Condiments, Spices and Flavors

by Mary Elizabeth Green

Cassia is the inner bark of a species of cinnamon called Chinese cinnamon or cassia lignea. The greater part of it is exported from China. The bark is put up in bundles about half the length of cinnamon bark and is more pungent and less sweet of flavor. Cassia buds are the unripened fruits of the tree which produces Chinese cassia. In shape and size they resemble cloves, in aroma, cinnamon, and are usually preserved whole for sweetmeats or spices. Cassia is mentioned by Moses as an ingredient of the holy oil, in Psalms as a perfume and in Ezekiel as a spice.

Allspice, sometimes called Jamaica pepper and properly, pimento, is native to the Island of Jamaica and has not been successfully cultivated outside of the West Indies. The pimento tree is an evergreen of the myrtlebloom family, all of which are exotic trees, and reaches a height of thirty feet. The allspice of commerce consists of the berries of this tree, exported whole after being dried, and so called because their aroma resembles that of cloves, cinnamon, juniper and nutmeg. The berries are gathered when green, being left on the twigs until dried by the sun, by which means all the essential oil is retained.

Cassia Buds.

Nutmeg.

Nutmeg is the kernel of the fruit of an exotic evergreen tree native to the Banda and other of the East Indian islands. In appearance it resembles the orange, yielding fruit when eight or nine years of age and bearing for fifty or sixty years. It requires a light soil, moisture and shade, and cannot be propagated in regions in which these conditions are not present. The tree bears fruit during most of the year, in the Molucca and other islands three crops a year being gathered. The fruit, which requires nine months in which to mature, is carefully dried before the pericarp is removed and the kernel taken out. There are three varieties, the male or barren, the royal and the queen, the last, a small, round nutmeg, considered most valuable. The inferior nutmegs are used for the extraction of nutmeg butter or oil, known as “oil of mace.” About six per cent of volatile oil is contained. It is stated that more nutmegs are exported to the United States than to all Europe. The Dutch formerly preserved the entire fruit, kernel and pericarp, in a syrup of sweet vinegar for a sweetmeat. This nation when in control of the spice trade of certain of the East Indian islands made strenuous efforts to confine the nutmeg tree to the Bandas. But the “nutmeg bird,” a species of blue pigeon, frustrated their designs by scattering the nuts all over the islands after feeding upon their pulpy covering. So determined at one time were the Dutch to keep the price of nutmegs high that, if an unusually large harvest occurred, part of it was burned by them.

Mace is the reticulated aril covering the kernel. When fresh, it is of a crimson color, reaching the golden tint only when dried and after some months. In its properties it is similar to the nutmeg. The leaves of the nutmeg tree as well as the fruit are highly aromatic.

The cardamon is a member of the ginger family and is native to Malabar, Madagascar and Ceylon. That from the latter country is of quite large size. It consists of a rhizome or root stock from which rise tall, flag-like leaves. The flower stem springs directly from the root and is much shorter, bearing racemiform clusters of small white flowers. The fruit consists of greenish pods half an inch in length, each pod being three capsuled and containing numerous seeds. These seeds are pungent in flavor and constitute the valuable part of the plant. The pods are dried slowly as rapid drying causes them to split, thereby losing the seeds. Cardamon seeds were used by the ancient Greeks both as a spice and as medicine.

Pepper, with cinnamon, salt and incense, was one of the staple commodities which anciently passed over the caravan routes between Venice and India. At that time its price was extremely high and, according to E. M. Holmes, rents were frequently paid in this article as late as the middle ages. After the sack of Rome by the barbarians one of the articles of tribute demanded by Alaric was a thousand pounds of pepper. As late as the eighteenth century the pepper trade was confined to the Portuguese. In recent years it has become one of the cheapest of our spices.