Vinegar: The Cornerstone of Modernization

Vinegar: The Cornerstone of Modernization

Let me preface this blog by saying I am about to make a very bold, seemingly outlandish claim, but please hear me out… 

One of if not the most essential factor in the growth and development of cities and complex society across western Europe during the Middle Ages was vinegar.  In fact, I posit that if not for this sour commodity, the complex diversification and urban development between the 1100s and the 1400s would not have happened in that part of the world. 

Since the dawn of time, mankind’s battle for survival was predicated on food. To quote scholar Thomas Robert Malthus, “Food is necessary for the existence of man” (Malthus 2012). For centuries man searched for ways to make cheap, abundant food. The Agricultural Revolution that fostered the development of civilization and growth that lead up to the Middle Ages was connected to animal domestication and husbandry, fishing and hunting, and the development of agriculture. Most crops grew in a cyclical pattern where they were planted in the spring and harvested in the fall, or vice versa, while hunting and fishing followed a similar pattern.  These cycles produced an abundance of food during harvest season, thus the next big hurdle for the development of society was the preservation of the food to last year round.  

Medieval Preservative Production

In Europe during the Middle Ages, there were four effective ways to preserve food: smoking, salting, fermenting, and pickling. Smoking was fairly popular but had very specific drawbacks.  It could only be done with meat and was a labor/time intensive effort. It required custom facilities, specific woods, and excessive manpower. These issues relegated it as a preservation method primarily for the rich. Salting was by far the most effective way to preserve all kinds of foods, however, there were problems with this method as well.  It took an excessive amount of salt to properly preserve the food, and salt was very expensive at this time.1 Fermentation was never popular in most of Europe. While it was a fairly economical and an effective method of food preservation, it carried a social stigma and an acquired taste for the distinct flavor.2  That just left pickling as a viable preservation method.  

Pickling was a method of preserving food in vinegar through an anaerobic chemical process.  The use of vinegar as a preservative dated back to the times of ancient Babylon and Egypt. In the early Middle Ages in Europe, however, it was difficult to produce large amounts of vinegar.  This was due to an unrefined process and the lack of plants needed to produce the product. This changed in the late 1100s in the French city of Orleans, when a group of vintners accidentally stumbled upon a simple process to make vinegar, known as the “Orleans Method” (cite).  Shortly after this, the “Solera Method” or sherry vinegar was discovered in Northern Italy and the men of the Crusades brought back from the Levant ways to make vinegar out of raisins and pomegranates. With all of these cost effective preservative innovations during the Middle Ages, Europe was full of vinegar. 

The Orleans Method of Vinegar Production

So, why was vinegar so important and how did this sour condiment lead to the growth of cities in the Middle Ages? 

First, malt vinegar was at the time the most effective pesticide known to man and some scholars estimated that it increased grain production up to twenty percent (Smith-Fiola and Gill 2017). Next, vegetables, fruits, meats, and grains were preserved economically and efficiently with the use of vinegar. Even dairy became easier to store over long periods of time when vinegar was used as a curdling agent and milk was made into cheese. 

Medieval Store Selling Vinegar

So, with the abundance and longer shelf-life of food, fewer people needed to work on farms. Thus, more people diversified their trades. This diversification of jobs lead to a growth in commerce which promoted societal development. This increase in commerce prompted urbanization. With all of these factors added together, we saw the rise of modernizing European cities and the complex cultural structures of the Middle Ages.  All of this growth and development was largely thanks to the most humble of commodities… vinegar!

Notes

1. There were two kinds of natural salt available for this process, sea salt and rock salt.  Sea salt prior to the Industrial Revolution required much time and effort to gather and produced very small yields.  Because sea salt lacked the ionization process, it was not fully effective in preservation. That left rock salt as the preservation option.  There were very few salt mines in Europe with the major exception being the Salina Turda in Romania. Due to its depth, this area was not a major salt producer until the 19th Century when the advent of better drilling and mining methods. Most of the salt used in Medieval Europe came from the Arabian and Sahara Deserts and the cost of importation made it too expensive for most people to use.  According to the paper entitled, “British Economic Growth 1270-1870,” which was published by the University of Warwick’s Centre on Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy, the average income in England from 1270 to 1600 was between $400 and $800 in today's relative market (Broadberry et al. 2010).  While a similar study conducted by the University of Toronto valued salt at roughly $4.00 per gram (today’s relative market) in the 1348 Venetian market (Wee 1963).  With the price of salt growing farther from the Italian ports, this was not an economically viable option for most. 
2. Fermenting food was a popular method of preserving meats, fruits, vegetables, and grains for centuries across East and Central Asia as well as in Northern Eurasia.  However, it never really became popular in the majority of Europe with the exception of the Scandinavian countries. Many believe it was only popular in Scandinavia because of the harsh natural conditions.  Scandinavia had the coldest European winters and the shortest crop growing season. Thus, fermentation was used out of necessity to preserve mostly fish and dairy products. This was further supported by the fact that Danish cuisine generally contained the least amount of fermentation, whereas, Iclandic cuisine was full of fermented foods.  Side note: The Iclandic national dish is called “hakarl” which is fermented sleeper shark meat.  If you ever get the chance to try it, I highly suggest you do so. It is a unique delicacy with a deliciously strong flavor.  

Work Cited:

Broadberry, Stephen, et al. Collaborative Project HI-POD, 19 Aug. 2010, 

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/sbroadberry/wp/britishgdplongrun8a.pdf.

Campbell, Bruce M. S. Before the Black Death: Studies in the "Crisis" of the Early Fourteenth 

Century:”Demographic Developments in Rural England, 1300-1348: A Survey”. Manchester University Press, 1992.

Malthus, Thomas. “CHAPTER 1.” An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus,       

             2012, https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/malthus/ch01.htm.

Rogers, James E. Thorold.A History of Agriculture and Prices in England. Kraus, 1963.

Smith-Fiola, Deborah, and Stanton Gill. Central Maryland Research and Education Center, 2017, 

https://www.extension.umd.edu/sites/extension.umd.edu/files/_docs/programs/ipmnet/Vinegar-AnAlternativeToGlyphosate-UMD-Smith-Fiola-and-Gill.pdf.

Wee, Hermann Van Der.The Growth of the Antwerp Market and the European Economy: 

(Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries). M. Nijhoff, 1963.