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A Roman Pepper Mill - Printable Version

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A Roman Pepper Mill - Eleatic Guest - 04-17-2015

LacusCurtius, always the treasure trove for unexpected things, mentions a curious device, a pepper mill:

Quote:The pepper-mill. A mill for grinding pepper, made of boxwood, is mentioned by Petronius (molea buxea piper trivit, Sat. 74).

What kind of pepper that might have been? Hardly from the Indonesian spice islands. And in what way if any, could a pepper mill technically differ from the handmills for grain? We will hardly have to think of it as a burr mill, not?


A Roman Pepper Mill - Alanus - 04-18-2015

Some form or species of pepper was used in Roman cooking, to the point that it was one of the three commodities required by Alaric when he lifted the blockade of Rome in 408. Obviously an expensive item. I would think the Romans also used salt mills to grind the coarse Trapani product.


A Roman Pepper Mill - Michael Kerr - 04-18-2015

Eleatic Guest wrote:
Quote:What kind of pepper that might have been? Hardly from the Indonesian spice islands. And in what way if any, could a pepper mill technically differ from the handmills for grain? We will hardly have to think of it as a burr mill, not?

Don’t know much about the ancient spice routes except that pepper and other spices were brought over from India via Egypt and even at this time may have originated in the Spice Islands and South-East Asia, but I think it had medical uses earlier on. Doctors used pepper as it acted as an irritant which stimulated secretion in the intestines and aided digestion. The following link to this web page might be of assistance summarising the early pepper trade, although it lacks sources, being a cuisine page. In regards to milling it I suppose the boxwood one described might have been an exotic oddity brought over from India by a rich Roman but for the rest the old mortar and pestle would have sufficed.

http://www.peppertrail.com/inner.php?menu_id=3&sm1_id=30&index_id=1
Regards
Michael Kerr



A Roman Pepper Mill - Flavivs Aetivs - 04-18-2015

The Muziris Papyrus mentions pepper in the list of goods the Hermapollon was bringing back to Roman Egypt.


A Roman Pepper Mill - Medicus matt - 04-18-2015

Quote:What kind of pepper that might have been? Hardly from the Indonesian spice islands.

Black pepper (Piper nigrum) and long pepper (Piper longum) are both native to India and were well known in both Greek and Roman antiquity.