Geographic Spice Index

In this index, you will find spices ordered according to the region they probably stem from. Since spice trade is nearly as old as humanity itself, we cannot reconstruct the natural occurrence of spice plants in all cases. For every region, I have included the most important spices used in present-day local cuisine. Of course, this information cannot be exhaustive, in part because spice usage may differ even in relatively small regions and in part because since I have not travelled to all these places, I rely on second-hand information, which is rather sparse about some topics. You may find that this index is rather Asia-centered; although certainly true, I claim that this is not due to my personal interest in Indian and South-East Asian cooking, but rather due to the fact that nearly all spices important in our days are of Asian origin (exclude allspice, vanilla and chile from this statement). Therefore, it seemed convenient to split up the Asian section of this index in several parts, while only one section deals with African or American spices, respectively. This index contains short hints about more than 60 herbs and spices that are not treated on my pages. Some of these spices are very obscure, have highly specialized (often non-culinary) applications, are only used in a small region or are merely of historic interest. Some others are quite interesting and deserve a fuller treatment, but I do not know enough about them to write a full article. Whenever that changes (maybe because of your help?), I will gladly write more about these spices.

In this index, you will find spices ordered according to the region they probably stem from. Since spice trade is nearly as old as humanity itself, we cannot reconstruct the natural occurrence of spice plants in all cases.

Leave a Comment