Chicken soup and colonisation.

I was making chicken soup last night, and marveled at how adding a cinnamon stick, star anise, some cardamom pods and some cloves made it taste just like my mother's chicken soup. It also made me wonder how these innocuous little dried things were practically the cause for the colonisation of what is now Indonesia.

When it's been going on the stove for an hour or two, the whole house smells like chicken soup. Just then, the Dutchman came home and commented:

"If you guys hadn't been making chicken soup, the Dutch ships would have never stopped at those islands!"