What I’m writing about this week, #16: Robin Hood and the medieval spice trade

I’ve had a really interesting week, reading, researching and writing about the medieval spice trade in Europe for my forthcoming novel (hopefully out this spring), Robin Hood and the Heretic Prince.

For those of you who don’t know, I have written a long series of novels about a gangster-ish Robin Hood and his loyal follower Sir Alan Dale called the Outlaw Chronicles (start with Outlaw, if you’re interested) and this will be the 11th book in that series. The action tales place in Sherwood Forest, London, Bordeaux and the south of France, in 1209, and I was looking for a way to get my heroes down to Provence so they could get involved in the fighting in the Albigensian Crusade. I came up with the medieval spice trade.

I found a character for the book called Andrew Bokerell, a real person who was a “master spicer” in London, that is, a merchant who trades in the incredibly valuable spices that medieval lords (and their cooks) used to flavour their food, and also for medicinal purposes. Andrew was mainly a “pepperer” who made an absolute fortune importing black peppercorns and he (or possibly his son, also named Andrew) later became Mayor of London from 1231 to 1237.

It is easy to see why he became so rich. Pepper was a luxury ingredient in London at the time, worth four shillings a pound (2.2kg), or 48 silver pennies. This was a time when a farm labourer might earn a penny a day, and a moderately well-off knight such as Sir Alan had an income from his lands worth £2 a year (480 pence). So a single pound of black peppercorns was worth one tenth of Sir Alan Dale’s annual salary – several thousands of pounds in today’s money.

Pepper was grown in India and Indonesia, and above is a slightly racist image from The Adventures of Marco Polo, which shows the Italian adventurer sampling black peppercorns harvested by locals in India. It was transported to Europe along ancient routes (also used for silk) and the trade was controlled by at this end by the Venetians who brought the spices from the Levant to Montpellier in southern France where there was a huge wholesale market. From there, merchants like Andrew Bokerell bought pepper (and other spices) in quantity and transported them north through France and by sea to England.

Traders such as Bokerell might sell the individual barrels of spices to the households of great lords and princes but for more modest kitchens, his apothecaries made up smaller packets of “spice mixes” for use in cooking and to promote good health. Two that are known today are Poudre Forte (strong powder), a blend of cinnamon, cloves, white and black pepper and grains of paradise (a species of ginger related to cardamon), and Poudre Douce (sweet powder), a mixture of ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar (which was produced in Cyprus from sugar beets and classed as a spice) and galangal. The Forme of Cury (curry), a 14th-century cookbook, lists English recipes using all the spices listed above and many more.

I’m about half-way through writing Robin Hood and the Heretic Prince and I’m finding the research fascinating – as it always is. This one fits in the series between The Iron Castle and The King’s Assassin. So I hope you will take a look at the novel when It comes out (probably) in April. This will be my third self-published Robin Hood novel, after Robin Hood and the Caliph’s Gold and Robin Hood and the Castle of Bones. For a full list of my Outlaw Chronicles books, in the correct chronological order, click here.

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