Cardamom, Cinnamon, Nutmeg and Allspice should also be a folk song

January 27, 2020 7:57 PM

I have this sense that spices like cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice have something in common in terms of how they taste and I'm wondering if there's any chemical or biochemical similarity between them that might go part of the way towards explaining that affinity.

Specifically, those flavors seem to me to have a particular type of brightness to them that feels like a category of its own. It reminds me of my experience of umami, which, as much as it is its own flavor in a fundamental biological sense, really only comes into its own for me as a layer on top of other, more basic flavors. To analogize and oversimplify, I'd say that umami is to saltiness as the hypothetical commonality between the spices named previously is to sweetness. What I'm curious about is two-fold: do those spices have any chemical relation to each other? And, independent of that, is there anything they have in common in terms of biochemical processes or how they interact with sweetness? I'm also open to hearing that my experience is a totally idiosyncratic one.

posted by invitapriore to Food & Drink (11 answers total)

Best answer: the book that has this chart breaks the various spices down into their relevant chemicals
posted by aniola at 8:10 PM on January 27, 2020 [13 favorites]

Best answer: Perhaps one or more of the commonly very fragrant terpenes and terpenoids would fill the bill.

When I was looking for a link, I came across a page mentioning that a terpenoid (caryophyllene) in cinnamon, cloves, black pepper leaves, Thai basil, and lavender is the only terpenoid known to significantly interact with the endocannabinoid system, for example.
posted by jamjam at 8:29 PM on January 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

Apparently, caryophyllene is found in nutmeg, cardamom, and allspice as well.
posted by jamjam at 8:38 PM on January 27, 2020

As I understand it, allspice is the only New World spice (nb: vanilla is not a spice). So it would be very distantly related to the others. But it still could have evolved some of the same chemistry, perhaps for similar reasons. Biology is weird.
posted by sjswitzer at 10:25 PM on January 27, 2020

For a long time I have wanted a reference that lists the known specific chemical flavour compounds common to various spices. This looks like a good start, although it's quite sparse.
posted by confluency at 12:00 AM on January 28, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Oh, and there's also an academic project for cataloguing flavour compounds, FlavorDB.
posted by confluency at 12:04 AM on January 28, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Here's some more information from Botanist in the Kitchen on terpenes as flavor, although they're found much more widely across plants (and across various foods/flavors) than just the spices you name.

Cinnamon and nutmeg are both members of an evolutionary group of plants called magnoliids, many of which have strongly fragrant essential oils (black pepper and bay leaves are also in this group, as well as some plants used in perfumes), but cardamom and allspice are not particularly closely related to those evolutionarily.

But, a lot of plants share similar compounds for aroma (attract pollinators) and defense (against herbivores and pathogens) - many of these compounds are iterations across a few basic categories, and we happen to like the taste of many of them and sometimes notice those similarities.
posted by pemberkins at 3:28 AM on January 28, 2020

Just a note to say that the spices you've listed as being "sweet" are not always in cultures other than US/Northern Europe, or historically. Many of them made their debut in Europe during the Middle Ages and were used primarily in savory dishes. Nutmeg is a key component of a really good bechamel base for lasagna, and is delicious freshly grated over steamed greens; cinnamon and others, fantastic in the savory pastry from Morocco bistila: cardamom is found in chai tea: cloves give depth to smoking rubs and bbq sauces, and so on.
I think your view of them being "sweet" is fairly common in the US/Northern Europe context, and that you might enjoy considering how they can be used to enhance savory foods. When uncoupled from the idea of "sweet" they provide a lot of intriguing complexity. Always best freshly grated or ground.
posted by winesong at 9:15 AM on January 28, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I think your view of them being "sweet" is fairly common in the US/Northern Europe context, and that you might enjoy considering how they can be used to enhance savory foods. When uncoupled from the idea of "sweet" they provide a lot of intriguing complexity. Always best freshly grated or ground.

I absolutely agree! I almost always put nutmeg in my tomato sauce and cardamom in my basmati rice and shakshuka, and it's lovely. Those spices definitely add a lot to savory dishes, it's just that my particular experience has been that they interact with sweetness in a unique way.
posted by invitapriore at 11:00 AM on January 28, 2020

Speaking of "interacting with sweetness in a unique way", I found an article in Discover back in 2010 about a study showing that cannabinoids enhance the perception of sweetness:

New research from a Japanese team reveals that marijuana directly affects the cells in the taste buds which detect sweet flavours - Endocannabinoids selectively enhance sweet taste.

Yoshida et al studied mice, and recorded the electrical signals from the chorda tympani (CT), which carries taste information from the tongue to the brain.

They found that injecting the mice with two chemicals, 2AG and AEA, markedly increased the strength of the signals produced in response to sweet tastes - such as sugar, or the sweetener saccharine. However, neither had any effect on the strength of the response to other flavours, like salty, bitter, or sour. Mice given endocannabinoids were also more eager to eat and drink sweet things, which confirms previous findings.

In follow-up experiments, Yoshida et al found that endocannabinoids enhance sweet taste responses by acting on cannabinoid type 1 (CB1) receptors on the tongue's sweet taste cells themselves. In fact, over half of the sweet receptor cells expressed CB1 receptors!

Which makes it especially interesting in this context that caryophyllene is the only terpenoid known to interact with the endocannabinoid system.
posted by jamjam at 10:26 PM on January 29, 2020

For a long time I have wanted a reference that lists the known specific chemical flavour compounds common to various spices. This looks like a good start, although it's quite sparse.

The book I cited above has that chart in the back.
posted by aniola at 7:10 PM on January 30, 2020