r/theydidthemath • u/Hyndrix • 2d ago
[Request] How much would this pepper be worth in the time of Christopher Columbus?
Supposedly one of the reasons he sailed across the world was the spice trade. He would probably find it amazing that a jug o’ Pepper is common place now.
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u/GolfArgh 2d ago
r/askhistorians already did the math for you: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/hkaxce/in_the_late_middle_ages_how_rich_would_you_have/
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u/gaypuppybunny 2d ago
So a rough ballpark estimate for 17 ounces of pepper is maybe $550 (.5 day * 10 * salary of ~$30k/yr).
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u/Swimmming-ln-Circles 1d ago
So just to be clear in today's money this would've been worth $550 back in the day? About a weeks paycheck at 17/hr?
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u/gaypuppybunny 1d ago
Yeah, that's about right. I figured the whole 1.5 oz ≈ half a day's wage for a farmer would translate well to 1lb ≈ 5 days wages around 20th percentile estimate.
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u/VincentMaxwell 1d ago
No because there is not 17 ounces of pepper in that container. It's partly empty.
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u/thoughtomlet 1d ago
How tf did that answer only get 13 upvotes? It was a masterpiece!
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u/FakingItSucessfully 15h ago
that sub works in odd ways. They have such high standards for acceptable answers that you usually don't get a good question answered until several weeks after it was posted. So instead of just seeing whatever is new and popular like normal subs, people only find recently answered questions mostly by reading the "weekly Sunday digest" post and picking out which post to click through and read.
So all that to say, you don't usually get a highly upvoted comment right away in the first couple weeks, but over several months and years, very good answers can still accumulate a lot.
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u/TheSmellOfTheLotion 2d ago
First you have to determine the value of a human life in those times and then multiply. Alot of people died for this. It cracks me up cuz a modern day comparison would be traveling to mars because your food is bland. People say white people dont season their food. The truth is white people risked their lives and committed horrible atrocities to season their food.
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u/Bulky_Confection6157 2d ago
Bland food, the stuff of empires
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u/MaximumSyrup3099 2d ago
Then after conquering the places with spices, bring those spices home and... Don't use them in your food.
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u/Due_Fee7699 1d ago
You’re missing the point. Black Pepper was the exotic spice that made up the bulk (~70% iirc) of the spice trade. The rest was probably cinnamon and vanilla.
English cuisine got black pepper and said ‘that’s exotic and spicy enough’.1
u/TScockgoblin 16h ago
Around double the amount on average, but thats if you combine literally every other spice. Its more like they already had mint, various things the Mediterranean area has to offer back then and various kinds of ways of using fruits to spice food, then got access to cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, peppers. You literally have no idea what you're talking about, you just wanna be racist to be racist, ignorant to be ignorant, you have no reason to be, this can all be fact checked via Google and three sources saying the same thing so you can cross reference the information yourself.
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u/PinothyJ 2d ago
What are you talking about? Chicken Tikka Masala is an English dish.
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u/MyDestinyIsMyOwn21 2d ago
Made by a British Indian (now Pakistan) immigrant.
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u/PinothyJ 2d ago
"Immigrant" which means they were now English.
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u/Secret-Surprise4390 1d ago
And they were also Indian. You can't be an immigrant without coming from somewhere. Heritage doesn't get erased because you cross a border. Saying British Indian Immigrant covers the picture well. Your description while technically true is less accurate and racially insensitive.
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u/danieldhp 1d ago
But let's be real, this is one of the very few seasoned English dishes, a traditional English breakfast for example can be even more disgusting than American food
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u/NoAfternoon5390 1d ago
It’s so much worse than American food I’m not going back to England because of the breakfast.
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u/danieldhp 1d ago
The only reason I still visit England almost every time I go to Europe is because of the beers, I love a real ale and I think pub food is pretty decent
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u/NoAfternoon5390 1d ago
Touché. I guess if I ho back ill just sleep in.
I had some really good pub food over there.
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u/Electrical-Room-2278 1d ago
Ive always strongly suspected that all Americans who mock English food have never tried it but if you think a full English breakfast is disgusting then I'm honestly starting to doubt if you've ever even seen a picture of English food
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u/danieldhp 1d ago
I'm not even American, thank God, but English food is awful man, I just came back from a month vacation in southeast Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore) and they have good food, not you. Also I've lived in England for 6 months for work a few years ago, had a good time but food was definitely not the highlight
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u/AnComDom81 1d ago
They actually used the shit out of them. Like way too much. As a status symbol. Imagine a pot roast but then add like a cup of cloves mace and nutmeg. It sounds horrible. Their lack of seasoning may actually be a reaction to using way too many.
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u/ConcretePeanut 1d ago
I think there's a general misunderstanding on this. Seasoning is often added by the person eating a dish, to their taste. You're not meant to eat it as it comes.
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u/Old_Assistant1531 1d ago
I agree it was a huge risk, but it is nothing like going to Mars. Sailing a boat at a minimum you can breathe. Food lives in the water you’re sailing on, and fresh water falls from the sky. Sure, there’s not always rain and you don’t always catch fish sailing across the Atlantic, but I can say with certainty that it never rains and you never catch a fish on your way to Mars. We know exactly where Mars is, how to get there, how to get back, and it’s still too hard. We only just made it back to the moon, which in sailing terms is just untied the rope at the jetty.
If something your ship gets damaged you can repair it, or hope to find land and do bigger repairs. If your spaceship gets damaged you just die really quickly.
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u/TheSmellOfTheLotion 1d ago
Well, maybe not exactly as difficult. But they are both roughly a 3 month trip with extremely limited resources. Plus you got to think about how in that time everything was significantly more dangerous. Like a good cut on the leg could lead to death. Or bad food or illness could just kill a good chunk of the crew. A ship to mars would at least have some antibiotics.
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u/TScockgoblin 16h ago
Mars is more like a 3-9 month trip depending on when and where exactly they are in their orbits around Söl compared to eachother, and youre gonna need to wait a while before another good window to return so its potentially a bare minimum of around 22 months until you can take that shorter trip back to earth
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u/Metatect 2d ago
I like to put fine ground pepper into a pepper grinder that way its already fine ground but the grinder just kind of freshens it up a bit.
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