The Importance of Spices

These days certain spices are so ubiquitous that they have almost become invisible. Is that pepper I see next to the salt on the table? But for most of the history of spices Pepper has been an incredibly expensive commodity. It was only produced in India and found its way to Europe by strange and mysterious means.

Actually, traders from India brought pepper along the spice route up the cost of Arabia and to Egypt, from where it travelled by caravan to Europe (much of the trade going to Greece). It was the Greeks who led to pepper being favoured as a flavouring by the Romans and which also led to the Roman trading voyages to India and the opening of the Spice Trade.

As a spice pepper is amazing in that it has 'heat' and pungency but no bitterness. It therefor gives any and all foods an 'oomph' in terms of flavour without making them unpalatable (this is why Romans even put pepper in their desserts!).


But what actually is a spice? In terms of a moderrn definition, a spice is typically obtained from the dried fruiting body of a plant. Thus it can be the whole fruit (as in cubeb pepper or allspice berries or cumin) or it is the kernel or seed of the fruit (as in nutmeg and fenugreek seeds or nigella seeds). In contrast, herbs are the vegetative parts of a plant (the stems and leaves) and include lemongrass (stems), thyme (leaves), oregano (leaves). Spices are also obtained from the roots, rhizomes or tubers of plants. Thus ginger (and its relatives, galangal, zedoary etc) are spices, as is the Medieval spice, Galingale [the root of a sedge])


Humans are odd amongst animals in that we like pungency in our foods and many, many spices and this has led us to use a whole range of spices in our cookery and many of these spices, in some way, echo the nature of black pepper.

This is why the chilli, when introduced to Europe from the Americas was called the 'chilli pepper'. Indeed, the vast majority of spices impart 'heat' on a dish and only very few are purely used for their flavouring properties.


Most of our common and not so common spices have a heat and pungency that mimics black pepper in some way or other. But all of them also tend to impart a bitterness to the foods they are used to flavour and need to be applied sparingly, or in combination with other spices. Good examples are cubeb pepper (common in the Middle Ages) and Sénégal Pepper (which was used as a black pepper substitute during the Second World War).

This is one reason why chillies have become so popular in that they impart heat but no pungency or bitterness to a dish. They can therefor be used to add heat whilst other spices are added for pungency and flavour. Certainly the common availability of chillies and chilli pastes in Africa has led to a resurgence in the use of native spices as subtler flavourings.

Despite this, it is true to say that our love of black pepper has displaced many local spices that we used to use in the past and it also means that we are ignoring many taste sensations that could usefully be put back in our cookery. Maybe it's time to re-discover some of these lost spices from all over the globe an to re-gain our lost culinary heritage.

About the Author

Dyfed Lloyd Evans is the creator of the Celtnet Guide to Spices a comprehensive guide to global spices and the recipes incorporating them. You can learn more about the spice trade and it's influence on European history in the History of the Spice Trade article. He is also the author of the Guide to Spices and their Uses, which catalogs 57 spices and gives 233 recipes showing how these spices can be used. Sales of which all go to supporting Liberian refugees in West Africa.