Spices give the finished dish a certain depth of color, expand its flavor profile, improve digestion and assimilation of food, and extend its shelf life. In the past, they were used to mask the odor of rotten foods. Many spices have antimicrobial properties, which is why they are still added to dishes to keep them from spoiling. Today, with the current level of technological equipment of farms and kitchens, of course, no one puts black pepper in goulash to hide from the baron that it is "with a whiff". Therefore, the main role of spices in the modern world is to emphasize the merits of the product, to reveal its facets.
Spices contain essential oils, as well as more complex oil molasses, which work together to impart new flavors to the finished dish. They are categorized into functional groups: alcohols, ketones, aldehydes, esters, terpenes, thiols, phenols, etc. We will consider only the most important chemical components that play first fiddle in our favorite spices.
Let's start, of course, with black pepper. It bears the beautiful Latin name Piper nigrum and is cultivated for its fruit - a small fruit from which white, green, red and, actually, black pepper are obtained.
Dried or ground, this spice is considered the most popular in European cuisine due to its aromatic, medicinal and organoleptic qualities. Like almost everything in our world, pepper was once called "black gold" and "the king of spices": it cost as much as a cast-iron bridge, and the rich who possessed it could be called "bags of pepper".
Pepper was used to pay taxes and bribes, and was offered as a dowry or ransom to the Visigoths besieging Rome. At one time, the Guild of Pepper Merchants was established in London to ensure that no one tampered with the spice.
The punishment for such a transgression could be severe, up to and including being buried alive.
Today, of course, no one will take pepper to pay taxes (hmm... has anyone tried it?), because it has long become a mass product and uninteresting for the average consumer. But we still appreciate it for piperine - an alkaloid responsible for the burning in Piper nigrum, thanks to which you can "revitalize" any dish. It is believed that this is the secret of steak au poivre - steak with pepper: its recipe was created to resurrect tasteless frozen beef delivered to French chefs from America.
Supposedly, piperine has beneficial effects on the human body because it can inhibit the growth of cancer cells, although scientists don't understand how this works. And researchers also believe that piperine interferes with the activity of genes that control the formation of new fatty tissues - in other words, pepper helps to lose weight. But that's not accurate.
In fact, not much has changed in a couple thousand years. The ancient Greek physician Dioscorides probably didn't understand how Piper nigrum worked either, but he still recommended it as a warming and digestive and urinary aid. But my favorite recipe is an Ayurvedic paste of ground white pepper and butter to be licked occasionally to cure the throat.
If black pepper is king, cardamom is considered the queen - the most expensive spice in the world after saffron and vanilla.
It grows in South India and Sri Lanka, Guatemala and Tanzania. Cardamom has such an ancient history that it is mentioned in Vedic texts and by the ancient Greeks. It is believed to have been cultivated in Babylonian gardens and in Scandinavia.
Cardamom seeds are used as a spice, preservative and stimulant. Its main chemical component is cineole, which is actively used as a sedative, antiseptic, expectorant and laxative. Cardamom seeds are often chewed for fresh breath and to detoxify the body after excessive coffee consumption. In India, they are still used to relieve asthma and flatulence attacks? to treat anorexia and debility, and to brew delicious masala tea!