Spices and herbs at a grocery shop in Goa, India

Spice shop downtown Amman, Jordan.

A spice is a dried seed, fruit, root, bark, or vegetative substance primarily used for flavoring, coloring or preserving food.^{[citation needed]} Sometimes a spice is used to hide other flavors.^[1]

Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are parts of leafy green plants also used for flavoring or as garnish.

Many spices have antimicrobial properties. This may explain why spices are more commonly used in warmer climates, which have more infectious disease, and why use of spices is especially prominent in meat, which is particularly susceptible to spoiling.^[2]

A spice may have an extra use, usually medicinal, religious ritual, cosmetics or perfume production, or as a vegetable. For example, turmeric roots are consumed as a vegetable and garlic as an antibiotic.

Classification and types[link]

The Gato Negro café and spice shop (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Culinary herbs and spices[link]

Botanical basis[link]

Common spice mixtures[link]

History[link]

Early history[link]

Spices at central market in Agadir, Morocco

Humans were using spices in 50,000 BCE^{[citation needed]}. The spice trade developed throughout the Middle East in around 2000 BCE with cinnamon and pepper, and in East Asia with herbs and pepper. The Egyptians used herbs for embalming and their need for exotic herbs helped stimulate world trade. The word spice comes from the Old French word espice, which became epice, and which came from the Latin root spec, the noun referring to "appearance, sort, kind": species has the same root. By 1000 BCE, medical systems based upon herbs could be found in China, Korea, and India. Early uses were connected with magic, medicine, religion, tradition, and preservation.^[3]

Archaeological excavations have uncovered clove burnt onto the floor of a kitchen, dated to 1700 BCE, at the Mesopotamian site of Terqa, in modern-day Syria.^[4] The ancient Indian epic Ramayana mentions cloves. The Romans had cloves in the 1st century CE, as Pliny the Elder wrote about them.^{[citation needed]}

In the story of Genesis, Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers to spice merchants. In the biblical poem Song of Solomon, the male speaker compares his beloved to many forms of spices. Generally, early Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, and Mesopotamian sources do not refer to known spices.^{[citation needed]}

In South Asia, nutmeg, which originates from the Banda Islands in the Molukas, has a Sanskrit name.^{[clarification needed]} Sanskrit is the ancient language of India, showing how old the usage of this spice is in this region.^{[original research?]} Historians believe that nutmeg was introduced to Europe in the 6th century BCE.^[5]

Indonesian merchants traveled around China, India, the Middle East, and the east coast of Africa. Arab merchants facilitated the routes through the Middle East and India. This resulted in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria being the main trading center for spices. The most important discovery prior to the European spice trade were the monsoon winds (40 CE). Sailing from Eastern spice growers to Western European consumers gradually replaced the land-locked spice routes once facilitated by the Middle East Arab caravans.^[3]

Middle Ages[link]

"The Mullus" Harvesting pepper. Illustration from a French edition of The Travels of Marco Polo.

Spices were among the most demanded and expensive products available in Europe in the Middle Ages, the most common being black pepper, cinnamon (and the cheaper alternative cassia), cumin, nutmeg, ginger and cloves. Given the medieval medicine's main theory of humorism, spices and herbs were indispensable to balance "humors" in food,^[6] a daily basis for good health at a time of recurrent pandemics.

Spices were all imported from plantations in Asia and Africa, which made them expensive. From the 8th until the 15th century, the Republic of Venice had the monopoly on spice trade with the Middle East, and along with it the neighboring Italian city-states. The trade made the region rich. It has been estimated that around 1,000 tons of pepper and 1,000 tons of the other common spices were imported into Western Europe each year during the Late Middle Ages. The value of these goods was the equivalent of a yearly supply of grain for 1.5 million people.^[7] The most exclusive was saffron, used as much for its vivid yellow-red color as for its flavor. Spices that have now fallen into obscurity in European cuisine include grains of paradise, a relative of cardamom which most replaced pepper in late medieval north French cooking, long pepper, mace, spikenard, galangal and cubeb.

Early modern period[link]

The control of trade routes and the spice-producing regions were the main reasons that Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama sailed to India in 1499. Spain and Portugal were not happy to pay the high price that Venice demanded for spices. At around the same time, Christopher Columbus returned from the New World, he described to investors new spices available there.^{[citation needed]}

Another source of competition in the spice trade during the fifteenth and sixteenth century was the Ragusans from the maritime republic of Dubrovnik in southern Croatia.^[8]

The military prowess of Afonso de Albuquerque (1453–1515) allowed the Portuguese to take control of the sea routes to India. In 1506, he took the island of Socotra in the mouth of the Red Sea and, in 1507, Ormuz in the Persian Gulf. Since becoming the viceroy of the Indies, he took Goa in India in 1510, and Malacca on the Malay peninsula in 1511. The Portuguese could now trade directly with Siam, China, and the Moluccas. The Silk Road complemented the Portuguese sea routes, and brought the treasures of the Orient to Europe via Lisbon, including many spices.^{[citation needed]}

With the discovery of the New World came new spices, including allspice, bell and chili peppers, vanilla, and chocolate. This development kept the spice trade, with America as a late comer with its new seasonings, profitable well into the 19th century.^{[citation needed]}

In the Caribbean, the island of Grenada is well known^{[clarification needed]} for growing and exporting a number of spices, including the nutmeg, which was introduced to Grenada by the settlers.^{[citation needed]}

Handling spices[link]

A spice may be available in several forms: fresh, whole dried, or pre-ground dried. Generally, spices are dried.^[9] A whole dried spice has the longest shelf life, so it can be purchased and stored in larger amounts, making it cheaper on a per-serving basis. Some spices are rarely available either fresh or whole, for example turmeric, and must be purchased in ground form. Small seeds, such as fennel and mustard seeds, are used both whole and in powder form.

The flavor of a spice is derived in part from compounds that oxidize or evaporate when exposed to air. Grinding a spice greatly increases its surface area and so increases the rates of oxidation and evaporation. Thus, flavor is maximized by storing a spice whole and grinding when needed. The shelf life of a whole spice is roughly two years; of a ground spice roughly six months.^[10] The "flavor life" of a ground spice can be much shorter.^[11] Ground spices are better stored away from light.^[12]

To grind a whole spice, the classic tool is mortar and pestle. Less labor-intensive tools are more common now: a microplane or fine grater can be used to grind small amounts; a coffee grinder^[13] is useful for larger amounts. A frequently used spice such as black pepper may merit storage in its own hand grinder or mill.

Some flavor elements in spices are soluble in water; many are soluble in oil or fat. As a general rule, the flavors from a spice take time to infuse into the food so spices are added early in preparation.^[14]

Production[link]

Production in tonnes. Figures 2009-2010 Researched by FAOSTAT (FAO)
India	1,100,000	70 %
Bangladesh	140,113	9 %
Turkey	87,028	5.7 %
China	85,987	5.5 %
Pakistan	45,473	3 %
Total	1,588,807	100 %

^{[citation needed]}

Standardization[link]

The International Organization for Standardization addresses spices and condiments, along with related food additives, as part of the International Classification for Standards 67.220 series.^[15]

Research[link]

The Indian Institute of Spices Research in Kozhikode, Kerala, is devoted exclusively to researching all aspects of spice crops: black pepper, cardamom, ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, garcinia, vanilla, etc.

See also[link]

Food portal

• Condiment
• List of herbs and spices
• List of Indian spices
• Spice trade

Notes[link]

Sources[link]

• International Organization for Standardization (2009). "67.220: Spices and condiments. Food additives". http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_ics/catalogue_ics_browse.htm?ICS1=67&ICS2=220&development=on. Retrieved 2009-04-23. 
• Linda Civitello (2007). Cuisine and culture: a history of food and people. John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 0-471-74172-8. 
• Adamson, Melitta Weiss (2004). Food in Medieval Times. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-32147-7. 
• Scully, Terence (1995). The art of cookery in the Middle Ages. Ipswich: Boydell Press. ISBN 0-85115-611-8. 
• Host: Alton Brown (14 January 2004). "Spice Capades". Good Eats. episode 14. season 7. Food Network. 

Further reading[link]

Please expand this article. Some suggested sources are given hereafter. More information might be found in a section of the talk page. (March 2012)

Books

• Corn, Charles. Scents of Eden: A History of the Spice Trade. New York: Kodansha, 1999.
• Czarra, Fred (2009). Spices: A Global History. Reaktion Books. p. 128. ISBN 978-1-86189-426-7. 

• "Spices: Fred Czarra". Press.uchicago.edu. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=406255. Retrieved 2011-02-18. 

• Dalby, Andrew. Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
• Freedman, Paul. Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008.
• Keay, John. The Spice Route: A History. Berkeley: U of California P, 2006.
• Krondl, Michael. The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice. New York: Ballantine Books, 2007.
• Miller, J. Innes. The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1969.
• Morton, Timothy. Poetics of Spice: Romantic Consumerism and the Exotic. Cambridge UP, 2000.
• Turner, Jack (2004). Spice: The History of a Temptation. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40721-9. 

Articles

• "Food Bacteria-Spice Survey Shows Why Some Cultures Like It Hot". ScienceDaily. March 5, 1998. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/03/980305053307.htm. Retrieved 2008-12-20. "...Garlic, onion, allspice and oregano, for example, were found to be the best all-around bacteria killers (they kill everything)" 
• Sallam, Kh.I.; Ishioroshi, M; Samejimab, K. (December 2004). "Antioxidant and antimicrobial effects of garlic in chicken sausage". Lebensm. Wiss. Technol. 37 (8): 849–855. DOI:10.1016/j.lwt.2004.04.001. PMC 1805705. PMID 17330154. //www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1805705. 
• Billing, Jennifer; Sherman, Paul W. (March 1998). "Antimicrobial Functions of Spices: Why Some Like it Hot". The Quarterly Review of Biology 73 (1): 3–49. DOI:10.1086/420058. PMID 9586227. 
• "Common Kitchen Spices Kill E. Coli O157:H7". 18 August 1998. http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/pr_fsaf/News%20Releases/relspicfung.htm. "...The study is the first in the United States that looks at the effect of common spices on E. coli O157:H7. Previous studies have concluded spices kill other foodborne pathogens. 'In the first part of our study, we tested 23 spices against E. coli O157:H7 in the laboratory', Fung said. 'We found that several spices are good at killing this strain of E. coli.'" 
• "The Lure and Lore of Spices". http://www.thespicehouse.com/info/lore/. "If the appearance of spices were to reflect their real importance in the history of the world, the bottles of spices would be filled with bright glittery substances, diamonds, rubies, emeralds or gold would be appropriate. When you opened the bottle, a poof of vibrantly colored, mystically fragrant, magical smoke would slowly billow softly throughout the room." 
• "Spice". Encyclopedia of Spices, Spice Blends by Region, The Spice Trade. http://www.theepicentre.com/Spices/spiceref.html. Retrieved 2008-12-20. 
• International Organization for Standardization (2009). "67.220: Spices and condiments. Food additives". http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_ics/catalogue_ics_browse.htm?ICS1=67&ICS2=220&development=on. Retrieved 2009-04-23. 

External links[link]

Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on Spice

Look up spice in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Spice

• Pungency of spices

Zubin Mehta, 2007)

Zubin Mehta (ज़ुबिन मेहता); pronounced [ˈzuːbɪn ˈmeːɦt̪aː] (born 29 April 1936) is an Indian conductor of western classical music. He is the Music Director for Life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Biography[link]

Zubin Mehta was born into a Parsi family in Bombay, British India, the son of Mehli and Tehmina Mehta. His father Mehli Mehta was a violinist and founding conductor of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. Mehta is an alumnus of St. Mary's School, Mumbai, and St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. Mehta initially intended to study medicine, but eventually became a music student in Vienna at the age of 18, under Hans Swarowsky. Also at the same academy along with Mehta were conductor Claudio Abbado and conductor–pianist Daniel Barenboim.

Mehta's first marriage was to Canadian soprano Carmen Lasky in 1958. They have a son, Mervon and a daughter, Zarina. In 1964, they divorced.^[1] Two years after the divorce, Carmen married Zubin's brother, Zarin Mehta, now the Executive Director of the New York Philharmonic. In July 1969, Mehta married Nancy Kovack, a former American film and television actress.^[2] Mehta is a permanent resident of the United States, but retains his Indian citizenship.

Conducting career[link]

Zubin Mehta conducting the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Mumbai, October 2008

In 1958, Mehta made his conducting debut in Vienna. The same year he won the International Conducting Competition in Liverpool and was appointed assistant conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Mehta soon rose to the rank of chief conductor when he was made Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 1960, a post he held until 1967. In 1961, he was named assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic; however, the orchestra's music director designate, Georg Solti, was not consulted on the appointment, and Solti subsequently resigned in protest;^[3] soon after, Mehta himself was named Music Director of the orchestra, and held the post from 1962 to 1978.

In 1978 Mehta became the Music Director and Principal Conductor of the New York Philharmonic and remained there until his resignation in 1991, becoming the longest holder of the post.

The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) appointed Mehta its Music Advisor in 1969, Music Director in 1977, and made him its Music Director for Life in 1981.^[4]

Since 1985, Mehta has been chief conductor of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence. Additionally, from 1998 until 2006, Mehta was Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. The Munich Philharmonic named him its Honorary Conductor. Since 2005, Mehta has been the main conductor (together with Lorin Maazel) of the Palau de les Arts, the new opera house of the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències, in Valencia, Spain.

Mehta conducted the Vienna New Year's Concert in the years 1990, 1995, 1998 and 2007. He has also made a recording of Indian instrumentalist Ravi Shankar's Sitar Concerto No. 2, with Shankar and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

1990s[link]

In 1990, he conducted the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Orchestra del Teatro dell'Opera di Roma in the first ever Three Tenors concert in Rome, joining the tenors again in 1994 at the Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles. In between those appearances he conducted the historic 1992 production of Tosca in which each act took place in the actual setting and at the actual time specified in the score. This production starred Catherine Malfitano in the title role, Plácido Domingo as Cavaradossi and Ruggero Raimondi as Baron Scarpia. Act I was telecast live from Rome's basilica of Sant'Andrea della Valle on Saturday, 11 July, at noon (Central European Daylight Savings Time); act II was telecast later that evening from the Palazzo Farnese at 9:40 p.m.; act III was telecast live on Sunday, 12 July, at 7:00 am from the Castel Sant'Angelo, also known as Hadrian's Tomb.

In June 1994, Mehta performed the Mozart Requiem, along with the members of the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at the ruins of Sarajevo's National Library, in a fund raising concert for the victims of armed conflict and remembrance of the thousands of people killed in the Yugoslav wars. On 29 August 1999, he conducted Mahler Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection), at the vicinity of Buchenwald concentration camp in the German city of Weimar, with both the Bavarian State Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, sitting alongside each other. He toured his native country India and home city Mumbai (Bombay) in 1984, with the New York Philharmonic, and again in November–December 1994, with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, along with soloists Itzhak Perlman and Gil Shaham. In 1997 and 1998, Mehta worked in collaboration with Chinese film director Zhang Yimou on a production of the opera Turandot by Giacomo Puccini which they took to Florence, Italy, and then to Beijing, China, where it was staged, in its actual surroundings, in the Forbidden City with over 300 extras and 300 soldiers. for nine historic performances. The making of this production was chronicled in a documentary called The Turandot Project which Mehta narrated.

2000s[link]

Zubin Mehta, 2010

On 29 November 2005 Mehta appeared with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra performing Bruckner's Symphony No. 8. On 26 December 2005, the first anniversary of the Indian Ocean Tsunami, Mehta and the Bavarian State Orchestra performed for the first time in Chennai (formerly called Madras) at the Madras Music Academy. This tsunami memorial concert was organised by the Madras German consulate along with the Max-Mueller Bhavan/Goethe-Institut. 2006 was his last year with the Bavarian State Orchestra.

Performance style[link]

Mehta received praise early in his career for dynamic interpretations of the large scale symphonic music of Anton Bruckner, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and Franz Schmidt. His conducting is renowned as being flamboyant, vigorous and forceful.

Honors and awards[link]

Mehta at a ceremony to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in March 2011

Mehta's name is mentioned in the song "Billy the Mountain" on the 1972 album Just Another Band from L.A. by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention.

At the Israel Prize ceremony in 1991, Mehta was awarded a special prize in recognition of his unique devotion to Israel and to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

In 1995, Laureate of the Wolf Prize in Arts.

In 1999, Mehta was presented the "Lifetime Achievement Peace and Tolerance Award" of the United Nations.

The Government of India honoured Mehta in 1966 with the Padma Bhushan and in 2001 with India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan.^[5]

In 2005, he was voted the 117th-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israeli news website Ynet to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis.^[6]

In September 2006 the Kennedy Center announced Mehta as one of the recipients of that year's Kennedy Center Honors, presented on 2 December 2006.

On 3 February 2007, Mehta was the recipient of the Second Annual Bridgebuilder Award at Loyola Marymount University.

In 2007 he received the prestigious Dan David Prize.

Conductor Karl Böhm awarded Mehta the Nikisch Ring – the Vienna Philharmonic Ring of Honor.

Mehta is an honorary citizen of Florence and Tel Aviv. He was made an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera in 1997. In 2001 he was bestowed the title of "Honorary Conductor" of the Vienna Philharmonic and in 2004 the Munich Philharmonic awarded him the same title, as did the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2006. At the end of his tenure with the Bavarian State Opera he was named Honorary Conductor of the Bavarian State Orchestra and Honorary Member of the Bavarian State Opera, and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Wien, appointed him honorary member in November 2007.

In October 2008, Mehta received the Praemium Imperiale (World Culture Prize in Memory of His Imperial Highness Prince Takamatsu), Japan.

On 1 March 2011, Mehta received the 2,434th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

On 2 October 2011 he received the Echo Klassik in Berlin, for his life's work.^[7]

Films[link]

Mehta's life has been documented in Terry Sanders' film Portrait of Zubin Mehta. A documentary film about Mehta, Zubin and I, was produced by the grandson of an Israeli harpist who played with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra before Mehta assumed the helm. The filmmaker joins the orchestra on a tour of Mumbai and meets with him for two interviews, in India and Tel Aviv.^[8]

In Christopher Nupen's 1969 documentary The Trout about a performance of Schubert's Trout Quintet in London by Jacqueline du Pré, Daniel Barenboim, Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman, Mehta plays the double bass.^[9]

Educational projects[link]

In 2009, Mehta established Mifneh (Hebrew for "change"), a music education program for Israeli Arabs, in cooperation with Bank Leumi and the Arab-Israel Bank. Three schools, in Shfaram, the Jezreel Valley and Nazareth, are taking part in the pilot project.^[10]

He and his brother Zarin constitute the Advisor Council of the Mehli Mehta Foundation.^[11]

See also[link]

• List of Israel Prize recipients

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Martin Bookspan and Ross Yockey, Zubin: The Zubin Mehta Story
• Renate von Matuschka, Die Partitur meines Lebens.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Zubin Mehta

• Official website
• Zubin Mehta at Allmusic
• Zubin Mehta at the Internet Movie Database
• Dan David Prize laureate 2007