I know that most black pepper entered Europe through Italian ports back then, and they kind of has a monopoly on it, which is one of the reasons that so many other places kept trying to find alternate routes to India. But just how much price gouging was there? If you lived in France or the Holy Roman Empire, how rich would you have to be to afford to regularly eat black pepper? Would you have to be a king or other high-ranking nobility, or would it be something that lower ranking nobility and middle-class tradesmen could afford?
For starters I will copy/paste parts of my old answer here:
I'll use english prices, as the data is most available, but we must keep in mind that there would be considarable variation between England and e.g. Venice who was the largest importer of pepper from Egypt prior to the establishment of the Cape route around Africa.
So for English, I first found data from Lybyer The Ottoman Turks and the Routes of Oriental Trade where he in a footnote lists the nominal prices of pepper in England for decades of fifteenth century. I collected, and processed it in this table. As a note, weights are given in pounds and values in old english system of 1 pound (£) = 20 shillings (s), and 1 shilling (s) = 12 pence (d)
| decades | 1400-10 | 1410-20 | 1420-30 | 1430-40 | 1440-50 | 1450-60 | 1460-70 | 1470-80 | 1480-90 | 1490-1500 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| shillings per dozen pounds | 12 | 32 | 16 | 13 | 9 | 13 | 14 | 14 | 17 | 17 |
| shilings per pound | 1 | 2.67 | 1.33 | 1.08 | 0.75 | 1.08 | 1.17 | 1.17 | 1.42 | 1.42 |
| pence per pound | 12 | 32 | 16 | 13 | 9 | 13 | 14 | 14 | 17 | 17 |
| pence per ounce | 0.75 | 2 | 1 | 0.81 | 0.56 | 0.81 | 0.88 | 0.88 | 1.06 | 1.06 |
| pence per 12 ounce | 9 | 24 | 12 | 9.75 | 6.75 | 9.75 | 10.5 | 10.5 | 12.75 | 12.75 |
I ^did ^most ^of ^the ^conversion ^myself, ^and ^sorry ^if ^i ^butchered ^something, ^imperial ^units ^of ^measurments ^aren't ^my ^strong ^suit
Next important resource is The Macroeconomic Aggregates for England, 1209-2008 by Gregory Clark (PDF) which lists numerous data about wages and prices for England through decades.
For pepper in the 15th century it confirms the values on page 92, where we can see similar values for price of pepper in 15th century, pretty much varying between 10 and 15 pence per pound of weight.
This resource also allows us to put things into perspective. On page 52-53 you could find information on daily wages of people of the time and see that average wages in 15th century would be around 4.5 or 5 pence per day, with farmers and laborers earning lower then that at 3.5-4d per day.
We can also use the data on pages 82-100 to compare prices of pepper with other items and we can see for example that ion the fifteenth century everyday items were cheaper then pepper per pound basis: Bread - 0.2d per lb; Beef -0.4d per lb, Cheese -0.5d per lb,Butter - 1d per lb, Milk - 1d per gallon, Beer - 2.5d per gallon, Wine - 8d per gallon.
Sugar was similarly as expensive as pepper, fluctuating 10-20d per lb throughout 15th century, going cheaper towards the end, probably due to opening of various sugar plantations in the Atlantic islands.
To give some context and add some additional information. While the above data provides prices for a unit of weight, there is still a question how much pepper was actually consumed, and how much pepper was needed. Of course, we don't actually have this data, however we have various estimates. The estimates are really approximate and guesswork really, done on basis on the value of pepper imported divided with the estimate of population. Another problem with this is that it gives no answer on how the pepper was distributed e.g. it's impossible to tell if entirety or just a part of the population was buying pepper, and how much. We just know how much entered.
The values vary as the estimates do, but I've found that in Europe at around year 1500 annual pepper consumption per capita was at the upper estimate given as 50g^[1] (and some estimates are lower, like 35g^[2] or even 20-25g^[3]). Estimates for modern consumption of pepper for Europe is around 150g-200g annually per capita, some 3x-4x more then in the Late Medieval period.
So, the annual consumption of 50g of pepper equals 1.7637 ounces. The price for that, according to our table, for example in year 1460, would be 0.88d per ounce or 1.55d for 50g. Half a day's salary for a farmer. If we calculate the modern consumption of 200g, it should come up 4x more expensive, at around 6d, so a two day wages. Few days at most. If you want to be extra diligent, we should add that the farmer might need to buy extra pepper for his entire family, but I have no estimates for the sizes of household. The general idea would be that it would really be in realm of possiblity for anybody to afford pepper. Now, would people actually go out and buy it, is harder to tell.
Sources:
[0] The Macroeconomic Aggregates for England, 1209-2008 by Gregory Clark (PDF)
[1] Portugal and the European spice trade, 1480-1580 by Halikowski Smith, Stefan (PDF from here), page 294
[2] The Indo-Roman Pepper Trade and the Muziris Papyrus By Federico De Romanis, (Google Books), page 255
[3] Portugal and the European spice trade, 1480-1580 by Halikowski Smith, Stefan (PDF from here), page 294