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Comment by fbdab103 | Hacker News Reader

I am also curious if it is possible to determine if the spices were pure (given technology/cultivation constraints of the day). Seems like there would be an enormous incentive to dilute the product as much as possible when the buyer likely has very limited opportunity to contrast quality.

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I can't imagine spices were ever shipped powdered, as you may be imagining from the supermarket.

They would be shipped as whole plant parts but dried. You'd powder or grate right before using.

If they were powdered before shipping they'd lose so much flavor and potency along the way.

Ah of course. Not exactly little bottles of McCormick back then.

I have trouble imagining how you would "dilute" something like flaxseeds or nutmegs (the seeds are the size of a small egg). Do you make fake seeds that look the same and just mix them in with the other seeds?

I was thinking more along the lines of something like salt to which you could theoretically add an adulterant. Now what that would be without making the end result unpalatable is beyond my knowledge, but with the right financial incentives, I assumed someone could identify something.

Maybe but

> nutmeg, cloves, mustard and dill.

None of these were common as some sort of powder back then (nor today except nutmeg). All would be extremely difficult to fake

Counterfeit nutmegs (made of wood) were at minimum widely feared at some points in history: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/94734/why-early-america-...

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