The Taste of Conquest Quotes

“One of Rembrandt’s more famous paintings… The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp … depicts a scene that took place in the old spice weighing tower in Neomarket … The building not only served to regulate the traffic in nutraceuticals like cinnamon and nutmeg, but was also used by the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons for their annual public dissection… The famed surgeon Nicolas Tulp looks on… Apparently he was as skilled at wooing an audience as wielding a scalpel. He later held the position of city treasurer 8 times, and of burgomaster (mayor) 4 times.”
― Michael Krondl, The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice

“The discipline on Dutch ships was perhaps more brutal than on other European merchant ships… The official rulebooks allowed captains to punish any seamen who injured another by pinning him to the mast with a knife through his hand.”
― Michael Krondl, The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice

“Tacitus informs us for example that after murdering his wife Poppaea in 65 AD, Nero used a year’s supply of Rome’s cinnamon to bury her.”
― Michael Krondl, The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice

“*22Fidalgo derives from filho d’algo—literally, the “son of somebody”—though it later became a generic term for nobility.”
― Michael Krondl, The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice

“First, you had to get a badger drunk on wine filtered through camphor and blended with a compound of gold, seed pearls, and coral.”
― Michael Krondl, The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice

“Mostly, though, the peppercorns were just a flimsy outer layer with nothing inside. They had to be dehydrated in alcohol, then dried with a hair dryer in small batches, and impregnated with glue so that they would not turn to dust in the exhibit.”
― Michael Krondl, The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice

“Once people no longer fear starvation, they choose to eat for a whole variety of reasons, and these were not so different at the court of the Medici than they are at the food courts of Beverly Hills. Food is much more than a fuel; it is packed with meaning and symbolism. That”
― Michael Krondl, The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice

“The introduction of oranges, lemons, eggplant, and other fruits and vegetables to the West is generally ascribed to Arab intervention. Pasta as we know it seems to have been invented in Moorish Sicily.”
― Michael Krondl, The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice