Of Snacks and Civilization: A Somewhat Less Than Solemn History

One might imagine that the evolution of the word “snack” would be straightforward – a simple tale of culinary linguistics.
One would, of course, be wrong. Like most things medieval, it’s a story of unexpected turns and mordant ironies, beginning with the rather fitting fact that our beloved term for between-meal indulgences originally described a dog’s bite.

The Middle Dutch “snacken,” entering English around 1300, would take nearly half a millennium to evolve from canine aggression to casual consumption – a transformation that surely says something profound about human nature, though I’m not entirely sure what.

In my kitchen, contemplating the vast array of processed conveniences that constitute modern snacking, I find myself thinking of those medieval nobles, who – while Europe burned with war and pestilence – occupied themselves with the painstaking art of coating spices in honey.

It’s almost comical, isn’t it? The world was ablaze with war and pestilence, and yet, there they were, those medieval nobles, engrossed in the meticulous art of coating spices in honey.

The Hundred Years’ War raged on, the Black Death rewrote demographics, and somewhere, a nobleman was fretting over the quality of his anise comfits.

These comfits – the medieval equivalent of artisanal small-batch whatever – required servants to spend hours coating seeds and spices with layer upon layer of honey or sugar. Coriander, fennel, caraway: the spice cabinet transformed into status symbols.
One imagines the conversations: “Oh, you’re still eating plain fennel seeds? How… rustic.”

Jean Froissart, the meticulous chronicler of medieval life, documented this era with what one might call journalistic integrity if journalism had existed and integrity had been invented.

His “Chronicles” paint a picture of a world where the nobility could simultaneously worry about the proper preparation of sweetmeats and the proper prosecution of war—multi-tasking, medieval style.

A century later, Hieronymus Bosch would capture this world’s peculiar madness in paintings that look suspiciously like what might happen if one consumed too many questionably preserved comfits. “The Garden of Earthly Delights” might well be the first documented food hallucination in art history.

Here in our enlightened age, I find myself faced with my own snacking dilemma. The choices are somewhat different – less about displaying wealth through candied spices and more about choosing which artificially flavoured corn-based product will best fill the void between meals. Progress, presumably, though I sometimes wonder what those medieval nobles would make of our “cheese-flavoured” offerings.

The democratization of snacking might be one of history’s more subtle revolutions. From status symbol to staple, from luxury to necessity, from artisanal comfits to mass-produced munchies, we’ve managed to transform what was once a display of conspicuous consumption into… well, conspicuous consumption of a different sort.

Perhaps there’s a certain cosmic justice in how “snack” began as a word for biting and ended up describing things that bite back at our health.
Though I suspect those medieval nobles, with their honey-coated spices, weren’t particularly concerned about nutritional value either. Some traditions, it seems, persist through the ages.

And so here we are, inheritors of this dubious legacy, still finding ways to occupy ourselves with elaborate snacking while the world presents its usual array of crises. At least we’re consistent in our priorities if nothing else.

May harmony find you,

Irena Phaedra