Forum libero

http://www.theepicentre.com/Spices/excerpt2.html

Historians have tried to explain this powerful medieval appetite for spices by pointing to the prevalence of inadequate food-preserving techniques. Pepper together with salt, it was said , was the chief means of preservation, of keeping the meat of cattle, slaughtered in the fall, edible throughout the winter. The other spices, according the this explanation, served to make spoiled meat edible again. This is hardly convincing, for spices imported from the Orient were among the most precious substances known in the Middle Ages. That is why they were the prerogative of the upper classes. To limit their function to food preservation and explain their use solely in these terms would be like calling champagne a good thirst quencher. Salt served very well as a meat preservative in the Middle Ages; and there were suitable native herbs which were also used by the poorer people to make spoiled meat palatable.

Capito fallito?
Questo è tedesco non americano così non hai la scusa dell'"americano ignorante" (cit).