wish.
Jess (30:37):
It is a good one. So thank you so much, Greta, for being on
the show today. You guys won'tsee it. We have some technical
difficulties, but when it gotgoing, it got going. Good. So
yes, definitely enjoy having onthe show. If people want to
check out your show, or justkind of follow you and find out
(31:00):
more about your kind of historynuggets,
Greta (31:03):
where would they go? So on Twitter, that's where I'm
most active. And usually whenI'm researching and find strange
spellings or oh my god, I can'tbelieve it stuff. That will be
on Twitter at th o a food. Samehandle on Instagram th o a food
there. It's more picturesfinished dishes. Maybe someday
(31:26):
more recipes. We'll see movingfor it. But I love getting
questions, just sort of whatpeople are wondering about
sometimes I'll send you a pagefrom a book to answer your
question. Yeah, come along forthe journey and I promise you
won't get scurvy.
Jess (31:44):
Even orange and you'll be alright.
Greta (31:50):
Okay, I
Jess (31:50):
have been Jess. And this has been a flicky for the
podcast treat this episode likegospel the gospel and tell
someone about it. Eat somethingthat's absolutely delicious this
week, and you can always tell meabout it on any social media
platform. I'm on Facebook,Instagram, Twitter and a tiny
little bit on tick tock. So yes,make sure you get in touch with
(32:14):
me. And again, thank you so muchGreta for being here. Have a
great week, everybody.
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