Spices Flashcards
Spices
- Plant parts containing chemicals that produce smell and taste
What are characteristics of aromatic compounds?
- Secondary metabolites
- Found in many different plants and parts
- Many functions in plant
- Essential oils
What are functions of aromatic compounds in plants?
- Scent attractant
- Deterrent of herbivory
- Pathogen protection
What are essential oils?
- Volatile hydrophobic molecules
Common chemical group of aromatics?
- terpenes
- Built with 5 carbon isoprene units
Spices were first trafficked to Europe by who?
- Arab traders
Marco Polo accounted what?
- An abundance of Eastern spices in 1200’s
Where do many pungent spices originate?
- Tropical and Asian origins
When did spice explorations by sea begin?
- 1400’s by major seafaring countries Portugal, Spain, Dutch, English
Who had dominance of spice trade in 1500’s
Portugal had India, China, Spice Islands
Who gained control of spice trade in 1600’s
Dutch
- Dutch East India Company
How did the British/English East India Company undermine Dutch control of spice trade after 1600’s?
- Established other areas of spice production
What makes spices desirable?
- Smell, flavour, and aid to cure foods
Black Pepper plant
Piper nigrum, Piperaceae, pepper family
- Climbing vine native to India
How is black pepper prepared
- Green unripe berries dried, become black and shrivelled
How is white pepper made?
- Using ripe black pepper berries, not unripe green
- Less pungent
What is the world’s most widely used spice?
- Pepper
What was pepper worth in Middle Ages Europe?
- 10 times more than other spices
What is the pungent compound of pepper?
- Piperine, an alkaloid
Nutmeg and Mace plant
- Myristica fragrans, Myristicaceae
- Nutmeg is stony seed
- Mace is aril, membrane around pit
Myristicin
- Essential oil in nutmeg and mace
Where is nutmeg/mace from?
- Only grew in spice islands originally
Banda Islands
- Indonesia, previously known as Banda Islands
History of Spice Islands through nutmeg
- 1603 British arrived
- 1616 Convinced inhabitants to acknowledge British king, became 1st English colony
- 1620 British lose control after Dutch siege, led to Anglo-Dutch wars to control spice world
- 1667 Treaty of Breda, relinquished Banda island to Dutch, British got another island that was originally Dutch
- 1776 French smuggle out seed and break Dutch monopoly
Who broke Dutch monopoly on nutmeg/mace and how?
- French botanist Pierre Poivre
- Smuggled out seed in 1776 to grow in Mauritius
Cloves
- Eugenia caryophyllata, Myrtaceae, Laurel family
- Un-opened flower buds
- Spice Islands, similar history as nutmeg
Cinnamon
- Cinnamomum zeylanicum, Myrtaceae
- Native to India and Sri Lanka
- Inner bark of tree
- Highly valuable and sought after
Saffron
- Crocus sativa, Iridaceae, Iris family
- Stigma of flowers
- Give orange-yellow colour and delicate flavour
- Spain major producer
Hot Chili Peppers
- Capsicum spp., Solanaceae, nightshade family
- Native to Central/South America
- Pepper is the fruit
Where does the hot taste in chili peppers come from? How does it affect body?
- Capsaicinoids
- Group of 7alkaloids concentrated in seeds
- Capsaicin binds to same nerve receptor that perceives burning temperature hotness
Where does the word ‘chili’ originate?
- Mexican origin
- Long pod shape pepper
How many cultivated chili species are there? Name a few
- 5 Cultivated species and many varieties
- C. annuum most common (cayenne, jalapeño, bell, paprika)
- C. frutescens, more fiery
What are 2 new world spices?
- Hot chili peppers
- Vanilla
Vanilla plant
- Vanilla plantifolia, Orchiaceae, orchid family
- Native to rain forest in Central America
- Over 18,000 species, vanilla only crop product
Where was vanilla first discovered by Europeans and by who?
Spanish discovered in Aztec chocolatl
How is vanilla prepared as a spice?
- Fruit pod is vanilla bean
- Curing process involves drying, heating, sweating (i.e. fermentation)
- Takes months
What are the black specks in ice cream?
- seeds from natural vanilla
What is the primary component of vanilla extract?
- Vanillin, and some other compounds
Vanillin, what kind of compound and how artificially made?
- Phenolic, found in vanilla
- Artificially synthesized from several substrates like lignin (wood component, wood pulp)
- Genetically engineered yeasts can convert glucose to vanillin
