the magic of spices
In my late teens my mother gave me a magical birthday gift: a Victorian spice caddy. It has lived in and enhanced my kitchen ever since, coming with me to York, Cambridge, Glasgow and now Cardiff. It’s painted a noble black and did once have some pretty purple and white flowers on its lid, but these are now largely obscured by time. Inside the outer tin box are six little pots, five of which have their lids elegantly marked in gold paint: ‘ALLSPICE’, ‘CINNAMON’, ‘CLOVES’, ‘MACE’ and ‘NUTMEG’. The sixth pot has a lid with tiny holes punched through from its underside. This creates a surface of small, rough-tipped metal cones on the top of the lid: a Victorian nutmeg grater! (Much as I love my antique spice tin, I admit that I now grind my nutmeg using a brilliantly newfangled microplane.)
On the far right, the spice box has a divider that encloses a seventh compartment. Its purpose is unspecified, but I always keep my cardamom pods in it. The outer tin’s lid has a clasp for a small padlock – a reminder of the value of spices in the Victorian era. Access would have been the preserve of the mistress of the house.
The beloved spice box my mother gave me many years ago.
The spice trade is breathtakingly ancient – much, much older than this venerable antique. Cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, star anise, clove and turmeric were all known in China well over 1000 years BCE, for both their culinary and medicinal uses. It was the Chinese who first understood the medicinal properties of plants, and their discoveries were transported to India (becoming part of the subcontinent’s Ayurvedic traditions) and on to the Hellenic peninsular. After the Dark Ages, Venice, Genoa and Lisbon grew fabulously rich as they became hubs of the lucrative spice trade.
It was in Kerala that I first tasted fresh cassia (cinnamon bark) straight from the tree – an amazingly exciting and fragrant experience! The more commonly found ground cinnamon is made from finer, sweeter cinnamon quills. These are harvested from the young stems of the cinnamon tree when they are about two metres high. The outer bark is removed and the inner parts levered off in coiled slivers (known as ‘quills’). When I went to Morocco one March, playing my viol for the British Council, we were offered freshly picked oranges, sliced and sprinkled with ground cinnamon. Utterly delicious! It’s a lovely light dessert, which takes only a moment to create, to round off a rich meal. Occasionally I sprinkle orange flower water on the orange slices first, before giving them their cinnamon dusting. Ruby grapefruit can be substituted for the orange.
While I was in Kerala, I learned about grinding my own spices (read my journal piece on a cookery lesson in Kerala here). I use a faithful old coffee grinder, and the result is infinitely fresher and tastier than ready-ground spices that have been sitting around in their packets. Before grinding cinnamon quills (also known as cinnamon sticks) I break them up a bit, so that they fit nicely into the grinder. I find that home-ground cinnamon has a special, attractive sweetness.
The powerful and heady clove, once one of the most expensive of spices, has a wide variety of culinary and medicinal roles. Resembling an iron nail, it is the dried flower bud of a large evergreen tree native to Indonesia. Our name for it, which comes from Middle English, is taken from the old French clou de girofle (nail of clove). One important culinary usage is in the Indian spice mix garam masala. But the original owners of my spice box would have been more likely to have used it for its spicy glow in mincemeat and other warming Christmas concoctions, alongside allspice, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon and ground ginger. Cloves contain eugenol, an aromatic compound with antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and analgesic properties. Clove essential oil is a first-rate remedy for toothache.
Mace and nutmeg, also native to Indonesia, come parcelled up together inside an outer, fleshy green casing rather like the one that encloses walnuts. When cut open, you’ll find the mace forming a brittle, lacy jacket around the central nutmeg. The flavour of mace is a more delicate, slightly woodier version of nutmeg, which was used quite a lot in traditional English cookery. (For pescatarian readers, it is delicious blended with butter for potted shrimps.) Like my mother, I use nutmeg liberally. It must be freshly grated. Nutmeg makes milk and cream sit up and glow with warmth and goes hand-in-hand with buttery spinach. I use it in béchamel sauces for a spinach roulade or a chard soufflé. It is perfect, too, in a creamy quiche custard and a must for oeufs Florentine and in Italian gnocchi and gnudi … (recipes for all of these can be found in my book).
Allspice is the odd one out in my spice box, coming from the Caribbean. Its name is said to have been dreamt up by the English in the early seventeenth century as its flavour was felt to combine that of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. Like those spices – as well as basil and bay – it contains eugenol. Allspice has a special role to play in jerk seasoning and in stews. Yet it is also found in traditional fruit cakes and Christmas pudding – which is almost certainly how it would have been used in the era of my Victorian spice box.
