59 Fun Facts About Spice

Which spice, harvested by hand from a crocus, is the world's most expensive by weight?

Premium grades regularly top US$5,000 per kilogram because every thread is picked by hand.

The threads of the crocus-derived spice are which part of the flower?

About 150,000 flowers go into a single kilogram of dried spice.

Which country produces around 90% of the world's crocus-thread spice?

Afghanistan is a distant second, and Spain's La Mancha crop is famous but small.

Roughly how many crocus flowers does it take to make one kilogram of the dried threads?

That works out to some 440,000 individual stigmas per kilo.

Black pepper is made from the unripe fruit of a vine native to which region?

The vine Piper nigrum comes from India's Malabar Coast; today Vietnam grows about 30% of the world's crop.

How does white pepper differ from black pepper?

The outer fruit is removed, which is why white pepper is milder and paler.

Which country led world black pepper production in 2023 with about 30% of the total?

The world produced 855,105 tonnes of peppercorns that year.

Peppercorns were found stuffed in the nostrils of which Egyptian pharaoh's mummy?

They were placed there as part of the mummification ritual, proof of trade with India over 3,000 years ago.

Pink peppercorns are actually the fruit of what?

The plant belongs to the Anacardiaceae, the same family as cashews and mangoes, which is why some allergy sufferers avoid them.

The heat in pepper comes mainly from which compound?

It is found in both the outer fruit and the seed, unlike chili heat which comes from capsaicin.

Cinnamon is obtained from which part of the tree?

The bark curls into quills as it dries; ancient Egyptians used it to embalm mummies.

'True' or Ceylon cinnamon takes its name from the former name of which country?

Most supermarket cinnamon is actually cassia, which contains far more coumarin.

Herodotus claimed cinnamon sticks were collected by giant what?

The 'cinnamon bird' story helped Arabian traders hide the spice's real source for centuries.

Mace is a spice made from what part of the nutmeg?

The lacy aril is peeled off the seed and dried separately, giving two spices from one fruit.

Under the 1667 Treaty of Breda, Britain traded the nutmeg island of Run for which island?

At the time a sack of nutmeg looked like the better end of the deal.

The nutmeg tree is native to which island group?

The Dutch East India Company waged a bloody campaign against the Bandanese in 1621 to secure a monopoly.

Eating large amounts of nutmeg can cause poisoning from which compound?

In pure form it is a toxin, which is why nutmeg 'highs' tend to end badly.

Vanilla comes from the seed pods of what kind of plant?

The Totonac people of Veracruz were farming it by at least 1185.

In 1841, who discovered vanilla could be hand-pollinated, enabling cultivation outside Mexico?

Edmond Albius's technique is still used on every vanilla farm today.

Which island supplies, together with Indonesia, about two-thirds of the world's vanilla?

By weight vanilla is the second most expensive spice after saffron.

The word 'vanilla' comes from a Spanish word meaning what?

Vainilla is the diminutive of vaina, 'sheath'.

Cloves are what part of the Syzygium aromaticum tree?

They are native to Indonesia's Maluku Islands, the original Spice Islands.

In Indonesia, cloves are famously blended into which product?

Indonesia is the largest clove producer but exports only 10-15% of its crop, smoking most of the rest.

Eugenol, which makes up 72-90% of clove oil, is chiefly responsible for what?

Dentists have long used it as a numbing antiseptic, which is why the dentist's office smells of cloves.

Chili pepper heat is measured in units named after which pharmacist, who devised the test in 1912?

The original test relied on panels of tasters diluting extracts until the burn disappeared.

Capsicum plants, the ancestors of all chili peppers, originated in which region?

They were being eaten by about 7,500 BC and were cultivated in Mexico some 6,000 years ago.

Why did Columbus's crew call the fiery Capsicum fruits 'peppers'?

The misnomer stuck, and the Portuguese then carried chilies to Africa, Arabia and Asia.

Which animals cannot feel the burn of capsaicin and happily eat the hottest chilies?

That suits the plant, since birds spread the seeds intact while mammals would grind them up.

Which country grew about 39% of the world's chilies and peppers in 2024?

World production reached 45 million tonnes of green chillies and peppers that year.

In the 2020s, after the two costliest spices, which was the third most expensive by weight?

Guatemala overtook India as the leading producer around 1980, though the plant is native to the Indian subcontinent.

Which Central American country surpassed India in production of the green-pod spice in 1979-80?

German coffee planters had introduced the crop there in the early 20th century.

Which compound gives the ginger-family rhizome in curry powder and yellow mustard its golden colour?

Turmeric belongs to the ginger family, and turmeric paper works as a pH indicator.

Star anise is the main commercial source of shikimic acid, a precursor of which drug?

The tree is native to South China and Vietnam, and its Japanese cousin is highly toxic.

Star anise and the unrelated anise plant share their liquorice flavour thanks to which compound?

Star anise is also a standard ingredient of Chinese five-spice powder.

The English coined 'allspice' around 1621 because the berry seemed to combine which three flavours?

It is the dried unripe berry of a Caribbean tree, and Jamaica remains the leading source.

Szeged and Kalocsa are the two principal growing regions for which spice in Hungary?

Albert Szent-Györgyi used the local peppers as a source of vitamin C in the work that won him the 1937 Nobel Prize.

Spain's pimentón de la Vera gets its distinctive smoky flavour from being dried how?

The word paprika itself is Hungarian, from a Serbo-Croatian word for pepper.

The tingling numbness of Sichuan pepper comes from which compound?

The 'peppercorn' is the husk of a citrus-family shrub and is unrelated to black pepper or chili.

Why did the US FDA ban imports of Sichuan peppercorns from 1968 to 2005?

The ban was lifted once heat-treatment of the peppercorns was required.

Which country produces about 70% of the world's cumin?

The ancient Egyptians used cumin as a preservative in mummification.

Ginger was most likely first domesticated by which seafaring peoples?

It originated in Maritime Southeast Asia; today India grows about 45% of the world's crop.

Most 'wasabi' served outside Japan is actually a mixture based on what?

Real wasabi needs shade, cool temperatures and running water, so it is scarce and expensive.

The burn of wasabi is felt mainly where?

The volatile allyl isothiocyanate rises straight up the back of the nose.

Dijon mustard was born in 1856 when Jean Naigeon replaced vinegar with what?

The word mustard itself comes from Latin mustum, grape must, once mixed with ground seeds to make a paste.

American yellow mustard gets its bright colour from which spice?

The mild yellow seeds and a high proportion of vinegar make it far gentler than Dijon.

Sotolon, the compound that gives fenugreek its smell, is why the spice is used to flavour imitation what?

India grows most of the world's fenugreek, over 80% of it in Rajasthan.

Which city held a monopoly on the spice trade with the Middle East from the 8th to the 15th century?

Breaking that monopoly was the main reason Vasco da Gama sailed for India in 1499.

In 15th-century Oxford, a pound of pepper, the cheapest spice, cost about the same as what?

The idea that medieval cooks used spices to mask rotten meat is a myth; they were far too expensive for that.

Roughly what share of global spice production comes from India?

It is also the world's largest consumer and exporter of spices.

Unlike spices, herbs are defined as which parts of a plant?

By that rule coriander is both: the leaves are an herb and the seeds a spice.

The world's largest spice company, maker of Old Bay and French's, was founded in 1889 in which city?

Willoughby McCormick started it at age 25; the company is now based in Hunt Valley, Maryland.

Which ancient Egyptian medical text of about 1550 BCE lists some 800 herbal remedies?

Egyptians used herbs both for cooking and for mummification, and Alexandria became the ancient world's main spice entrepôt.

In the Book of Genesis, Joseph is sold by his brothers to merchants trading in what?

The earliest written records of spices come from ancient Egyptian, Chinese and Indian cultures.

Historians largely reject the claim that medieval Europeans used spices for what purpose?

Old cookbooks suggest adding spices at the end of cooking, and the 16th-century writer Messisbugo even thought pepper sped up spoilage.

Merchants from which Adriatic maritime republic, now in Croatia, rivalled Venice in the spice trade?

Ragusa is modern Dubrovnik; Pisa, Genoa, Amalfi and Ancona also shared in the Mediterranean monopoly on trade with the Middle East.

Which seafaring peoples ran the first true maritime trade network in the Indian Ocean, from about 1500 BC?

Their outrigger voyages carried cinnamon and cassia to East Africa and eventually led to the settlement of Madagascar.

Vasco da Gama's 1497 fleet crossed the Indian Ocean to which Malabar Coast port, seat of the Zamorin?

Four ships sailed on the orders of Manuel I of Portugal, stopping at Malindi on the East African coast along the way.

Which Portuguese commander conquered Malacca, then the centre of Asian trade, in 1511?

He then sent António de Abreu to the Banda Islands, making the Portuguese the first Europeans to reach the nutmeg source in 1512.

Which 1st-century Roman cookbook contains many recipes using black pepper?

Tamil texts also record Greeks buying large sacks of pepper in India.