Allspice, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon — they don’t actually look all that appetizing.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Allspice, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon — they don’t actually look all that appetizing.
These pictures only make me wonder if those other bits are edible, too.
I have never been a fan of nutmeg in anything. Blech.
Mmmmm! Smells like Christmas!
Beats the food going off 15 minutes after you prepare it. Spices not only help preserve food they can mask odours from slightly off food. It’s basically what the world did before refrigeration. I love my fridge and the fresh food it enables me to eat without those stinky substances ( which I didn’t grow up with as my parents didn’t feel the need).
Oh no gods, that nutmeg is beautiful.
Carlie:
Do you grate it fresh, or have had the pre-ground stuff? Because pre-ground nutmeg, yeah, it’s awful.
Also, obligatory book recommendation: Spice: The History of a Temptation, by Jack Turner.
Lofty @ 4:
Mister grew up with only a few spices and herbs in food, because big family, military pay. I grew up in a family of cooks, great grandparents, grandparents, etc., and a full spice cupboard was considered a necessity. Mister happily embraced cooking with spices and herbs, can’t imagine going without now.
carlie @2: Never had a proper custard tart, then? Pastried bliss.
Iyeska, flos mali
My wife is a talented cook and has managed to adapt her extensive spice repertoire to my limited ability to tolerate them. It’s only a problem now if we go out, good Italian food at out favourite cafe tastes great but I pay for it over the next 24 hours with digestive disruption.
Life’s full of variables that one tends to cope with to some fashion or another.
Iyeska
Agreed. Just lovely.
I’m already well sick of “pumpkin spice flavored everything” that creeps up this time of year, but that’s no reflection on my love of the individual spices abused in such a mass produced way. Each one is like a different color of paint, all in need of mixing and finding the right balance to create individual masterpieces.
Lofty:
I know several people who love the taste of various spices and herbs, but they create digestive havoc. That always strikes me as really getting the nasty end of the stick, especially as a whole lot of herbs and spices have been used throughout the ages as digestive aids of one kind or another.
The red part on the outside of the nutmeg is mace. It goes a sort of golden-brown when it’s dry. All my nutmegs are grated down to slivers that I can’t really grate, though together they make at least a couple of nutmegs.
My pumpkin pie recipe has a little black pepper and no allspice, and since I have a friend who can’t stand ginger I’m trying to figure out a recipe for her. It tastes weird to me without the ginger so far.
I love all of those, though Husband can only handle them in small amounts. His digestive issues mean that as much as I love herbs and spices, salt and pepper with the occasional Rosemary sprig are about all I get to use.
ledasmom,
My nutmeg gets grated down to nubs as well, but I’ve found a great use for them. When I make hot chocolate or hot rum toddies, I toss one of those nutmeg nubs into each mug – YUM!
What I like about cinnamon is at some point in the distant past someone said, “I’m gonna go bite that tree over there.”
Not really, the “used spices to hide spoilage” is more of a legend than anything else. As I recall (I can’t find my copy right now), the before-mentioned Spice: The History of a Temptation does a good job of refuting this.
williamgeorge #15
Probably something more along the lines of “Well, it’s either eating this tree bark or starving to death. Gee, that’s a funny taste. I hope it’s not poisonous.”
Those aren’t pumpkin spices, those are gingerbread spices!! Just add some black pepper to the mix, and it’s the winter solstice! (I’m all for making Halloween an atheist holiday, but it will not hijack my solstice cookies.)
Oh gods….delicious spices….i love them all. Give me them and give me them in spades!!
Fuck it, tonight i’m having spices with some rice.
Those pictures look delicious! Yes, please stuff everything with spices, as hot and bothering as possible!
Black pepper and ginger are my favourites. Ginger and turmeric (which belong to the same family) have possible medical uses, and of course a clove held in the mouth supposedly reduces toothache. Nutmeg is a hallucinogen, although the dose required is large, and dangerous. The term “spice” in medieval times covered a lot of substances used in small quantities (hence profitable to trade in) which we don’t think of as such, such as incenses and ointments; and getting direct access to their sources, without going through Muslim traders, was the most important incentive for early European imperialism. “The spice must flow!”
Oh, and cardamom!
Nick Gotts:
Large amounts of nutmeg are psychoactive, with some people reporting hallucinations, but the majority of people who have dosed on it don’t experience hallucinations.
On herbs in general – I was honestly shocked to see the lengths to which a company would go in service of marketing – Instantly fresh herbs. Just add water! Fucking hell, it’s dried herbs. Just like all of the other dried herbs. But no, just add water and they’re instantly fresh!
a true abomination unto Nuggan.
I love all that stuff, all year round.
When it gets cold I likes me some hot chocolate:
1 tbs coacoa powder
1 tbs brown sugar
nutmeg, cinnamon, cayenne pepper or pink berries to taste
For a big mug heat the milk and put everything into a blender.
Enjoy.
Antimicrobial Functions of Spices: Why Some Like it Hot
Author(s): Jennifer Billing and Paul W. ShermanSource: The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 73, No. 1 (Mar., 1998), pp. 3-49.
Spices do have considerable antimicrobial activity, essential oils, you know. Also the picture above actually shows two spices, mace, the red aril, and inside the seed coat, nutmeg, the endosperm. Hard to know why spice use started, but the use of spices, and the amount of spices, are highest at the lowest latitudes.
I’m not sure where it can be viewed online, but I strongly recommend The Spice Trail, a three-part series by BBC Two.
As Ray Lewis‘s hilarious† book The Evolution Man points out, numerous caveman researchers gave their lives to determine what was edible.
† Terry Pratchett has called Mr Lewis’s novel “the funniest book I have ever read”.
And in my copy (which I also cannot find at the moment), the introduction tells the story of a paleontologist(?) who wrote to Mr Lewis complaining about a few errors, but added something like “…and they don’t matter one bit, as I was laughing so hard I fell off my camel in the Sahara.”
Gregory @27: All three episodes can be viewed here.
Cinnamon has anti-microbial properties, and is one of the tree species used for toothbrush purposes. I imagine it is much more pleasant to chew on a cassia twig than it is to chew on a melaleuca twig.
I don’t care if PZ thinks that it’s a peculiar craze, give me those wonderful fall spices, and lots of them!
When I smell them, I can think of fall, even though it’s 94 degrees outside today in this miserable place.
I had some fried rice with five-spice, curcuma, sesame oil and some chopped chili. YES.
I think they look delectable! I made spices with lentils for dinner last night – basil (dried – we ran out of fresh from our CSA, which I usually prefer to throw in chopped at the frying stage to pull the essential oils out into the sesame oil frying base), cumin seed (ground and whole), cloves (ground), cinnamon (ground), cardamom (ground), cayenne pepper (ground and crushed), garlic (minced), fennel seed (whole, fenugreek substitute), turmeric (ground), ginger (fresh, shredded), coriander seed (ground), and white peppercorn (ground). It was even better than my standard daal, as I stir-fried some diced potato, mushrooms, and banana pepper with the usual minced onion, garlic, ginger, crushed cayenne pepper, fennel seed, and whole cumin seed before adding the lentils and broth to stew. Served over brown rice, it’s filling and delicious. I adapted this recipe, and as with adding other veggies, I modify it based on what I get from our CSA or what I have around the house that needs to get used before it goes bad. If I use tomatoes (as in the original recipe), I usually use fresh tomatoes, cut into small cubes and fried with everything else (which basically turns it into paste plus little pieces of tomato skin).
Tonight I’m making baked acorn squash with butter, maple syrup, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. I make acorn squash stuffed with stir-fried small diced potatoes, poblano pepper, maize, and black beans (also sometimes tomatoes) spiced with sage, cumin, nutmeg, onion powder, and salt when I’m feeling ambitious, but tonight I decided to be lazy and go the simple route, as the maple-syrup version is also really tasty, and I always get all this maple syrup for which I don’t have much other use (I like it on ice cream and pancakes, but I rarely eat either – on the plus side, it can be stored for years unopened, as the boiling should have killed any microbes, and it can be stored for a long time in the freezer once opened). Gods I’m hungry; why is it not quitting time yet?
@33/John
… *drool*
That sounds amazing. I do something similar with lentils, but haven’t figured out the potatoes like you have yet.