SPICE AND HERB

dried parts of various plants cultivated for their aromatic, pungent, or otherwise desirable substances. Spices and herbs consist of rhizomes, bulbs, barks, flower buds, stigmas, fruits, seeds, and leaves. They are commonly spoken of loosely as spices, spice seeds, and herbs. Spices are the highly esteemed, fragrant or pungent plant products of tropical and subtropical regions, the dominant species of the trade including cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and pepper. Spice seeds are the tiny aromatic fruits and oily seeds of herbaceous plants including anise, caraway, cumin, fennel, poppy, and sesame. Herbs are the fragrant leaves of such plants as marjoram, mint, rosemary, and thyme. Spices, spice seeds, and herbs are employed as adjuncts to impart flavour and aroma or piquancy to foods. In the small quantities used to prepare culinary dishes they have little or no nutritive value, but they stimulate the appetite, add zest to food, enhance the taste, and delight the gourmet. The most notable uses of spices and herbs in very early times were in medicine, in the making of holy oils and unguents, and as aphrodisiacs. Priests employed them in worship, incantations, magical rites, and rituals. Ancient herbals, including those of Cathay, Sumer, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, testify to the use of spices and herbs in the treatment of disease. Hippocrates, Galen, and Pedanius Dioscorides, among others, employed them. In the 1st century of the Christian Era Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, extols at length the efficacy and healing powers of spices and herbs in the treatment of just about every ailment known in his day. Such virtues, tempered and moderated, filtered down into the Middle Ages and early modern times. It is not known when man first used spices and herbs in food. Sesame seems to have been known and employed as food, for making wine, and for its oil from time immemorial. Garlic and onions were employed as part of the diet in very early times. Certainly by the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans many spices and herbs had come into use to flavour food and beverages. Herodotus (c. 484c. 425 BC) describes the food of peoples he had met or heard about and relates that some ate fish and meats raw, sun-dried, salted, or pickled. Dried, salted, and pickled meats were staple items of food in many lands centuries after his time, and it requires no effort to imagine the welcome change the gratifying flavour of spices and herbs brought to foods, not only to opulent Greeks and Romans but to the affluent of society everywhere long after them. Only the wealthy could indulge in the use of imported aromatic spices, and this was apparently true all over the world. Marco Polo observed, in 13th-century Cathay, that the higher class people ate meat that had been preserved in several of their spices, but the poor had to be content with meat steeped in garlic juice. In Europe, in the course of time, knowledge slowly spread of the use of spices and herbs to aid in the preservation of food by retarding or preventing rancidity or other deterioration caused by oxidation and to flavour dishes. By medieval times large quantities of culinary herbs were in use. Eastern spices were beyond the purse of the greater number of people, but with the ascendency of the western European nations in the Oriental spice trade these conditions gradually changed, and the aromatic and pungent spices finally came into general use by rich and poor alike. Modern uses of spices, spice seeds, and herbs are legion. There are few culinary recipes that do not include them, and their judicious use brings a delectable, distinctive aroma and taste to a host of dishes (see Table). In the food industry they are employed in the preparation of numerous products including processed meats, fancy sausages, sauces and vinegars, prepared mustard, pickles, chutneys, preserves, mayonnaise, salad dressings, biscuits, cookies, cakes, confections, and beverages. Their essential oils and oleoresins are the basis of a number of spice flavourings and seasonings employed in food manufacturing, where oil spices are preferred to the whole or ground spices for the preparation of certain products. Spices and herbsor their oils where processing temperature permitsgo into the preparation of a number of liqueurs, including absinthe, anisette, benedictine, crme de menthe, curaao, and kmmel. Their essential oils are the flavouring components of a number of extracts, and they are employed in perfumery, cosmetics, toilet preparations, hair oils, toothpastes, toilet soaps, and tobacco. In medicine the spices and herbs have not entirely lost their reputation. In India and other Asiatic countries their curative virtues enjoy respect. They still have a place, though limited, in Western medicine. Present-day herbalists extol the efficacies of some spices, spice seeds, and herbs in the treatment of certain ailments.