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Seeds and spices

Seeds hold their aroma in oils that whole seed keeps sealed in. Crushing or lightly toasting immediately before brewing is the difference between a spice infusion and hot water that smells faintly of a cupboard. This group is also where the same English word most often covers several unrelated plants.

27 recordsUsually crushed before brewing; whole seed gives up little.

All 27

  • Ajwain
    Sharply thyme-like with a bitter, almost numbing edge. A pinch is a large quantity and it dominates anything it is put with.
  • Anise
    Sweeter and more concentrated than fennel, with a pronounced liquorice note and almost no bitterness. A little goes considerably further, and the usual error is dosing it like fennel and producing something that tastes of confectionery.
  • Black cardamom
    Heavily smoky with a cool camphor note underneath, and much more savoury than green cardamom. One pod flavours a large pot and two overwhelm it.
  • Black pepper
    Hot and woody with a citrus top note when freshly cracked. In chai it supplies a background heat rather than a flavour of its own.
  • Caraway
    Sharp and aniseed-adjacent with a distinct bready warmth, and more bitter than fennel. Anyone who dislikes rye bread will recognise why immediately.
  • Cardamom
    Intensely aromatic, cooling and slightly citrus. The seed carries the flavour and the pod does not, so pods are crushed rather than steeped whole.
  • Clove
    Powerfully aromatic and numbing, with a bitterness that arrives quickly. Two or three cloves flavour a pot; a spoonful ruins it.
  • Coriander seed
    Warm and citrus-like with a light sweetness and a soapy note that some people find immediately and others never notice at all. Gentler than most seed spices and easy to over-use because of it, particularly when lightly crushed first.
  • Cubeb
    Peppery and pine-like with a bitter, faintly camphorous finish — more aromatic and considerably less hot than black pepper, and closer to allspice than either.
  • Cumin
    Warm, earthy and slightly bitter, with a distinct musky note that people either like immediately or never. Toasted seed is markedly nuttier and less raw.
  • Date seed
    Roasted, nutty and faintly bitter with a caramel sweetness, noticeably lighter in body than coffee and with none of its acidity. Cardamom, which is nearly always added, does much of the work.
  • Dill seed
    Sharper and more bitter than the leaf, with a caraway-like edge and a faint citrus lift. It does not taste much like fresh dill.
  • Fennel seed
    Sweet and clearly aniseed, with no heat and very little bitterness. Among the most immediately likeable botanicals here.
  • Fenugreek
    Sweet on the nose and firmly bitter in the mouth, with a mucilaginous body from the soaked seed. Almost always sweetened where it is drunk.
  • Grains of paradise
    Peppery heat with a cardamom-like aromatic lift and a clean citrus finish. Warmer and rounder than black pepper and far more aromatic.
  • Guarana
    Bitter, dry and faintly chocolatey, with smoke from the curing rather than from the seed. The soft drink tastes of guarana the way cola tastes of kola, which is to say partly and at some distance.
  • Kola nut
    Strongly bitter at first with a sweetness that arrives afterwards and lingers — a well-known effect of chewing it, and the reason water tastes sweet after. Dried and ground it makes an astringent, bitter, faintly nutty drink.
  • Korarima
    Cardamom-like but earthier and much less eucalyptus-bright, with a peppery warmth that sits closer to grains of paradise than to green cardamom.
  • Long pepper
    Hotter than black pepper with a slow-building heat and a sweet, almost molasses-like base. The delay before the heat arrives is what distinguishes it in the mouth.
  • Mace
    Nutmeg’s warmth without its weight — brighter, more peppery, a little more floral, and it does not turn soapy in a cup the way ground nutmeg readily does.
  • Mahleb
    Almond and sour cherry together, with a bitter almond edge that grows if too much is used. Distinctive enough that anyone who grew up with the breads recognises it instantly.
  • Nigella
    Bitter, peppery and faintly oniony, with a herbal top note. Nothing about it resembles cumin, which is what it is most often called.
  • Nutmeg
    Warm, sweet and resinous with a woody bitterness underneath. Mace is lighter, more floral and more delicate than the nut, and the two are not interchangeable at the same quantity.
  • Sichuan pepper
    Citrus-peel aroma followed by a distinct buzzing numbness on the lips and tongue. The numbness is the point and it is unlike anything else in the spice cabinet.
  • Tahitian vanilla
    Floral, cherry- and anise-like, with much less of the sweet creamy character that the word vanilla means in most kitchens. In a cup it reads as perfume where Bourbon vanilla reads as custard.
  • Vanilla
    Rich and sweet-smelling with almost no sweetness of its own, and a woody, raisin-like depth that synthetic vanillin does not reproduce. Madagascan, Mexican and Tahitian pods differ noticeably.
  • Wattleseed
    Coffee, chocolate and hazelnut with a distinct sweetness and none of coffee’s acidity or its sharp roast bitterness. It is more like a very good grain coffee than like coffee itself.

Commonly confused within this group

  • Anise and Fennel seed — Anise is routinely adulterated with the cheaper fennel, which looks similar and tastes milder.
  • Nigella and Cumin — Nigella is sold as black cumin and is a buttercup relative rather than an Apiaceae. Nothing about the two tastes alike.
  • Caraway and Cumin — Kammun, kümmel and comino sound related across languages and name different plants. The seeds look similar and the flavours are not close.
  • Black cardamom and Cardamom — Different genera despite the shared name. Black cardamom is fire-dried and smoky and is wrong in almost every sweet preparation green cardamom belongs in.
  • Long pepper and Black pepper — The Latin piper covered both and classical sources valued this one more highly. Its heat arrives late and builds, which is what distinguishes it in the mouth.
  • Sichuan pepper and Black pepper — Not a pepper and not related to one. It produces a tingling numbness rather than heat, which is a mechanical sensation rather than a taste.

Guides covering this group

Other groups

Grouping is by the plant part used, which is a fact about the material rather than a judgement about flavour. A plant appears in one group only, so cinnamon is a bark and not a spice here even though every kitchen in the world files it the other way.