Translations:English cuisine/61/en

English cookery has demonstrably been open to influences from abroad from as early as the thirteenth century, and in the case of a few foods like sausages from Roman times. The Countess of Leicester, daughter of King John purchased large amounts of cinnamon, while King Edward I ordered large quantities of spices such as pepper and ginger, as well as of what was then an expensive imported luxury, sugar. Dickson Wright refutes the popular idea that spices were used to disguise bad meat, pointing out that this would have been as fatal then as it would be today. She suggests instead that spices were used to hide the taste of salt, which was used to preserve food in the absence of refrigeration.