The Dark and Stormy

Admiral Christopher Columbus claimed to have found ginger growing in the West Indies and he is said to have observed the root hanging around the neck of one of the men, who greeted his ship. Like much else this European traveller described, the ginger sighting was false. But the desire for ginger flavored the following centuries of food encounters.

Ginger is the rhizome of Zingiber officinale, a laterally creeping stem, related to turmeric, another rhizome used in cooking. Because it sends out roots and shoots, each piece is able to give rise to a new plant, making it easy to propagate. Analyzing cooking pots from 4,500 years ago, archaeologists have documented the use of ginger in making Tamil wet stews, “protocurries.” Ancient South Asians also drank a sugary ginger drink by at least 800 BCE. Originating in tropical Asia, the exotic ginger plant subsequently reached the Roman Empire and became an increasingly valuable and sought after commodity for use in European food and tonics.

Because ginger was a popular antidote for seasickness, it makes sense that it traveled far and wide on the high seas. Starting in 1561, ginger became the first Asian spice to be cultivated in the Americas and transported back to Europe. By the seventeenth century, Caribbean ginger was one of the region’s ubiquitous small crops. Richard Ligon devoted five acres of land to growing it in Barbados. Richard Blome, the London engraver, geographer, and mapmaker was active in the second half of the 17th century. His A description of the Island of Jamaica with other isles and territories in America (1678) was sold as a glorified postcard for Great Britain’s colonial possessions. Like Richard Ligon before him, Blome describes growing ginger. By the eighteenth century, according to William James Gardner, ginger was “a plant depending so much on careful cultivation and favourable seasons” that the profits from exports exhibited greater fluctuations than perhaps any other staple.

No matter the cost, the Asian ginger was popular in cooking and brewing drinks in the Caribbean, long before Asians arrived. Its complex and pungent flavor brightened up the spiciness of any food or drink. From the recipes of the plump Dominican priest Pere Labat in Martinique at the end of the seventeenth century to the Food Network star Alton Brown’s recipe for ginger ale in the twenty-first, the meeting of sugar and ginger has been a tasty encounter. My personal favorite use of ginger is in the drink known in the Caribbean as the “Dark ‘n Stormy:” simply a glass of ice, over which is poured 2 ounces of dark rum, followed by 8 ounces of ginger beer, and promising peace after any storm.