Friends who are familiar with the development of spices basically agree that the concept of spices originated from the European continent, which is basically beyond doubt. The use of spices on the European continent can probably be traced back to their ancient Roman Empire, and in the impression of many friends, ancient Rome was extremely civilized, and in such an environment, people seem to use a variety of spices should also be very rich, but in fact there is a gap between imagination and reality.
Many friends don't know that many of our ancient traditional spices are actually not of origin in Europe, so their spice sources rely more on trade. Ancient trade was not as developed as today's logistics, so the types of spices were relatively limited, according to more reliable records, the main popular spices during the ancient Roman Empire were only pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. In this way, the gap between the types of spices and people's imagination is still relatively large.
With the demise of the ancient Roman Empire, the spice trade was monopolized, and the traditional spice was pushed to an extremely high price. The bay leaf in Europeans, it is a leaf of the laurel tree, and there are two main reasons why it was chosen in the first place. The first is because geranium Europe is also one of the origins of geranium, as the place of origin, the amount of supply can be guaranteed, and the supply can be independent in order not to be controlled by others.
The second is that the aroma of bay leaves is actually somewhat similar to cinnamon, which was a highly regarded aroma in the eyes of Europeans at that time, in addition to pepper. The flavor of bay leaf can replace cinnamon to a certain extent, and these two reasons combine to make bay leaf the first spice of choice. The launch of bay leaf in that era can be said to be the work of the Europeans, more or less for the Europeans to save some face, but also let the monopoly of the spice trade of the Arabs have some restraint, it is with the success of bay leaves, such as rosemary, sage, thyme, etc. will be launched one after another, it can be said that the emergence of bay leaves saved the history of spices in Europe.