Spices Rich and Rare

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 92, 9 July 1927, Page 24

Spices Rich and Rare

Do You Know Where Mace, Cinnamon, and Turmeric Come From ?

SNot the sort they dish up at the Fofies Bergere but the kind the Queen o£ Sheba gave to Solomon; the condiments the Auckland grocer sells. Fragrant stuff with the romance of Babylon behind it; merchandise of Arab caravan from time immemorial. Its aroma turned Europe’s greedy noses to the East Indies, led to the discover of the Cape passage and brought on the long fight for supremacy in India. Arab traders brought spices from the remotest isles of the Indian Ocean to Egypt, where it was purchased by Venetians and sold at enormous profit to the nations of the West. From India there was only the tedious overland and Red Sea route to Europe, patrolled by barbarous Tartar and Turkish tribes. The discovery of a new and safe way to the riches of the East wa.s made by Vasco de Gama, who sailed round the Cape of Good Hope in 1498 and opened the golden age of Portugal. The commerce of the East Indies was in her hands for over a century and Lisbon became the great depot for spices. But the Dutch and the English had their eyes on the trade and the formation of the East

India companies began to battle for ascendancy in India. In 1605 the Portuguese were driven from the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, and when Ceylon fell into their hands the Dutch became the sole purveyors to Europe of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. “Take of Sweet Cinnamon” The very\sound of the word cinnamon has a fragrance about it. A precious and costly thing in ancient days, it was presented to monarclis and great potentates. Moses was commanded to use both cinnamon and cassia, and mention is made of it by Heredotus. Arab traders made its history a romantic mystery and told strange tales of how it came into their hands.

Ceylon was the original home of the cinnamon tree, and the bark was collected by the natives and sold to the traders. Attempts to cultivate it in plantations were made by the Dutch. Wilful injury to the tree was a crime punishable with death. An aromatic laurel, it grows to a height of 20 or 20 feet, and round its stately stem often clings the night-blowing

Noble Myrtles “Driving through an avenue of Cloves brings a degree of exquisite pleasure only to be enjoyed in the clear, light atmosphere of thSse latitudes,” wrote an Englishman resident in the Moluccas. The whole tree, a myrtle, is aromatic, and it grows to a noble height with a luxuriance of foliage. The cloves of the apple-pie are the dried, unopened buds of the tree, and from their appearance they get their name through the Latin “clavus,” a nail. The tree was once confined to Amboina, in the Spice Islands, which were captured by the Portuguese in 1511 and the Dutch in 1605. Care was taken to hold the precious monopoly by the Dutch and the natives were treated unmercifully. To keep the market tight, cloves and nutmeg were often destroyed by fire, and in 1760, a Frenchman relates, a blazing pile of aromatics worth four million florins was seen in Amsterdam. Time has spoilt the merchants’ “corner,” and now the tree is cultivated in the West Indies and Africa, though the Amboina variety is still the best.

Even a finer tree than the cloye is the nutmeg:, also a native of the Moluccas. The Dutch tried to keep it in the Banda Islands, but in this they also have failed. The fruit resembles a small peach. The kernel of the nut is ground to give custards and rice puddings that nice sunburnt look and the red ligament round the shell is sold as another spice, mace. Penang nutmegs are now considered

a better article than the Banda variety. From a fancy that the berries of a fine Jamaican myrtle had the flavour of cinnamon, cloves and nutmegs combined, they were named “allspice,” and that is what the housewife still calls the sweet-smelling stuff which goes in the Christmas puddings. It is also known as pimento or Jamaica pepper. The “pimento walks” of the West Indies and South America, covered with fragrant white blossom, are said to be things to swoon about. The trees grow to 30 feet in height. Peppers and Ginger As one might suspect, the pepper vines thrive in the hottest places of the world. Pepper is a general term for various pungent pods, berries, fruits and seeds. In Travancore, the vines clamber round the mango trees, and they also grow on the Malabar coast, Sumatra, Java, and the West Indies. Capsicums, chillies, cardomins are all sorts of pepper. Cayenne came originally from the island of that name and is now grown in Greece and Turkey. From China and the East Indies came the spice-lily, the tubers of which come here preserved in syrup or sugar as ginger. A similar root to that of the ginger gives turmeric, which has been used as a dye and as a condiment, for many hundreds of years. It is the principal ingredient in all Indian curry powders. A genus of trailing or climbing orchids, grown in Central America, Mexico and Fiji, supplies the vanilla essence fer the ice-creams and chocolate. The oblong pods of the plant are filled with pulp and black oily seeds, like iron filings, which emit so aromatic an odour that it often in-

toxicates those who climb trees to pick them. To Europe we may go for the less romantic kinds of spices. Aniseed is made from the small seed of an umbelliferous plant like fennel, and it grows in Russia, Germany, China, Malta and Spain. From the . seed, which is like that of the poisonous hemlock, the French make liqueur anisette. Rather similar is the caraway, which grows wild in parts of Europe, and which is cultivated in Germany, Holland, and in England. From the same seeds, which make the seed-cakes of the Sunday-school treat, is distilled the heady kummel.