Here are 82 books that Spice fans have personally recommended if you like
Spice.
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In my writing, food is a means to explore culture and understand the world. I’ve been described as a ‘culinary detective’. I collect and create eclectic, evocative recipes from around the globe so I can travel from my kitchen when I'm back home in London. The Nutmeg Trail follows my multi-award-winning books, Fire Islands and Samarkand.
Delving into the bloodiest and most tragic period of spice’s past, Milton’s novel reveals the extraordinary link between nutmeg and colonisation. It was the seed from which the British Empire grew. If fiction is your preferred way to explore history – and what a history spice has! – then this is the book for you.
The tiny island of Run is an insignificant speck in the Indonesian archipelago. Just two miles long and half a mile wide, it is remote, tranquil, and, these days, largely ignored.
Yet 370 years ago, Run's harvest of nutmeg (a pound of which yielded a 3,200 percent profit by the time it arrived in England) turned it into the most lucrative of the Spice Islands, precipitating a battle between the all-powerful Dutch East India Company and the British Crown. The outcome of the fighting was one of the most spectacular…
In my writing, food is a means to explore culture and understand the world. I’ve been described as a ‘culinary detective’. I collect and create eclectic, evocative recipes from around the globe so I can travel from my kitchen when I'm back home in London. The Nutmeg Trail follows my multi-award-winning books, Fire Islands and Samarkand.
With a scholarly eye for detail, Keaye explores the history of the spice routes. The trade is at once mysterious and hard to trace yet also world-encompassing. It started more wars and sparked more discoveries than any other global exchange. This book elegantly covers over 3,000 years of human history and leaves the reader with much to think about.
An exotic saga with the tang of drama in every voyage, The Spice Route transports the reader from the dawn of history to the ends of the earth The Spice Route is one of history's great anomalies. Shrouded in mystery, it existed long before anyone knew of its extent or alignment. Spices came from lands unseen, possibly uninhabitable, and almost by definition unattainable; that was what made them so desirable. Yet more livelihoods depended on this pungent traffic, more nations participated in it, more wars were fought over it, and more discoveries resulted from it than from any other global…
In my writing, food is a means to explore culture and understand the world. I’ve been described as a ‘culinary detective’. I collect and create eclectic, evocative recipes from around the globe so I can travel from my kitchen when I'm back home in London. The Nutmeg Trail follows my multi-award-winning books, Fire Islands and Samarkand.
Farimond offers a unique way of looking at the chemistry behind the ingredients, arranging spices in a periodic table based on their dominant flavour compound. I love the pages comparing flavour profiles of different world cuisines. Curious cooks can learn how to choose, use, and pair spices to bring out their full potency.
Transform your dishes from bland and boring to punchy and flavorsome with this definitive guide to spices.
It's time to spice up your home cooking!
Taking the periodic table of spices as a starting point, this adventurous recipe book explores the science behind the art of making incredible spice blends to help you release the flavor in your dishes. Discover a spice book like no other from TV personality, food scientist and bestselling author, Dr Stuart Farrimond.
Sure to get your tastebuds tingling, you can explore:
- 52 exciting recipes from around the world which showcase each spice blend -…
In my writing, food is a means to explore culture and understand the world. I’ve been described as a ‘culinary detective’. I collect and create eclectic, evocative recipes from around the globe so I can travel from my kitchen when I'm back home in London. The Nutmeg Trail follows my multi-award-winning books, Fire Islands and Samarkand.
McFadden zooms in on a single spice. She has researched the subject in-depth, exploring the history, botany, and culinary potential of peppercorns and their spicy relatives. Half the book features peppery recipes (do try the fresh green peppercorn pickle) and, for me, the peppercorn tasting notes are a particular pleasure.
My interest in medieval food and cookery combines two of my great passions in life, but I first started to become seriously interested in the combination when researching religious dietary ideas and practices. I am fascinated by the symbolic role played by food and drink in religious life, and by fasting and self-denial as part of a religious tradition, but also in the ways in which medieval communities feasted and how tastes in food and drink developed through trade and cultural exchange. I teach an undergraduate course on Feast, Fast, and Famine in the Middle Ages because questions about production, consumption, and sustainability are crucially important for us all.
This is one of the books I wish I had written! Although it is a scholarly book based on the author’s research, it reads like a compellingly told story. It’s full of imaginative and vivid detail. Paul Freedman asks why there was such a high demand for spices in medieval Europe, examines the practicalities of trade and travel that enabled Europeans to acquire them, the ways they used them as commodities and the cultural meanings of taste and what changes in taste tell us about societal development.
How medieval Europe's infatuation with expensive, fragrant, and exotic spices led to an era of colonial expansion and the discovery of new worlds
The demand for spices in medieval Europe was extravagant and was reflected in the pursuit of fashion, the formation of taste, and the growth of luxury trade. It inspired geographical and commercial exploration ,as traders pursued such common spices as pepper and cinnamon and rarer aromatic products, including ambergris and musk. Ultimately, the spice quest led to imperial missions that were to change world history.
This engaging book explores the demand for spices: why were they so…
Hussein Fancy is a Professor of History at Yale University where he teaches medieval history with a particular focus on medieval Spain and North Africa. His research, writing, and teaching focus on the entwined histories of not only Jews, Christians, and Muslims but also Latin and Arabic in the Middle Ages. He has traveled and lived extensively in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
The paradoxes of medieval Spain have not only inspired scholars but also novelists. However different their methods, both share the desire to understand the present through the distant past. I read The Moor’s Last Sigh as an undergraduate, long before I had any idea that I wanted to become a historian. Rushdie’s novel is a family saga that traces a path backward from modern India to the Jews, Christians, and Muslims of medieval Spain. It’s a rambling and phantasmagorical tale that meditates on a lost world, in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims shared the same time and place.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Booker Prize-winning, bestselling author of Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses combines a ferociously witty family saga with a surreally imagined and sometimes blasphemous chronicle of modern India and flavors the mixture with peppery soliloquies on art, ethnicity, religious fanaticism, and the terrifying power of love.
“Fierce, phantasmagorical … a huge, sprawling, exuberant novel.” —The New York Times
Moraes "Moor" Zogoiby, the last surviving scion of a dynasty of Cochinese spice merchants and crime lords, is also a compulsive storyteller and an exile. As he travels a route that takes him from India to Spain, he…
I am a Dutch astronomer and historian of maritime navigation who somehow landed a coveted academic job in Sydney, Australia. I spend much of my free time on weekends at the Australian National Maritime Museum as a guide on our vessels, as a speaker, as a consultant on matters related to the historical determination of longitude at sea, and as a deckhand on our historic tall ships. I’ve written 2 history of science books, including a biography of William Dawes, the astronomer on the ‘First Fleet’ from England to Australia (1787–1788). In addition to this, I enjoy writing about the history of medicine and diseases during the Age of Sail.
In early times, during the European colonisation of the East Indies (the Spice Islands), the various East India companies would closely follow the African shoreline on their way north and east from the Cape of Good Hope. This turned out to be slow going, and so when the Dutch discovered the ‘Brouwer route,’ following the roaring forties before turning north some distance before hitting the Australian coast, their passage could be shortened by at least a month. The main problem of those early navigators was to decide when to turn north before running into the Western Australian coast. Many ships, and many Dutch ships in particular, misjudged their longitude and so ran into coastal shallows and shipwrecked.
The waters just off the Western Australian coast cover numerous early shipwrecks, with Dutch shipwrecks being particularly well represented. As an avid maritime history enthusiast with Dutch roots, this book is right up…
I am a historian of science who just completed a book on the role of perfume in the quest for the secret of life and vitality. While writing it, I became fascinated with the challenge of translating scent into language. While our nose can recognize a virtually infinite number of odors, there are only a few basic categories of description (“floral,” “woody,” “citrus,” etc.). To fully describe them often requires a poet’s touch – invoking a tapestry of memories, associations, and feelings to create the experience in the reader’s mind. These are some of the best books I’ve encountered for talking about the complex world of scent, and the importance of perfume in human history.
Aftel is the Alice Waters of natural perfume and here she shares the secrets of her craft while revealing their rich history.
She brings out the magic and alchemy in humankind’s long-standing efforts to capture the aromatic essences of plants, evoking a hidden world of natural fragrances and their ability to seduce, heal, intoxicate, and transport one to another state.
As long as there has been passion, there has been perfume. Wealthy Romans used to scent their doves while in Shakespeare's time, a woman in love would place a peeled apple into her armpit to saturate it with her scent and then present it to her lover. "Essence and Alchemy" resurrects the social and metaphysical legacy that is entwined with the evolution of perfumery, from the dramas of the spice trade to the quests of the alchemists. Aftel tracks scent through the boudoir and the bath and into the sanctums of worship, and along the way teaches us the art…
I don’t read books with explicit scenes, and I don’t write them either. I’ve read hundreds of novels in this genre and written several of my own. I believe closed-door romances can be just as tension-filled and fun as those with spice. I love the closed-door romance community and have a passion for sharing books that make me laugh, cry, and swoon.
I adored how cozy this book was. All of Hailey’s books feel like a warm hug, but this one being set in fall made it all the more homey and wonderful. I’m not usually a fan of the friends-to-lovers trope, but I loved how Hailey portrayed their relationship. I recommend reading with a warm drink in the cold months.
Thou shalt not lie, steal, cheat, or…fall in love with your best friend.
When my best friend, Hunter Ward, offers me the opportunity to star alongside him as the lead love interest in a music video he’s directing, I’m torn between taking the gig and risking my heart. My job? To look and act like I’m in love with Hunter…without revealing my true feelings for him.
I’ve seen the man in action and watched him work the room. I’ve witnessed countless women fawn over him and practically swoon in his presence. And now that the full force of his charm…
I don’t read books with explicit scenes, and I don’t write them either. I’ve read hundreds of novels in this genre and written several of my own. I believe closed-door romances can be just as tension-filled and fun as those with spice. I love the closed-door romance community and have a passion for sharing books that make me laugh, cry, and swoon.
The banter in this book is unmatched. I could say more about this book, but really, the only thing that you need to know is that the banter is perfection. Every line of dialogue elevated the humor and the tension. I’m certain I binged this whole book in less than a day.
When I woke up this morning, I became aware of two things: One, I felt hungover, and I knew I hadn’t had a drop of liquor.A nd two, I was pretty sure I had accidentally married someone.
I, Olivia Sutton, have a Ten Year Plan. It’s air-tight and written in permanent ink. You know what’s not on the plan? Getting married to the man I used to love to hate. But when my sister’s pre-wedding trip goes horribly wrong, I find myself legally bound to my old nemesis, tech sensation Lachlan Hayes. Lachlan pitches a plan to temporarily stay married.…
