I was reading through recipes for peppernuts today. A few of these little recipes called for allspice and cloves, my first though was, “How redundant.” Growing up I thought (for some unknown reason) that they were similar somehow. Once I started cooking on my own late in High School and later in college I knew that they weren’t but the thought of what it actually was didn’t occur to me until now. Was allspice a combination of nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon like it tasted or was a spice all in it’s own right?
Thank goodness for Google! So I looked it up and found A LOT of people had the same question. I found one answer on KitchenSavvy.com that I thought was the best because I assumed what the questioner had too.
Allspice is the dried fruit of the evergreen myrtle plant Pimenta Dioica. It gets its name from the fact that it tastes, as you noticed, like cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg. The fruit is picked green and dried, usually in the sun, undergoing a color change to brown. It is available as whole seeds or, more commonly, already ground into powder.
Allspice is used in both sweet and savory dishes. It can appear in Caribbean jerk or Middle Eastern tagine recipes, as well as in desserts like cookies or cakes. It also is used in prepared foods such as sausages, pickles and some condiments like ketchup or barbecue sauce. One of my favorite uses is to put allspice into tomato-based marinara sauce.
It originated in the Central and South America and was brought to Europe by early explorers. […]
If you don’t have any on hand, you can substitute 1/2 teaspoon each of cinnamon and cloves, along with a pinch of nutmeg for 1 teaspoon of allspice.
Read more at Kitchen Savvy.
I found that you can buy the dried berries in some whole food stores and super markets. One more thing the GrainMaker® mills can handle. Dried allspice berries to a fresh ground allspice powder!
If I learn something new every day, that day has not been wasted. :c) ~Wendy
