What spices and herbs would a middle class person use to flavor their food before trade with the far east and middle east made imports affordable? ( I think I'm asking about the Middle Ages and perhaps the early portion of the Early Modern period).
The middle class could not afford the vast majority of ingredients we classify today as spices, that is until increasing trade and the European colonization of the Americas. The Viandier of Taillevent, for instance, was a recipe book put together by a cook for King Charles V of France in the 14th century. There is heavy use of spices such as ginger, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, and saffron. As /u/kanuut pointed out, some of these were being imported from outside of Europe; cloves and nutmeg, for instance, came from modern day Indonesia. Still, spices - and in turn the dishes within the Viandier - were not for commoners. Saffron was fifteen times more expensive than pepper, and pepper - before Columbus voyaged to the Americas - cost the same as gold. Only nobles could afford spices in significant quantities as they were products of trade even in the Middle Ages. Aside from the fact that they symbolized exoticism, the value of spices in humoral medicine made them even more valuable.
Even sugar, an ingredient we think of as so common today, was seen medication until the 15th century. At that point it was being used as a spice in limited quantities until the 18th century (as a way to enhance the flavor profile as opposed to explicitly sweetening a dish). The 1700s saw larger quantities of sugar being added to tea and coffee; it did very much become fuel - cheap, compact calories - for the working class. In the 15th century, then, sugar was almost exclusively reserved for nobility. They would serve subtleties - sugar sculptures - at feasts and other events. Such sculptures were highly prized initially because they were delicious and attractive, but sugar sculptures - and indeed, sugar - came to be symbolic of the noble's power and wealth. Sugar, and most spices to be sure, were not accessible to the European middle class during the Middle Ages and early portion of the Early Modern era.
Freedman, Paul. Out of the East: spices and the medieval imagination. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2009.
Mintz, Sidney W. Sweetness and power: the place of sugar in modern history. New York: Penguin, 1985.
Pilcher, Jeffrey M. Food in world history. New York: Routledge, 2017.
Scully, Terence, ed. The Viandier of Taillevent. Ottawa, Ont: Presses de l'Universite d'Ottawa, 1988.