FOOD TRIVIA - Food and Travel

Have you ever mixed up allspice for mixed spice when cooking?

Well, it's not as critical as it may seem as even though they are two different things, allspice was so-named because the flavor is suggests a combination of nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves.

Actually allspice is the dried pimiento berry which is usually ground. It comes from the allspice tree (Pimenta officinalis; Pimenta dioica), or pimiento tree (Spanish for pepper because the berries resemble peppercorns), native to the West Indies and Central America.

What you must NOT do is confuse it with pimento - a sweet red chilli. Allspice is generally used in pickling, baking, preserved meats and sauces although it turns up in spicy toiletries such as 'Old Spice'.

Once used for embalming by the Mayan Indians, Christopher Columbus added it to his horde of goodies with which he retuned from the New World.

Pimiento is a major crop in Jamaica ?and also grown in Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico.

Nineteenth century, Russian soldiers kept their feet warm in winter by putting allspice in their boots.

And here's a lovely piece of extra trivia - the Arawak Indians, native to the Caribbean, centuries ago cured and preserved their meat using allspice. They called this boucan. They taught the trick to Europeans who were called boucaniers, which became the word we know as buccaneers.

There has been a 10 percent increase in ice-cream consumption in China recently. It is now said to be the fastest growing ice-cream market in the world. Around 2000BC in China a sort of ice-cream was made with snow from the mountains. This was emperor food (or more likely spoiled-empress food) with servants being dispatched on fast horses to far places with orders to bring it back while it was still frozen. 'Or else!' you would assume.

Tea, for which China has become synonymous (I wouldn't do that for all the tea in China! was once an expression of absolute refusal) was supposedly discovered when some dried camellia thea leaves fell into the cauldron of water being prepared for sleepy Emperor Shen Nung of China in 2737BC. He was delighted that drinking it helped him stay awake. It's a nice story, but you have to question the logistics. There would have had to be a large number of leaves falling into a cauldron, and what was he doing sampling what was possibly meant to be his bath water?

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