Spices, Herbs & Seasonings Quiz — 10 Free Questions

Question 1

Which aromatic leaf, from a small tree of the citrus family native to the Indian subcontinent, is fried in hot oil until it crackles to start South Indian and Sri Lankan dishes, giving a nutty, faintly citrus fragrance, and has nothing to do with the spice blend of a similar name?

Question 2

Which spice is the dried, round, ridged fruit of a fast-growing annual whose leaves are a divisive herb, the seed tasting warm and citrusy with none of the soapy note some people find in the foliage, and forming the backbone of many curry powders and of pickling spice?

Question 3

Which peppery herb, coming in a softer summer annual and a tougher winter perennial, both tasting somewhere between thyme and marjoram with more bite, is so traditionally cooked with pulses to add flavour and aid digestion that German speakers call it the 'bean herb'?

Question 4

Which fiery spice blend, the foundation of the stews called wat in Ethiopian and Eritrean cooking, layers dried red chilli with fenugreek, ginger, garlic, korarima, ajwain, rue seed and warm baking spices, often bloomed in oil into a paste before use?

Question 5

Which herb, a member of the mint family with soft, bruise-prone leaves and a sweet, peppery, clove-like scent, is pounded with pine nuts, garlic, hard cheese and olive oil to make the Genoese sauce pesto, and turns black in the fridge?

Question 6

Which Persian and Gulf seasoning is made by boiling whole limes in salt water and then leaving them in the sun until they are hard, hollow, and blackish-brown inside, then pierced or ground to add a musty, intensely sour, slightly fermented note to stews and rice?

Question 7

Which spice is a knobbly underground stem, used fresh, dried and ground, or crystallised in sugar, with a hot, lemony bite from a compound called gingerol that turns sweeter and mellower when cooked?

Question 8

Which island group in eastern Indonesia, historically called the Spice Islands, was for centuries the only place on Earth where clove, nutmeg and mace trees grew, making it the target of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and English rivalry?

Question 9

Which eastern Indian and Bangladeshi spice mix is unusual in being used whole, never ground, an equal blend of five seeds, cumin, fennel, fenugreek, nigella and either mustard or wild celery seed, that is crackled in hot oil or ghee to start a dish?

Question 10

Which compound is the single molecule most responsible for the smell and taste of vanilla, and is produced far more cheaply from wood pulp, petrochemicals or clove oil than from the orchid pod, so that the overwhelming majority of 'vanilla' flavour in food is this synthetic version?

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About Spices, Herbs & Seasonings

A spice is a dried piece of a plant, a seed, bark, root, bud or berry, used in small amounts for flavour, colour or preservation. A herb is usually the fresh green leaf. A seasoning blend is a mix of the two, plus salt, built for a particular kitchen. This quiz covers about eighty of them, from saffron picked flower by flower to a black salt that smells of boiled eggs.

Every question describes one, by the part of the plant it is, where it grows, the aroma compound behind its flavour, the dishes it defines, and the trade or history attached to it, and asks you to name it from four choices. The explanation then fills in the botany, how it is prepared and used, and the story: the war fought over nutmeg, the enslaved boy who solved vanilla pollination, the spice Rome prized above black pepper and then forgot.

A few threads run through it. The spice trade drove exploration, colonisation and some of history's ugliest monopolies: the Dutch massacre of the Banda islanders for nutmeg, the destruction of clove trees to keep a corner on the market, the swap of an island for Manhattan, the Grain Coast named for a pepper substitute, a Roman herb harvested to extinction. Flavour chemistry keeps surprising: the maple smell of fenugreek, the tongue-numbing tingle of Sichuan pepper, the soap that some people taste in coriander leaf, the boiled-egg sulphur of a rock salt, the single molecule that stands in for real vanilla in almost everything.

It also travels the whole spice rack rather than staying in the familiar Mediterranean corner. The souring agents of Asia, tamarind and kokum and amchoor and black dried lime. The pungent herbs the West rarely sees, epazote and hoja santa, shiso and Vietnamese coriander, curry leaf and pandan. The resins, asafoetida and mastic and the cherry-stone spice mahleb. And the blends that are really recipes in themselves, from garam masala and panch phoron to ras el hanout, berbere, za'atar, shichimi togarashi and Chesapeake Old Bay.

The quiz also clears up the confusions people carry around: that cassia is sold as cinnamon, that most wasabi is dyed horseradish, that curry powder is a British invention, that star anise is unrelated to aniseed, that the 'seeds' of caraway and cumin belong to different worlds. Where a photograph of the whole spice or herb would not simply hand the answer to someone who already knows it, it is shown; the instantly recognisable ones are left as text.

The reward is practical. Learn what galangal does that ginger cannot, why marjoram goes in at the end and thyme at the start, what makes a garam masala different from a curry powder, and the spice rack stops being a row of dusty jars and becomes a set of tools. Every claim has been checked against reliable sources, and the wording is kept plain.