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. Spices were among the most demanded and expensive products available in Europe in the Middle Ages , [5] 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, [6] 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. The value of these goods was the equivalent of a yearly supply of grain for 1. 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.
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 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 — allowed the Portuguese to take control of the sea routes to India.
Patterns of spice use
Since becoming the viceroy of the Indies , he took Goa in India in , and Malacca on the Malay peninsula in 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.
One issue with spices today is dilution, where spices are blended to make inferior quality powdered spices, by including roots, skins and other admixture in production of spice powder. A spice may be available in several forms: 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. To grind a whole spice, the classic tool is mortar and pestle. Less labor-intensive tools are more common now: 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. 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. Shipments from Mexico and India, a major producer, were the most frequently contaminated.
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. 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. The International Organization for Standardization addresses spices and condiments , along with related food additives, as part of the International Classification for Standards The Indian Institute of Spices Research in Kozhikode , Kerala , is devoted exclusively to conducting research for ten spice crops: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Vegetable substance other than leaves primarily used for flavoring, coloring or preserving food.
For the sensation of eating spicy-hot foods, see pungency. Black pepper comes from Piper nigrum , an exclusively tropical plant that has several useful properties.
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For example, the compound piperine inhibits the ubiquitous, deadly bacterium Clostridium botulinum Nakatani Many other spices exhibit greater antibacterial potency when they are mixed than when used alone Ziauddin et al. Some are combined so frequently that the blends have acquired special names. Sausages botulus in Latin are a rich medium for bacterial growth and have frequently been implicated as the source of botulinum toxin.
Other blends, such as curry powder which contains 22 different spices , pickling spice 15 spices , and chili powder 10 spices , are broad-spectrum antimicrobial melanges. In addition to their uses in cooking, individual spices and blends are employed as coloring agents, antivirals including suppressing HIV , brain stimulants, and aphrodisiacs Hirasa and Takemasa Among traditional societies, many spice plants also have ethnopharmaco-logical uses, often as topical or ingested antibacterials and vermicides Chevallier , Cichewicz and Thorpe A few spices, particularly garlic, ginger, cinnamon, and chilis, have for centuries been used to counteract a broad spectrum of ailments, including dysentery, kidney stones, arthritis, and high blood pressure Johns , Duke However, the use of spices in food preparation differs from medicinal use in three ways.
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In cooking, spices are used without regard to diners' health status, they are used in tiny quantities, and they are routinely added to specific recipes. By contrast, in medicinal usage, spices are taken in response to particular maladies, in large quantities, and not with any particular dish—more like swallowing a pill than preparing a meal. Undoubtedly, much of this plant material serves as nutrition, for example, when meat is scarce.
Moreover, some animals that store food add plants with antibacterial and antifungal properties to their caches e. In light of the beneficial effects of spices, why aren't spices used equally often everywhere? The answer probably lies in the costs of spice use, including financial costs to procure parts of plants that do not grow locally e.
Indeed, Ames et al. The implication is that too much of a good thing can be bad.
French Vocabulary - Herbs and spices in French
In hot climates, benefits of avoiding foodborne illnesses and food poisoning apparently outweigh the various costs of spices. But in cool climates, where unrefrigerated foods decay more slowly, benefits of further retarding spoilage may not be worth the costs and risks. Even in countries where spices are heavily used, pre-adolescent children Rozin and women in their first trimester of pregnancy Profet typically avoid highly spiced foods, especially meats.
These differences in spice use may have a similar adaptive basis. For example, Profet suggested that morning sickness may function to reduce maternal intake of foods containing teratogens during the early phase of embryogenesis, when delicate fetal tissues are most susceptible to chemical disruption.
Indeed, women who experience morning sickness are less likely to miscarry than women who do not Weigel and Weigel Young children, who are growing rapidly, may also be particularly sensitive to environmental mutagens. Once pregnancy has progressed into the second trimester and once children reach puberty, the dangers of food poisoning and foodborne illnesses may again outweigh the mutagenic risks associated with phytochemicals Flaxman and Sherman in press. The antimicrobial hypothesis is not the only explanation that has been proposed to explain spice use; however, careful consideration of the alternatives reveals that all have significant flaws.
For example, one proximate hypothesis is that spices disguise the smell and taste of spoiled foods Govindarajan However, the problem with this hypothesis as an ultimate evolutionary explanation is that it ignores the potentially serious negative consequences of ingesting foods laced with bacteria or their toxins. Even poorly nourished individuals would often be better off if they recognized and passed up foods containing potentially deadly spoilage microorganisms.
A second proximate alternative to explain spice use is that spicy foods are preferred in hot climates because they increase perspiration and help cool the body evaporatively. However, although chilis and horseradish can cause sweating in some people, most spices do not have this effect Rozin and Schiller Thus, evaporative cooling cannot be a general explanation for the increased spice use in hot climates.
Moreover, physiological mechanisms of temperature regulation obviously operate to keep us cool without the necessity of finding, eating, and dealing with the potentially negative side effects of phytochemicals. One alternative ultimate hypothesis for spice use is that wherever spices are difficult to obtain and are therefore expensive, individuals signal their wealth and social status e.
This hypothesis would apply primarily to spice plants with restricted ranges e. However, it does not predict or explain the multiple positive correlations between temperature and spice use we found for spices that are available ubiquitously e. Also, this hypothesis is difficult to reconcile with the fact that the rarest spices tend to be used most commonly in the tropics, because it is in these locations where the plants are endemic and, presumably, therefore, least expensive.
A second alternative ultimate hypothesis is that spices supply chemicals that, in small quantities, have beneficial effects other than inhibiting food spoilage microorganisms. For example, certain phytochemicals, especially those found in garlic and onions, can aid digestion, modulate energy metabolism, and even help postpone some degenerative diseases, such as diabetes and cancer Johns and Chapman Some other phytochemicals, particularly those in cloves, rosemary, sage, pepper, and mace, are powerful antioxidants Lin , Hirasa and Takemasa By retarding the oxidation of oil or fat, phytochemicals help preserve foods and also reduce the production of free radicals, which have been linked to cancer and aging.
These effects are undeniably important, but they probably do not represent the primary reason for spice use because not all spices have these beneficial properties. Moreover, the need for micronutrients or antioxidants does not predict or explain the use of spices in recipes or the multiple positive correlations between temperature and spice use shown in Figures 5 , 7 , 8 , and 9.
Finally, it is also possible that spice use may not confer any benefits. Under this hypothesis, patterns of spice use arise because people just take advantage of whatever aromatic plants are available to improve the taste of their food. Perhaps the phytochemicals in spices happen to resemble those found in sought-after foods, such as fat and sugar Rozin and Vollmecke , and as a result spices taste good. If this idea were correct, spice chemicals should be highly palatable, and spice-use patterns should correspond to local availability of spice plants.
However, neither prediction is fully supported. Although some spices are initially appealing e. Indeed, the capsaicin receptor is a heat-activated ion channel in the pain pathway Caterina et al. For most unpalatable substances, an initial negative response is sufficient to maintain avoidance throughout life. However, preferences for spices develop during individuals' lifetimes, usually under familial guidance.
Parents encourage their children to use spices, and most children eventually come to like or at least accept them, implying that spice use is beneficial. In addition, spices are not necessarily more available in hot climates than in cool ones. There is no relationship between the number of countries in which each spice plant grows i.
Because spices have been cultivated for thousands of years in the Old World Zohary and Hopf and hundreds of years in the New World Coe , it seems likely that these patterns of spice plant availability reflect those that occurred when traditional recipes were developing. Thus, correlations between spice use and annual temperature must be due to people in hot countries using a larger proportion of whatever spices are available locally or importing more spices.
Of course, the spice trade Figure 2 facilitates the use of nonindigenous spices. For example, onion and pepper are the two most frequently used spices in the world Figure 3. Allium grows in all 36 countries we examined, but Piper grows in only 9 countries. Pepper is the world's most frequently traded spice more than 90 million pounds per year are imported into the United States alone; Tainter and Grenis Thus, although local availability certainly influences spice use, use is not dictated solely by local availability. How did spice use begin? We hypothesize that people may have begun cooking with spices whose flavors were initially appealing or that made them feel good due to digestive or vermicidal effects, among other things.
As a result, spice-using families may also have been less likely to suffer from foodborne illnesses or food poisoning than families that did not use spices, especially in hot climates. Furthermore, spice-using families probably would have been able to store foods longer before they spoiled, enabling them to tolerate prolonged periods of food scarcity. Observation and imitation of the food-preparation habits of these healthier families by neighbors could have spread spice use rapidly through a society.
Families that used appropriate spices would presumably rear more healthy offspring, who would then learn spice-use traditions from their parents. It even seems possible that people who lived in areas where certain spices were traditionally used might have developed physiologically heightened abilities to taste those phytochemicals. The possible existence of such inter-group variations in taste receptor sensitivity to spices are just beginning to be explored Drewnowski and Rock Eventually, however, new foodborne bacteria or fungi would immigrate, or indigenous microorganisms would evolve resistance to local spices.
Individuals eating foods contaminated by these microbes would become ill. After humans, like many other creatures, eat something that makes them sick, they tend to avoid that taste Milgram et al. Adding a different spice to a food that caused such an illness might change its flavor enough to make it palatable again—because it tastes like a new food. At the same time, if the spice were to kill the microorganism s that caused the illness in the first place, then the food would again be rendered safe for consumption.
As a result of this sequence of events, food aversions would more often be associated with unspiced and unsafe foods, whereas food likings would be associated with spicy dishes, especially in climates where foods spoil rapidly. Over time, the number of spices per recipe would proliferate due to iteration of this process—that is, sequential changes in taste, associated with inhibiting different bacteria and fungi. Despite the widespread availability of electrical refrigeration, antimicrobial properties of spices may still be useful.
For example, there is an order-of-magnitude difference in the frequency of foodborne illnesses between modern Japan and Korea, nearby countries with similar temperate climates. During —, food poisoning—primarily of bacterial origin—affected But, in addition, Korean meat-based recipes are spicier than those of Japan. Although meat-based recipes of Japan collectively used more kinds of spices 14 than those of Korea 8 , Korean recipes more frequently called for at least one spice, contained more spices per recipe Table 1 , and more frequently called for highly inhibitory spices Billing and Sherman As a result, an average Korean recipe most likely inhibits a significantly greater fraction of bacteria than an average Japanese recipe.
One possible explanation for the fact that traditional Japanese recipes do not call for more spices is that they date from times when fresh seafood was continuously available from local waters. Today, more food is imported, and it comes from farther away. Traditional Japanese recipes may simply not include enough spices antimicrobials to cope with the pathogens in the imported food supply. Of course, spice use is not the only way in which humans attempt to hold foodborne pathogens at bay.
Meat products have traditionally been preserved by thoroughly cooking, smoking, drying, and salting them. Indeed, salt, which is available the world over, has been used for preservation for centuries Multhauf We hypothesize that all these practices have been adopted for essentially the same reason: Use of spices takes advantage of plant defensive compounds. Not surprisingly, in view of their evolved functions, these phytochemicals have antioxidant, antimicrobial, and antiviral properties.
The use of spices essentially borrows plants' recipes for survival and puts them to similar use in cooking. However, there is a limit to how much of any one spice can be added before beneficial phytochemicals become phytotoxins. Thus, cookbooks from different eras are more than just curiosities. Essentially, they represent written records of our coevolutionary races against foodborne diseases. By cleansing foods of pathogens before consumption, spice users contribute to the health, longevity, and fitness of themselves, their families, and their guests.
We thank John Alcock, Thomas A. Gavin, Thomas Neuhaus, H. Dugatkin, Thomas Eisner, Paul W. Sherman, and an anonymous reviewer for suggestions on the manuscript; the librarians at Cornell University's Mann and Nestle Libraries for assistance with references; and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Science Foundation, and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University for financial support.
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Close mobile search navigation Article navigation. What is a spice? Patterns of spice use. Antimicrobial properties of spices. Other uses of spices. Alternative hypotheses to explain spice use. Origins of spice use. Antimicrobial value of spices today. Spices taste good because they are good for us Paul W. View large Download slide. The antimicrobial properties of chile peppers Capsicum species and their use in Mayan medicine. Capsicum production, technology, chemistry, and quality. History, botany, cultivation, and primary processing. The antimicrobial effects of spices, herbs and extracts from these and other food plants.
Phytochemicals ingested in traditional diets and medicines as modulators of energy metabolism. Similarities and differences in affective and cognitive origins of food likings and dislikes. Pharmacological properties and medicinal use of pepper Piper nigrum L. Pregnancy sickness as adaptation: Nest and colony characteristics of stingless bees from Panama Hymenoptera: The epidemiology and costs of diseases of public health significance, in relation to meat and meat products.
Capsaicin in hot chili pepper: