Spices: For or against?

[hollywood]

Steve - maybe you would like to explain what the unique qualities of the central ingredient in Bouillabaisse is, which I have been told is the best of all fish soups.

Sometimes only a spicy soup de poisson will do. With lots of crusty bread. And wine.

[jhlurie]

but... what do we do with the phrase "that's a spicy meat-a-ball" if we ban spice?

[Steve Plotnicki]

torakris - What an excellent post. Tell me, why didn't the use of spices fade in Asian countries like India and Thailand? How come the de-spicing of cuisine is a European phenomenon?

[Xanthippe]

Isn't there also a theory that hot and spicy cuisine is consumed in warmer climates because it induces perspiration, which makes a person feel cooler?

Yep . . .

Testimonials are certainly far from the realm of scientific research, but I can tell you that as much as I adore Mexican food, I consume particularly large quantities of same when the weather's hot. And yes, it does cause me to "glow" (horses sweat, men perspire, women glow ) to the point where I feel cooler.

[torakris]

torakris - What an excellent post. Tell me, why didn't the use of spices fade in Asian countries like India and Thailand? How come the de-spicing of cuisine is a European phenomenon?

Most of the Asians countries are where these "foreign spices" are indigenous plants, thus they have fused them selves to the culture, and simply if they are growing all around you and taste good why not use them? Also a lot of these areas are tropical climates whose peoples are still living not much different then their ancestors and food preservation technigues are still utilized out of necessity.

In Europe is was mostly the nouveau-riche of the middle ages that brought the spices into fashion, they were new and exotic and only affordable by them., but eventually the novelty wore off and they moved back into more moderate spice usage. Preferring those spices which were native to Europe.

[indiagirl]

A couple of points and a quote

First - The New Tayyeb. I've never eaten there but can make some educated guesses from Steve's various posts regarding the restaurant. Like many other Indian restaurants in the US, I would guess, it over-spices. Food cooked at home or in some restaurants in India uses spice ratios that are not that different from some French recipes I have seen. I am not trying to deny that Indian food uses more spices than French food, by any means. I'm just saying that this is not applicable to every dish. Also, restaurants in the US are primarly North Indian and they do use more spices than say, other Indian cuisines. The message here - the range of spice usage and the fact that a lot of Indian food is vegetarian (nullifies the bad meat cover up) should indicate that spices are used as flavor enhancers and traditionally for their medical benefits.

Two - New falvor vs. enhanced flavor. Many well written Indian cookbooks about Indian food will tell you that when you make a tomato-onion-giner-garlic based gravy with ground spices in it, ensure that the you cook it until the oil (fat) that you tempered the whole spices in, separates and appears to float on the top. This ensures that all the flavors combine to create one flavor as opposed to tomato with cumin powder.

This would imply a new, hopefully enhanced flavor.

My personal theory - skillful spicing results in gestalt and when that happens spices is wonderful and the right thing to do. If it does not .....

The quote:

From A Culinary History of Food - a fascinating read. Last night, very pertinently to this thread (and another) I read about the use of spices in food.

In medieval recipes, the seasoning of beef was as functional as in any dietetic treatise, whereas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was much as it is

The book mentions the use of vinegar, garlic and rue to season beef in "out of necessity" to correct the "natural deficiencies" of beef - which in this case are clearly described as being the "coldness" of the beef, not bad quality.

Garlic, rue, spice, mustard are all "hot" spices, intended to to compensate for the "coldness" of the meat.

On the theory that spices were used to cover up bad meat:

First of all the substances used in the preservation of meat and fish were mainly salt, vinegar, and oil, not spices

Second, leaving slted meats aside, meat in general was consumed sooner after slaughter than roday

Evidence cited was municipal regulations about meat slaughter and sale.

Finally, if anyone did eat preserved meat or meat that had gone bad, it wasn't the wealthy nobles and bourgeois, who consumed spices, but the hapless poor, who could not afford such luxuries.

The whole chapter on spices is fascinating, particularly the history of it's usage in French food. Synopsis later, if anyone is interested (let me know, okay?). I'm off to dinner. Italian. Moderate/low spicing, I suspect!

[jhlurie]

On the theory that spices were used to cover up bad meat

It almost seems as if some of the argumentation is saying that spices are being used to cover up the innate taste of inferior quality ingredients, not necessarily spoilage.

[Bux]

There are spices which are traditionally used in European cooking - members of the pepper and capsicum families for example, he said vaguely? - which is fine.  I have yet to really enjoy the intrusion of "foreign" spices.

Nope, I don't get any understanding about what you are talking about. "Foreign Spices", sounds like somthing my grandmother would say and I know you aren't my grandmother as she doesn't eat testicles (to my knowledge).

We all have a hard time imagining our elders when they were younger. I will say no more on that.

[Bux]

I would not be so bold as to separate out spices from that which makes a cuisine whole, but since you've already done that, I would point out that the chefs the world over are learning the techniques that make French food "refined," while French cooks are relearning how to use the spices that once drove European history.

Bux - just playing a hypothetical, not actually my view. I didn't mention the "F" word, but within that country where is the use of spice? Langoustines with curry powder?

I meant to say that cookers of refined European cuisine are relearning how to use the spices. Actually quatre épices, or four spices, is a traditional French seasoning for sausages and charcuterie in France. The "four spices" are usually cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and white pepper. The use of curry powder goes back to medieval times and the use may be continuous. That's been documented on a previous thread. It's probably more accurate for me to say that contemporary French chefs are learning to use seasonings in a creative way and to use unfamiliar and foreign seasonings. All seasonings are not spices.

Spices also seem to induce appetite, whereas hot weather seems to take suppress it. Not all spices are "hot" and not all spices are most popular in the equatorial belt, but there seems to be a noticeable increase in the level of use of spice in the tropics. I will not argue that it's stimulate appetite, preserve meats or mask flavor. I will note that people do develop tastes for what they know and pass that taste on by cooking those foods for their young. Thus, today we still see salt cod selling well in the same markets that offer refrigeratored fresh fish. Cured meats sell well for their unique flavor even when fresh meat is available. A current taste for spice is unrelated to some of it's original need.

[Tonyfinch]

The historical development which, to an extent, drives this discussion, is that French, British and Italian cuisines, all of which once used a lot of spice, largely stopped doing so.*  Why?  (Oh, I'm sure I've read books about this, but it's Friday afternoon - somebody spoon feed me).

It's been mentioned above but maybe not emphasised enough that between the 11 th and 19th centuries spices were regarded as much as medicines as food flavourings, as of course were herbs. There was a spice preparation for every everyday ailment and people saw them as having amazing health giving properties and also the ability to ward off illness and disesase. That, combined with their abiliity to make food palatable, was why they were so valuable and why they were used as currency and had wars fought over them.

Their use as straight medicine declined with the rise of "conventional" medicine. Why use a preparation of cloves to ease a toothache when you could use laudunum, and later on aspirin? As painkillers and medicines became more widely available in Europe the need to import spices for medical purposes declined. Their use as food flavourings continued, but unlike herbs, they were not indigenous to Europe and so why pay the expense for a less valuable purpose? Herbs continued to be used because they grew all around and could just be picked for free. In countries where spices grew as commonly as herbs there was no reason not to use them as liberally as before.

Edited March 15, 2003 by Tonyfinch (log)

[indiagirl]

On the theory that spices were used to cover up bad meat

It almost seems as if some of the argumentation is saying that spices are being used to cover up the innate taste of inferior quality ingredients, not necessarily spoilage.

Yes, and I wonder how much this notion of the innate "coldness" of beef can be understood in a modern context. I'm not much of a beef eater

(!) - Do you think beef is a "cold" meat?

edited, several times, because i've only had two sips of the morning cuppajoe

Edited March 15, 2003 by indiagirl (log)

[Pan]

Several people (well actually Steve P., but it is the same thing) have expressed the idea that many cultures cuisines are overly spiced. In European cooking spices were much used as a flavouring, to add interest to the food, rather then to cover the flavour of bad meat, however, they fell out of favour and are not commonly seen in savoury cooking. The period in which the use of spice disappeared in European cooking co-insides with the 'refinement' of European cuisine. The two may or may not be related.

Now it is the funky, groovy, 21st C. and we are all being exposed to the cuisine of cultures that weren't lucky enough to be refined (some of us are even from these countries!) and they sometimes use spice.

I like spice. I think that the spice can bring out other flavours in a particular ingredient, that is not necessarily the flavour of the spice or of the spiced ingredient. (eg. Cinnamon changes the flavour of tomato-based dishes, without making the dish taste of cinnamon).

The question is: Is the use of spice in savoury cooking a good thing or does it detract from the main event, which is the 'true flavour' of the base ingredient?

I'm a spice-lover, but sometimes, herbs instead of spices is a fine trade-off, and it's possible to have an excellent, simple salad or grilled item, to which I could add pepper but wouldn't need any other spice. Good food comes in many forms and styles.

[Pan]

Though it's hard to imagine French food benefitting from the addition of the more pungent spices like cumin, I could imagine a good French chef doing something interesting with cardamoms.

Cardamom is more fragrant than cumin to me, so I wonder about your statement. But first of all, I can easily see cumin seeds being used with chicken in a French dish (add creme fraiche, etc.). Secondly, I highly recommend that you try cuisine from La Reunion if you ever have the chance. I used to love a Reunionais (?) restaurant that used to be in Nice, and it was really a highly Indian-influenced cuisine with all the subtlety of French cuisine, featuring things like fish curries with red grapefruit and green peppercorns. It was really wonderful stuff!

[Pan]

If you stick to, the technique is supposed to enhance the expression of the central ingredient school (and spicing is in reality but just one technique,) the unique qualities of the central ingredient dictate what the balance needs to be.

But if you don't stick to such a theory, then the corollary doesn't apply. Tuscan cuisine operates largely based on your criterion, but I would argue that Indonesian, Thai, Indian, and at least some regional styles of Chinese cuisine do not follow such a line of reasoning at all. And I love 'em all.

Also, I have to ask you what you think the flavor of primarily textural foodstuffs like calamari is, and what would "enhance" it. I think my answer would be that calamari has almost no flavor and almost anything, therefore, enhances its flavor, but not in the sense that you seem to be using the word "enhance."

[Pan]

The book mentions the use of vinegar, garlic and rue to season beef in "out of necessity" to correct the "natural deficiencies" of beef - which in this case are clearly described as being the "coldness" of the beef, not bad quality.

Garlic, rue, spice, mustard are all "hot" spices, intended to to compensate for the "coldness" of the meat.

I haven't read this whole thread yet, so perhaps someone else commented on this, but it's obvious that humoral coldness, not coldness of temperature, is being referred to. It's a fact that most of the world believed in the humors of hot, cold, wet, and dry (corresponding to the four elements of the ancient Greeks, though the Indian and, even more, Chinese systems are somewhat different, for example, and then there's the Malay system as compared to the Latin American, etc.) until quite recently, and this included the U.S. I saw an ad from 1895 for a patent medicine sold in Nashville, TN for its "cooling" effects, phrased in such a way that it was clear that humoral cooling was meant. So the spices are humorally "heaty" and the meat is humorally "cold." That sounds just like the type of thing the village Malays I knew would have said - except for the fact that meat was universally considered "heaty" there! And also, frankly, when you actually live in a place that has no refrigeration (as that Malay village did not have), you attain an intimate understanding of the place of spices in masking the "off" flavor of fish and meat we'd consider "rotten" (or at least "over the hill") in our modern, refrigerated places. But there isn't just one reason to use spices.

By the way, my mother has a cookbook of Medieval recipes from western Europe, and they are highly spiced, feature dried fruits with meat (along with cinammon, e.g.), and also sometimes feature herbs and vegetables that are probably fairly unknown to both high-style cuisine and common cooking nowadays, such as the Elder Flower Pie. I found the stews from that cookbook delicious. I just spoke with my mother, so here's the title: Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery and Ceremony by Madeleine Cosman. About half of it is recipes.

[hedgehog]

Jaz wrote: There was an article in American Sceintist a few years ago that put forth the argument that spice use developed to protect food from bacteria and other dangerous microorganisms. The authors studied spice use across various climates and found that in hotter climates, where food spoilage would be more of a problem, the food (especially meat dishes) tended to be more heavily spiced than in cooler climates, and that those cuisines tended to use the spices that were most effective at destroying the harmful bacteria. (The authors included herbs, chiles and members of the onion family as well.)

I think what JAZ points out is the main reason why certain herbs and spices took hold in some countries and stuck. It was in response to food borne illnesses. And it was the genius of cooks over time that make it all palatable

In Morocco an herb like origanum compactum (called za'tar tadlaw) is used to preserve clarified butter (smen).This special butter flavored with this particular herb supposedlymakes the finest tasting tagines and couscous.

Edited March 17, 2003 by hedgehog (log)

[Pan]

In Morocco an herb like origanum compactum (called za'tar tadlawu) is used to preserve clarified butter (smen) for up to 7 years.

Origanum, eh? So zaatar is a member of the oregano genus. Interesting.

[hedgehog]

In Morocco, zatar is a generic word for a whole family of herbs: savory, thyme, hyssop, and oregano.

reference:Jamal Bellakhdar'sla pharmocpee marocaine traditionnelle

Medicine arabe ancienne et savoirs populaires

Ibis Press, 1997

I think the same is true in the middle east.

[Pan]

Thanks. All those herbs are members of one family? Also, does anyone know what the composition of zaatar (is that spelling wrong? No ayin in that word?) one can buy in a store like Kalustyan's in Manhattan would be?

[hedgehog]

Sorry to be so confusing.

Around the Mediterranean, the word za'atar (zatar or zaatar) is used two different ways to refer to a class of herbs and to refer to a spice blend of za'atar and sumac.

First, the herbs. Numerous herbs in the thyme-oregano-marjoram-saory family bear the name za'atar

You can purchase a live plant called za'atar parsi (thymbre spicata) at Well Sweep Farms in New Jersey.

You can buy jars of an oregano pickle which isn't oregano at all, but za'atar parsi. This last bit of information is from Wolfert's book on eastern mediterranean cooking.

.

Then there are the dried blends from Israel, Jordan and Syria you can buy at middle eastern stores . The za'atar part could be anyone of the many herbs mentioned above...or even a combination. There are secret blends as well as very simple ones. In fact, you can buy dried plain za'atar at some middle eastern stores, but I don't know which herb itwould be.

[Adam Balic]

On the theory that spices were used to cover up bad meat

It almost seems as if some of the argumentation is saying that spices are being used to cover up the innate taste of inferior quality ingredients, not necessarily spoilage.

I still don't buy the "spices used to preserve meat arguement".

1) Cultures that use spice in preservation of meat/fish etc also use large amounts of salt and sometimes other techniques, like ferementation. Spice as a preservative would be secondary to these other techniques.

2) Spice is a generic term, not all spice will have anti-bacterial properties, the amount of spice required to see any anti-bactial effect remains to be seen. Spices were extremely expensive in Europe.

3) At least in England, the extensive use of spices became un-popular in a relatively short time period. People did not suddenly start dying.

4) Ditto, if spices were used to cover up the flavour of inferior meat etc, why then did the use of spices disapear in England, before any obvious change in the quality of meat? Must have been those French and there in-ability to taste inferior meat.

[Adam Balic]

In Europe is was mostly the nouveau-riche of the middle ages that brought the spices into fashion, they were new and exotic and only affordable by them., but eventually the novelty wore off and they moved back into more moderate spice usage. Preferring those spices which were native to Europe.

I'm not sure that 5-6 hundred years of spice use can be described as a "novelty". As I have mentioned before, there is very little evidence of the actual amounts of spice being used in the medieval period, so it is not possible to say that taste "moved back into more moderate spice usage". In culinary backwaters like Scotland, the use of spices survived in a manner not that much different to the medieval period, to the end of the 18th C. I'm sure that this is true of many regions and in England, was true in Catholic families, compared to Protestant families.

[Adam Balic]

The central ingredient is the Rascasse or Rockfish in English. It is a local fish (to the Mediterranean that is) and you can't make a good bouillabaisse without it. How it makes the other ingredients and spices blend together to create a whole new flavor is a mystery to everyone.

But you might be onto something here. Because in reality, a BB isn't that different from Indian cooking strategy because it is a ground spice mixture that is added to a broth. But what sets it apart is how the spices are balanced in the broth. 

Steve - a side from that fact that you seem to have forgotten about half a dozen other fish at least, Rascasse (Scorpian fish) is used in many other Med. Fish soups/Stews (it is the 'central ingredient' of the Dalmatian fish soup). As these stews are not as good as bouillabaisse ( ), it would seem that the spice and seasoning are the vital additions. "Balance" (large "B") is a 'Plotnickist-Cultural-Construct'.

[Steve Plotnicki]

As these stews are not as good as bouillabaisse (  ), it would seem that the spice and seasoning are the vital additions. "Balance" (large "B") is a 'Plotnickist-Cultural-Construct'. 

Adam - Good try. Can't say why those soups are not the match of bouillabaisse but the choices aren't many . There is the type of fish used, and the technique to prepare them. What makes a BB a BB is the straining, balance of vegetables to spicing, and serving the fish whole and fileted, not cut up as part of the stew.

[Wilfrid]

Adam - Good try. Can't say why those soups are not the match of bouillabaisse but the choices aren't many  .

Because they're not French?