Words change their meanings all the time, become popular, get forgotten, sound archaic or resonate with the fashionable, or merely are attached to something new. Spice to me is all about food and cooking and taste – “an aromatic or pungent vegetable substance used to flavour food, e.g. cloves, pepper, or cumin. “the cake is packed with spices” Strangely, the spices mentioned in this definition are some of my favourite!
Spice these days can mean something completely and utterly different – it’s also a street name given to drugs: “Synthetic cannabinoids are lab-made drugs. Spice is a nickname for a substance containing one or more synthetic cannabinoids. Synthetic cannabinoids were originally designed to mimic the effects of cannabis.” This sort of spice is incredibly harmful and dangerous. There is another use of the word spice/spicy these days and it’s not a definition that I think I would ever use. I’ve usually heard it in connection with romantic fiction, in particular for women, and the word, as the Cambridge dictionary defines it: exciting and interesting, especially because of being shocking or dealing with sexual matters: a spicy novel. spicy details.
I can assure you that the recipe I’m sharing here is nothing to do with synthetic cannabinoids, or racy literature, it’s all to do with aromatic and pungent food items! This is from six years ago:
I came across a recipe which included ‘everything spice’… what did it mean? Did it mean whatever you fancy? Is it another word for allspice? Is it a particular spice mix or brand of spice mix? Is it sweet or bitter or savoury or musty? I look it up and Everything Spice is a company selling spices:
Everything Spice sells almost every dried herb, dried spice and dried chilli. If you can’t find what you want on the website then please get in touch…. curry kits, meal kits, curry sauces, chilli sauces, world sauces, spices & herbs, seasonings, snacks, dried chillies,
https://www.everythingspice.co.uk/
However, this was not what was meant in the recipe I was looking at, and it seems everything spice is also called everything bagel spice – a mixture of common ingredients and includes poppy seeds, toasted black and white sesame seeds, dried garlic, dried onion, and salt. Well, I thought spice meant what we call spices – usually seeds of plants which give us fennel, coriander, nutmeg, cumin, pepper, and the occasional dried ground up thing such as ginger. This sounds very interesting – and would give a texture to whatever it’s sprinkled on or in… since we are into bread-making every day maybe we should try some!
- 5 spice – cinnamon, star anise , fennel seeds, Szechuan or black peppercorns, cloves
- Italian seasoning – basil, marjoram, oregano,rosemary, thyme, and garlic
- jerk seasoning – allspice, Scotch bonnet peppers and added extras to taste such as cloves, cinnamon, spring onions, nutmeg, thyme, garlic, brown sugar, ginger, salt
- quatre épices – pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger
- curry… there are so many magnificent curry spice blends and mixes I am not even going to attempt to choose which to share!!
- I haven’t any images of spices o so I’m sharing a picture of some soup, pumpkin soup which is very seasonal!
Lois Elsden 