We may add that it was only well known in Europe after the frequent voyages of the Portuguese to India.[XXIII_78]
However, in 1168, an abbot of St. Gilles, in Languedoc, having a favour to ask of Louis-le-Jeune, thought there was no better means of persuading him to grant it than to send him a small stock of cinnamon.[XXIII_79]
Our forefathers (in the middle ages) had their tables furnished with cinnamon sauce; nutmeg, mustard, and garlic sauces; cold sauces; parsley and vinegar sauces, hot sauces, hell sauces, burgher sauces; cherry, plum, mulberry, grape, gorse, rose, and flower sauces. They were served with roast meat.
Cinnamon is daily employed in medicine, in diarrhœa, several fevers, &c., &c., and in pharmacy. That from China is much thicker than the others, its colour darker, and its odour more powerful; essential oil is drawn from it, and preserved in flagons, sealed with the arms of government, and sold at a very high price.
CLOVES.
Cloves were very little known to the ancients. Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Galen do not speak of them.
Pliny says that some cloves were brought to Rome, very similar to grains of pepper but a little longer; that they were only to be found in India, in a wood consecrated to the gods; and that they served in the fabrication of perfumes.[XXIII_80]
The conquest of India by the Portuguese rendered them common throughout Europe.
Cloves contain a considerable quantity of essential aromatic oil, thick, brown, and very heavy, to which it owes its aromatic properties and sharp burning savour. Cloves are employed as a seasoning or as medicine.