Spice

In the culinary arts, a spice is any seed, fruit, root, bark, or other plant substance in a form primarily used for flavoring or coloring food.

Spices can be used in various forms, including fresh, whole, dried, grated, chopped, crushed, ground, or extracted into a tincture.

These processes may occur before the spice is sold, during meal preparation in the kitchen, or even at the table when serving a dish, such as grinding peppercorns as a condiment.

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.

Europe's demand for spices was among the economic and cultural factors that encouraged exploration in the early modern period.

[citation needed] Historians believe that nutmeg, which originates from the Banda Islands in Southeast Asia, was introduced to Europe in the 6th century BCE.

[14] 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.

[18] Voyagers from 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 1499.

[19][a] Another source of competition in the spice trade during the 15th and 16th centuries was the Ragusans from the maritime republic of Dubrovnik in southern Croatia.

[20] The military prowess of Afonso de Albuquerque (1453–1515) allowed the Portuguese to take control of the sea routes to India.

[citation needed] With the discovery of the New World came new spices, including allspice, chili peppers, vanilla, and chocolate.

Finally, since they can be expensive, rare and exotic commodities, their conspicuous consumption has often been a symbol of wealth and social class.

This compelling but false idea constitutes something of an urban legend, a story so instinctively attractive that mere fact seems unable to wipe it out...

Anyone who could afford spices could easily find meat fresher than what city dwellers today buy in their local supermarket.

[18] It is often claimed that spices were used either as food preservatives or to mask the taste of spoiled meat, especially in the European Middle Ages.

They typically suggest adding spices toward the end of the cooking process, where they could have no preservative effect whatsoever.

[27] Though some spices have antimicrobial properties in vitro,[28] pepper—by far the most common spice—is relatively ineffective, and in any case, salt, which is far cheaper, is also far more effective.

The flavor of a spice is derived in part from compounds (volatile oils) that oxidize or evaporate when exposed to air.