The Crusades, an era of bloodshed, religious war and...a culinary exchange?

While it was a little ephemeral, there genuinely was a sharing of cuisine during the crusades in the Middle East.

Chronicles from crusaders coming to the Middle East for the first time would marvel at the diversity of fruits and spices readily available in the Outremer. This led to a number of these food stuffs travelling west. Two fruits that in particular were popular amongst European aristocracy were lemons and pomegranates. Indeed, it’s from this point onwards that you can sometimes see images of the Virgin Mary holding a pomegranate, a fruit with many seeds, a sign of fertility. This association of Mary with this fruit  just didn’t exist before the crusading era.

Then there was sugar. Before the slave produced plantations of sugar cane in the Caribbean, sugar was very expensive and in the 11th to the end of the 13th century, virtually all sugar in Europe came from the east. However once Acre fell in 1291 so did the consumption of sugar. Genoa and Venice still had trading connections but as people were now less exposed to Middle Eastern tastes then it seems demand also waned.

One spice did however linger, pepper. Pepper was originally spread throughout the Roman Empire, but after its collapse in the West, we lost our taste for it. This spice was a staple in the Middle East and so was one of the culinary innovations that was shared with cooks in Europe during the era of the crusades. This however continued to be popular in Europe on into the 14th and 15th centuries, once it returned it seemed that the populations of Europe never wanted to let go.