It's all a matter of degree. As to what was 'known' and what was actually commonly or widespread in use, for example, seems to matter a lot. For exmaple, there

It's all a matter of degree. As to what was 'known' and what was actually commonly or widespread in use, for example, seems to matter a lot. For exmaple, there are definitely regions that show early adoption of arabic culinary influence eg, moorish spain. the early days of venetian traders of the middle ages (1250), etc. And the returning soldiers from the crusades would have rbought back implicit knowledge to incorporate spices in other areas further north (1100-1300). But it would also seem that those exceptions prove the rule--the timeframe we are talking about is either early and very geographically constrained or later and constrained to a finite window of time. But we know that the persians and arabs had spices and that the hellenistic and roman empires had access to the spoils of war from those geographic regions. http://www.spiceadvice.com/history/ http://www.spiceadvice.com/history/ (not the greatest source, but illustrative)