Spices & Ingredients: fun facts and quiz

Black pepper, the dried berry of a climbing vine from southern India, was once so valuable it was called “black gold” and even used to pay rent and taxes.

Key fact
Pepper is the world’s most traded spice.

Saffron is the world’s most expensive spice by weight. Each thread is part of a crocus flower, picked by hand, and each flower gives only three.

Key fact
It takes around 150,000 flowers to make one kilo of saffron.

Vanilla comes from the pod of an orchid. Outside Mexico, its flowers must be pollinated by hand, a trick found in 1841 by Edmond Albius, an enslaved 12-year-old on Réunion.

Key fact
Madagascar grows most of the world’s vanilla.

Cinnamon is the inner bark of a tree, dried until it curls into sticks. “True” cinnamon comes from Sri Lanka; most sold today is a cousin called cassia.

Key fact
Ancient Egyptians used cinnamon in embalming.

Chillies come from the Americas. After Columbus’s voyages in the 1490s, they spread so fast that India and Thailand made them central to their cooking.

Key fact
Before 1492, no one in Asia or Europe had tasted a chilli.

Nutmeg and cloves once grew only on a few islands in today’s Indonesia, the Moluccas. European powers fought wars to control them.

Key fact
Nutmeg grew only on the tiny Banda Islands.

Herbs are a plant’s leaves; spices come from other parts, like seeds, bark, roots or berries. One plant can give both: coriander leaves are a herb, its seeds a spice.

Key fact
Turmeric is a root, and it turns curries yellow.