Honeyed Words: How Did the Arthurian Era Peoples Avoid the Saffron Sticker Shock?

How Did the Arthurian Era Peoples Avoid the Saffron Sticker Shock? · 1 June 2007

Picture of a Pan of Fennel Cooked with Saffron

I spent a good chunk of time typing up what was supposed to be tonight’s post, mostly organizing and summarizing the research I’ve been doing this week on Arthurian period food. Of course now that I’ve left the flash drive with the saved post on it at my office, that time does me no good. I hate to try to recreate my work only to produce lower quality stuff, so instead of posting what I originally intended to, I’ve assembled a hodgepodge of things I did this week that didn’t fit neatly into the other post and split the two Arthurian recipes into two separate posts instead of the single post as I was planning.

You’ll just have to trust me for now that I’ve done my homework and this Fennell recipe is as Arthurian as I could make it.

I selected the fennel recipe from a number of contenders in part because I’ve never cooked with saffron. At first, I figured it was one of those spices that used to be popular and isn’t anymore. I should have known better. A quick perusal of the spice aisle of my local market led me to the saffron bottles, wedged in between their less flashy brethren, Rosemary and Sage. When I took the first bottle off the shelf, I thought I had picked a dud; it looked empty. Closer inspection proved that it was not in fact empty, but contained .01 oz of saffron strands, suspended in the bottle and hidden behind the label.

A direct quote from the manufacturer, California Based The Spice Hunter. I guess they must have realized that it looked a little ridiculous to be paying $7.99 for an empty bottle too.

Saffron is the most expensive spice on earth, it takes more than 75,000 hand-picked blossoms, each of which has 3 saffron strands, to make a pound of saffron. Each strand must be hand-picked from the flower, so there are approximately 225,000 hand-picked strands per pound. An acre of crocus stativus produces only 2 ½ pounds of saffron.

This of course made me realize, yet again, how much of my food budget is taken up by herbs and spices. And unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting much relief from my budding herb garden in the near future. Here’s a picture of the plants taken earlier this week. If they continue to grow at this rate, I may have the equivalent of 3 full sized leaves by the end of summer.

Picture of a Pot with Spouting Herbs

I did find one way to save money this week though. There is a surprising wealth of Arthurian literature online and free via Project Gutenburg. My long neglected Le Mort d’Arthur by Thomas Malory is available as are: Four Arthurian Romances by 12th cent. de Troyes Chrétien (Translated); Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion by Beatrice Clay; Arthur - A Short Sketch of His Life and History in English Verse of the First Half of the Fifteenth Century; The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights by Sir James Knowles; Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut by Wace; and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain.

And just in case you’re wondering if the saffron was worth it; it wasn’t, at least for me. It provided the dish with a beautiful and striking yellow color (which was an amazing transformation considering it started out as deep red strings like the ones pictured at right) but I think I would have been equally as impressed on a per dollar basis with the lower cost substitutes safflower or tumeric. The dish itself was a great side, easy to make and awesome with the whole grain bread I paired it with. I just think I’ll save myself the $7.99 next time and deal with the historical inaccuracy.

'Fenkel in Soppes' or Braised Fennel with Ginger

From The British Museum Cookbook via the Carnegie Mellon Online Recipe Collection

750g (1 1/2 lb) trimmed, fresh fennel root; cleaned and cut into matchsticks
225g (8 oz) onions, thickly sliced
1 heaped tsp of ground ginger
1 level tsp of powdered saffron (I was unable to find powdered saffron and substituted finely chopped saffron threads.)
½ tsp of salt
2 tablespoon olive oil
150mL (5 fl oz) each dry white wine and water
6 thick slices of coarse whole wheat or whole meal bread (optional)