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A spice is a seed, fruit, root, bark, or other plant substance primarily used for flavoring or coloring food. Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are the leaves, flowers, or stems of plants used for flavoring or as a garnish. Spices are sometimes used in medicine, religious rituals, cosmetics or perfume production.
History
Early history
The spice trade developed throughout the Indian subcontinent by at earliest 2000 BCE with cinnamon and black pepper, and in East Asia with herbs and pepper. The Egyptians used herbs for mummification and their demand for exotic spices and herbs helped stimulate world trade. The word spice comes from the Old French word espice, which became epice, and which came from the Latin root spec, the noun referring to "appearance, sort, kind": species has the same root. By 1000 BCE, medical systems based upon herbs could be found in China, Korea, and India. Early uses were connected with magic, medicine, religion, tradition, and preservation.
Cloves were used in Mesopotamia by 1700 BCE. The ancient Indian epic Ramayana mentions cloves. The Romans had cloves in the 1st century CE, as Pliny the Elder wrote about them.
The earliest written records of spices come from ancient
Egyptian, Chinese, and Indian cultures. The Ebers Papyrus from Early
Egyptians that dates from 1550 B.C.E. describes some eight hundred different medicinal remedies and numerous medicinal procedures.
Historians believe that nutmeg, which originates from the Banda Islands in Southeast Asia, was introduced to Europe in the 6th century BCE.
Indonesian merchants traveled around China, India, the Middle East, and the east coast of Africa. Arab merchants facilitated the routes through the Middle East and India. This resulted in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria
being the main trading center for spices. The most important discovery
prior to the European spice trade were the monsoon winds (40 CE).
Sailing from Eastern spice cultivators to Western European consumers
gradually replaced the land-locked spice routes once facilitated by the
Middle East Arab caravans.
In the story of Genesis, Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers to spice merchants. In the biblical poem Song of Solomon, the male speaker compares his beloved to many forms of spices.
Middle Ages
"The Mullus" harvesting pepper. Illustration from a French edition of The Travels of Marco Polo.
Spices were among the most demanded and expensive products available in Europe in the Middle Ages, the most common being black pepper, cinnamon (and the cheaper alternative cassia), cumin, nutmeg, ginger and cloves. Given medieval medicine's main theory of humorism, spices and herbs were indispensable to balance "humors" in food, a daily basis for good health at a time of recurrent pandemics. In addition to being desired by those using medieval medicine, the European elite also craved spices in the Middle Ages. An example of the European aristocracy's demand for spice comes from the King of Aragon, who invested substantial resources into bringing back spices to Spain in the 12th century. He was specifically looking for spices to put in wine, and was not alone among European monarchs at the time to have such a desire for spice.
Spices were all imported from plantations in Asia and Africa,
which made them expensive. From the 8th until the 15th century, the Republic of Venice had the monopoly on spice trade with the Middle East, and along with it the neighboring Italian maritime republics
and city-states. The trade made the region rich. It has been estimated
that around 1,000 tons of pepper and 1,000 tons of the other common
spices were imported into Western Europe each year during the Late Middle Ages. The value of these goods was the equivalent of a yearly supply of grain for 1.5 million people. The most exclusive was saffron,
used as much for its vivid yellow-red color as for its flavor. Spices
that have now fallen into obscurity in European cuisine include grains of paradise, a relative of cardamom which mostly replaced pepper in late medieval north French cooking, long pepper, mace, spikenard, galangal and cubeb.
Early Modern Period
Spain and Portugal
were interested in seeking new routes to trade in spices and other
valuable products from Asia. The control of trade routes and the
spice-producing regions were the main reasons that Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama sailed to India in 1499. When da Gama discovered the pepper market in India, he was able to secure peppers for a much cheaper price than the ones demanded by Venice. At around the same time, Christopher Columbus returned from the New World. He described to investors new spices available there.
Another source of competition in the spice trade during the 15th and 16th century was the Ragusans from the maritime republic of Dubrovnik in southern Croatia.
The military prowess of Afonso de Albuquerque (1453–1515) allowed the Portuguese to take control of the sea routes to India. In 1506, he took the island of Socotra in the mouth of the Red Sea and, in 1507, Ormuz in the Persian Gulf. Since becoming the viceroy of the Indies, he took Goa in India in 1510, and Malacca on the Malay peninsula in 1511. The Portuguese could now trade directly with Siam, China, and the Maluku Islands.
With the discovery of the New World came new spices, including allspice, chili peppers, vanilla, and chocolate.
This development kept the spice trade, with America as a late comer
with its new seasonings, profitable well into the 19th century.
Function
Spices are primarily used as food flavoring. They are also used to perfume cosmetics and incense.
At various periods, many spices have been believed to have medicinal
value. Finally, since they are expensive, rare, and exotic commodities,
their conspicuous consumption has often been a symbol of wealth and social class.
The most popular
explanation for the love of spices in the Middle Ages is that they were
used to preserve meat from spoiling, or to cover up the taste of meat
that had already gone off. This compelling but false idea constitutes
something of an urban legend, a story so instinctively attractive that
mere fact seems unable to wipe it out.... Anyone who could afford spices
could easily find meat fresher than what city dwellers today buy in
their local supermarket.
It is often claimed that spices were used either as food preservatives or to mask the taste of spoiled meat, especially in the Middle Ages. This is false. In fact, spices are rather ineffective as preservatives as compared to salting, smoking, pickling, or drying, and are ineffective in covering the taste of spoiled meat.
Moreover, spices have always been comparatively expensive: in 15th
century Oxford, a whole pig cost about the same as a pound of the
cheapest spice, pepper.
There is also no evidence of such use from contemporary cookbooks: "Old
cookbooks make it clear that spices weren't used as a preservative.
They typically suggest adding spices toward the end of the cooking
process, where they could have no preservative effect whatsoever." In fact, Cristoforo di Messisbugo suggested in the 16th century that pepper may speed up spoilage.
Though some spices have antimicrobial properties in vitro,
pepper—by far the most common spice—is relatively ineffective, and in
any case, salt, which is far cheaper, is also far more effective.
Classification and types
Culinary herbs and spices
Botanical basis
- Seeds, such as fennel, mustard, nutmeg, and black pepper
- Fruits, such as Cayenne pepper
- Arils, such as mace (part of nutmeg plant fruit)
- Barks, such as cinnamon and cassia
- Flower buds, such as cloves
- Stigmas, such as saffron
- Roots and rhizomes, such as turmeric, ginger and galangal
- Resins, such as asafoetida
Common spice mixtures
- Advieh (Iran)
- Baharat (Arab world, and the Middle East in general)
- Berbere (Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia)
- Bumbu (Indonesia)
- Cajun (United States)
- Chaat masala (Indian subcontinent)
- Chili powder
- Curry powder
- Five-spice powder (China)
- Garam masala (Indian subcontinent)
- Harissa (North Africa)
- Hawaij (Yemen)
- Jerk spice (Jamaica)
- Khmeli suneli (Georgia, former U.S.S.R.)
- Masala (a generic name for any mix used in the Indian subcontinent)
- Mixed spice (United Kingdom)
- Panch phoron (Indian subcontinent)
- Pumpkin pie spice (United States)
- Quatre épices (France)
- Ras el hanout (North Africa)
- Sharena sol (literally "colorful salt", Bulgaria)
- Shichimi tōgarashi (Japan)
- Speculaas (Belgium and Netherlands)
- Thuna Paha (Sri Lanka)
- Vegeta (Croatia)
- Za'atar (Middle East)
Handling
A typical home's kitchen shelf of spices in the United States or Canada.
A spice may be available in several forms: fresh, whole dried, or
pre-ground dried. Generally, spices are dried. Spices may be ground into
a powder for convenience. A whole dried spice has the longest shelf
life, so it can be purchased and stored in larger amounts, making it
cheaper on a per-serving basis. A fresh spice, such as ginger,
is usually more flavorful than its dried form, but fresh spices are
more expensive and have a much shorter shelf life. Some spices are not
always available either fresh or whole, for example turmeric,
and often must be purchased in ground form. Small seeds, such as fennel
and mustard seeds, are often used both whole and in powder form.
Pepper mill
To grind a whole spice, the classic tool is mortar and pestle. Less labor-intensive tools are more common now: a microplane or fine grater can be used to grind small amounts; a coffee grinder is useful for larger amounts. A frequently used spice such as black pepper may merit storage in its own hand grinder or mill.
The flavor of a spice is derived in part from compounds (volatile oils) that oxidize
or evaporate when exposed to air. Grinding a spice greatly increases
its surface area and so increases the rates of oxidation and
evaporation. Thus, flavor is maximized by storing a spice whole and
grinding when needed. The shelf life of a whole dry spice is roughly two
years; of a ground spice roughly six months. The "flavor life" of a ground spice can be much shorter. Ground spices are better stored away from light.
Some flavor elements in spices are soluble in water; many are
soluble in oil or fat. As a general rule, the flavors from a spice take
time to infuse into the food so spices are added early in preparation.
This contrasts to herbs which are usually added late in preparation.
Salmonella contamination
A study by the Food and Drug Administration
of shipments of spices to the United States during fiscal years
2007-2009 showed about 7% of the shipments were contaminated by Salmonella bacteria, some of it antibiotic-resistant.
As most spices are cooked before being served salmonella contamination
often has no effect, but some spices, particularly pepper, are often
eaten raw and present at table for convenient use. Shipments from Mexico
and India, a major producer, were the most frequently contaminated. However, with newly developed radiation sterilization methods, the risk of Salmonella contamination is now lower.
Nutrition
Because
they tend to have strong flavors and are used in small quantities,
spices tend to add few calories to food, even though many spices,
especially those made from seeds, contain high portions of fat, protein,
and carbohydrate by weight. However, when used in larger quantity,
spices can also contribute a substantial amount of minerals and other micronutrients, including iron, magnesium, calcium, and many others, to the diet. For example, a teaspoon of paprika contains about 1133 IU of Vitamin A, which is over 20% of the recommended daily allowance specified by the US FDA.
Most herbs and spices have substantial antioxidant activity, owing primarily to phenolic compounds, especially flavonoids, which influence nutrition through many pathways, including affecting the absorption of other nutrients. One study found cumin and fresh ginger to be highest in antioxidant activity.
Production
India contributes 75% of global spice production.
| Rank | Country | 2010 | 2011 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | 1,474,900 | 1,525,000 |
| 2 | Bangladesh | 128,517 | 139,775 |
| 3 | Turkey | 107,000 | 113,783 |
| 4 | China | 90,000 | 95,890 |
| 5 | Pakistan | 53,647 | 53,620 |
| 6 | Iran | 18,028 | 21,307 |
| 7 | Nepal | 20,360 | 20,905 |
| 8 | Colombia | 16,998 | 19,378 |
| 9 | Ethiopia | 27,122 | 17,905 |
| 10 | Sri Lanka | 8,293 | 8,438 |
| — | World | 1,995,523 | 2,063,472 |
| Source: UN Food & Agriculture Organization | |||
Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization addresses spices and condiments, along with related food additives, as part of the International Classification for Standards 67.220 series.
Research
The Indian Institute of Spices Research in Kozhikode, Kerala,
is devoted exclusively to conducting research for ten spice crops:
black pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, clove, garcinia, ginger, nutmeg,
paprika, turmeric, and vanilla.
