As A Kid,

I along with many others were taught about the spice trade,

before refrigeration what better way than to mask the smell of rancid meat than to put a spice on it to cover the smell of the rotted meat, in much the same way that as fish goes 'off' making that horrible ammonia smell that is alkaline, we put vinegar, which is an acid, on fish to take away the smell of ammonia that rancid fish, crab or prawns that you would not normally eat gives off, moving on I was intrigued by this article from Caitlin PenzeyMoog, it is a very pleasant read, but the best is at the end where she exposes 7 great myths about spices and salt, it is definitely worth a cup of coffee to read, the picture by the way is The Unloading of Goods: Voyage to Calicut Series, 1504.