Spices, Herbs & Seasonings Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

Which seasoning is the grated green rhizome of a plant that grows wild by cold mountain streams in Japan, its sharp heat so volatile that it fades within about 15 minutes of grating, which is one reason most of what is served under its name is actually dyed horseradish and mustard?

Question 2

Which souring agent is the sticky, dried, dark purple rind of a fruit from a tree of India's Western Ghats, steeped in water to give a tart, faintly sweet, cola-like flavour to the fish curries and the pink coconut drink sol kadhi of the Konkan and Goan coasts?

Question 3

Which dried leaf, from a Mediterranean evergreen tree whose foliage was woven into the victory wreaths of ancient Greece and Rome, is dropped whole into stocks, stews and braises for a subtle woodsy, faintly bitter background note and fished out before serving?

Question 4

Which leafy herb has a bright, mouth-puckering lemon-sour taste from oxalic acid, and is cooked down into a classic French soup and a pale green sauce for salmon, melting almost to a puree as it hits the heat and turning a drab khaki?

Question 5

Which spice is simply dried red peppers ground to a powder, ranging from sweet and mild to fiery, sometimes smoked over oak, and treated as a national ingredient by both Hungary and Spain although the peppers themselves came from the Americas?

Question 6

Which yellow, turmeric-heavy spice blend was essentially a British invention of the late 18th century, created so that returning colonial officials and their cooks could approximate Indian flavours from a single tin, and is not a seasoning used as such in Indian home kitchens?

Question 7

Which Mediterranean herb has tiny leaves on wiry stems and a warm, faintly minty, earthy flavour that holds up well to long cooking, making it a mainstay of French stocks and stews, the bouquet garni, Caribbean seasoning and, dried, the Levantine blend zaatar?

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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.