A review by panxa
Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination by Paul Freedman

So the idea that spices were popular in the middle ages because they covered the taste of bad meat is something of an urban legend. Those who were rich enough to afford spices could also afford fresh meat. And spices aren't as good at preservation as salt and smoke, so the poor did waste money on them. Highly spiced food was popular throughout Europe and Asia from at least the Roman Empire up to the sixteenth century, when French cuisine began to focus on the flavor of the base ingredients, and delicacies from the New World (like coffee, chocolate) started to supplant spices at the tables of the elite.

Side note: this book came to me via Link+ from the Asuza Pacific University library.