In the kitchen a spice is a dried part of a plant other than the leaf — a seed, fruit, bark, root, bud or stigma — used in small amounts for flavour, aroma or colour.
The short answer¶
In cooking, a spice is a dried part of a plant, other than the leaf, used in small amounts for its flavour, aroma or colour. Black pepper, cumin, cinnamon, cloves and saffron are spices. The leaves of plants used the same way are herbs.
Most spices are sold dried, keep for months or years, and travel well. That durability is the reason they were among the first goods traded across continents.
Which parts of the plant¶
Almost every part of a plant except the leaf ends up in the spice rack.
| Part | Spices |
|---|---|
| Seeds | Cumin, mustard seed, nutmeg, nigella, fennel seed |
| Fruits and berries | Black pepper, allspice, star anise, cardamom, dried chillies |
| Bark | Cinnamon, cassia |
| Roots and rhizomes | Ginger, turmeric |
| Flower buds | Cloves |
| Stigmas | Saffron, the three threads at the centre of each crocus flower |
| Aril | Mace, the lacy red covering around the nutmeg seed |
| Seed pods | Vanilla, the cured fruit of an orchid |
Many of the "seeds" are strictly fruits. Coriander seed, cumin, caraway and fennel seed are each the whole dry fruit of a plant in the carrot family, and a peppercorn is a small fruit with a single seed inside. It makes no difference in the kitchen.
Where the word comes from¶
Spice comes from Old French espice, from the Latin species, meaning "kind" or "sort". In late Latin it had also come to mean goods or wares, especially valuable aromatic goods. In medieval Europe "spices" could include sugar, dried fruit and medicines as well as pepper and cloves.
Why spices were worth fighting over¶
The most prized spices came from a few places. Black pepper grows on the Malabar coast of south-west India; cloves and nutmeg came, until the eighteenth century, almost entirely from a handful of islands in the Maluku archipelago. Dried and light, they could survive a voyage of months and still sell for many times their cost.
That trade shaped empires, from the Roman ships that sailed to India to the Portuguese and Dutch seizure of the Spice Islands. See pepper in history and the spice islands.
Not every spice is tropical. Mustard, coriander, caraway, fennel and nigella are seed crops of temperate and warm-temperate regions, and saffron is grown in Iran, Kashmir and Spain.
Where the flavour comes from¶
As with herbs, most of a spice's aroma is carried in volatile oils, but a seed, bark or root holds them far more securely than a leaf. Whole spices keep their scent for a year or more; once ground, the oils have a much larger surface to escape from and the flavour fades within months. See how long spices last and grinding spices.
Heat unlocks those oils as well. Dry-toasting whole spices, or frying them briefly in hot oil at the start of a dish, deepens and changes their flavour. See toasting spices and tempering spices.
Some spices contribute more than aroma: pepper and chillies bring pungency (capsaicin in the case of chillies), turmeric and saffron bring colour, and mustard seed brings heat only when it is crushed and wet.
The grey areas¶
- Chillies are a fruit. Fresh, they are cooked like a vegetable; dried and ground, they are a spice. This site gives them a section of their own.
- Garlic, onion and celery are usually counted as vegetables, even when dried and powdered.
- Salt is a mineral, not a spice, though it sits beside them in every kitchen.
- One plant, two ingredients. Coriander seed is a spice and coriander leaf a herb; the same is true of dill seed and fennel seed.
- Labelling rules draw their own lines. In the United States, for example, food labels may list many dried herbs, such as basil and oregano, under the single word "spices", while onion, garlic and celery powder must be named separately.