Flora Information / The Most Common Spices used in Cooking
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Tagged with flora, flowers, plants, shrubs, vegetation, herbs, vegetable, fruit,spice, cuisine, common, spices, flavor, aroma, food, coloring
Last Modified Oct 18, 2007 at 02:48 PM EDT by JulieGViewed 6793 time(s)
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A spice is a dried seed, fruit, root, bark or vegetative substance used in nutritionally insignificant quantities as a food additive to enhance the flavor, color or aroma of the food. Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are leafy, green plant parts used for flavoring purposes. Herbs, such as basil or oregano, may be used fresh, and are commonly chopped into smaller pieces; spices, however, are dried and usually ground into a powder.
Spices come from the bark (cinnamon), root (ginger, onion, garlic), buds (cloves, saffron), seeds (yellow mustard, poppy, sesame), berry (black pepper), or the fruit (allspice, paprika) of (mostly) tropical plants and trees.
Many of the same substances have other uses in which they are referred to by different terms, e. g. in food preservation, medicine, religious rituals, cosmetics, perfumery or as vegetables. For example, turmeric is also used as a preservative; licorice as a medicine; garlic as a vegetable and nutmeg as a recreational drug.
This is a table of common spices used in various cuisines
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| Bark | Cassia (also called Chinese cinnamon or Indonesian cinnamon) |
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Used instead of cinnamon (often added to true cinnamon) in Mexican, European and other cuisines. |  view
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| Bark | Cinnamon (or Ceylon cinnamon) |
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It is used extensively in the preparation of desserts, chocolate, spicy candies, tea, hot cocoa and liqueurs. It is used as a flavoring agent in Middle-Eastern, South-Asian, American and British cu...
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| Bark | Saigon Cinnamon (aka Vietnamese Cinnamon or Vietnamese cassia) |
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It is an important ingredient in Vietnamese cuisine. | view
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| Bark Resin | Mastic |
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This relatively expensive spice is used in Turkish and Egyptian cuisines. | view
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| Berries | Juniper |
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It is an important spice in many European cuisines, especially in Alpine (Central Europe) regions. | view
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| Berries (embedded on the surface of a flower spike) | Long pepper (close relative of black pepper) |
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More pungent than black pepper, it is used in Indian and North and East African cuisines (Morocco, Ethiopia, etc.) | view
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| Buds | Artemisia Vulgaris (aka Mugwort or Common Wormwood) |
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It is used as a bitter flavoring agent in German cuisine and as a coloring agent in Korean and Japanese cuisine. | view
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| Buds (dried) | Cloves |
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This spice is used throughout Europe and Asia for flavoring food., | view
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| Dried & ground leaf | Cinnamon Myrtle (aka carrol, carrol ironwood, neverbreak, ironwood or grey myrtle) |
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It is used in Australian bushfood cuisine. | view
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| Dried Fruit ('lacy' reddish seed covering) | Mace |
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It is used in Indian cuisine (almost exclusively for sweets). It is also a important spice in European and Japanese cuisines | view
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Flora Information
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