Interesting Facts...
Humans were using spices
in 50,000 BC. The spice trade developed
throughout the Middle East in around 2000 BC with
cinnamon
and pepper, and in East Asia (Korea, China) with
herbs and
pepper.
In the 18th century, Holland had such a fiercely
guarded monopoly on the
clove
trade that the government made growing or selling
cloves
outside its colony of Amboina, in Indonesia, a crime
punishable by death. The Chinese were said to use
them as far back as 226 BC. Apparently they chewed
the flowerettes prior to having an audience with the
Emperor so that their breath would not smell bad.
Cardamom is used to break up kidney stones and gallstones,
and was reportedly used as an antidote for both snake and
scorpion venom. Guatemala is the largest producer of cardamom
in the world with an average yield of between 25 thousand
to 29 thousand metric tons annually.
Vanilla
is the only edible fruit of the orchid family,
the largest family of flowering plants in the world
The early term for "merchant" in Austronesian is *dagang
(Dempwolff) and this word is very similar to one of
the terms for "ocean."
Columbus' far-fetched proposal to reach the East
Indies by sailing westward received the support of
the Spanish crown, which saw in it a promise,
however remote, of gaining the upper hand over rival
powers in the contest for the lucrative spice trade
with Asia
The Cashew Nut is actually a seed and not a "nut",
in the botanical sense. The seed is surrounded
by a double shell containing an allergenic phenolic
resin, anacardic acid, a potent skin irritant
chemically related to the more well known allergenic
oil urushiol which is also a toxin found in the
related poison ivy. Properly roasting cashews
destroys the toxin, but it must be done outdoors as
the smoke (not unlike that from burning poison ivy)
contains urushiol droplets which can cause severe,
sometimes life-threatening, reactions by irritating
the lungs.
While native to Brazil, the
Portuguese took the
cashew
plant to Goa, India, between the years of 1560
and 1565. From there it spread throughout Southeast
Asia and eventually Africa.
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Kautilya Commodities is continuing the age old spice
trade but with a zeal, a fervor and a passion far
greater than the spice merchants of that time long
gone.
Since the time that gastronomically driven humans
learned cooking, they have been endlessly treading
the path of attaining a culinary excellence.
Civilisations of yore to corporates of today bear
testimony to the fact that only a few industries
have forged and ravaged as many fortunes as the
spice trade. At various periods in history,
spices have been as valuable as gold and silver.
Venice built its Renaissance splendour with riches
from the sale of black pepper, and it was the quest
for spices, not gold, that launched fleets of
explorers towards the New World.
The fight to control the flow
of
cloves, nutmeg,
black pepper, gold, silver and other
commodities led to the circumnavigation of Africa
and the world, and the exploration of the Western
hemisphere and the Pacific Ocean.
 India-Indonesia-Ethiopia-Middle
East-Madagascar-Guatemala-Vietnam-Sudan
At the helm of this ‘paradoxical’ trade was not
the glitter of gold but the allures of a better
taste and later on the scents. The Portuguese
dominated the pepper trade on India's Malabar Coast,
the Dutch East India Company controlled Indonesian
cloves,
and the Spanish had the monopoly on New World
vanilla. The French, meanwhile, eased their
dependence on foreign spices by developing
plantations in their Indian Ocean colonies,
including Madagascar, which lies 250 miles off the
coast of Mozambique. The island yielded
excellent cloves, black pepper and nutmeg, but it
was the cultivation of superb
vanilla, introduced
to
Madagascar's fertile red soil in the mid-19th
century, that secured the island's reputation as one
of the world's great spice centers.
Historians believe that the spices may have
landed initially at
Madagascar and they eventually
were transported to the East African trading ports
in and around the city known in Greco-Roman
literature as Rhapta. Merchants then moved the
commodities northward along the coast. In Roman
times, they traveled to
Adulis in Eritrea and then
to
Muza in Yemen and finally to Berenike in Egypt.
From Egypt they made their way to all the markets of
Europe and West Asia.
Similarly, cardamom found its route all the way to
Guatemala. Of course, cardamom had a peaceful
journey to Guatemala unlike some of the other spice.
read about KAUTILYA
 CLOVES
This spice gets its name from
the French word “clou” which
means nail, as many have
remarked on how much
cloves look
like nails. One of the most
precious spices of the 16th and
17th century,
cloves
have
triggered wars and expeditions.
 CINNAMON
Native to Ceylon (Sri
Lanka), true cinnamon,
Cinnamomum zeylanicum, dates
back in Chinese writings to
2800 B.C., and is still
known as kwai in the Chinese
language today. Cinnamon's
botanical name derives from
the Hebraic and Arabic term amomon, meaning fragrant
spice plant. Cinnamon has a
long history both as a spice
and as a medicine. There was
a saying in the 15th
century, "No man should die
who can afford cinnamon!"
 ALLSPICE
Allspice was used as a seasoning and to
embalm the dead in before fifteenth century by Mayas of
Latin America. The Aztecs employed allspice to sweeten
and flavour their favourite chocolate drink..
 DRIED
LEMONS
Black Lime (also known as Dried Lime, Loomi, Lumi, Noomi Basra, Omani,
Amani, Dried Lemons and Black Lemon)is a spice used in Middle Eastern dishes.
Dried Lemons are made by boiling
fresh lime in salt water and sun drying until the insides turn black.
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 CARDAMOM
Cardamom has been used as
a perfume, an aphrodisiac, a mouth freshner, a medicine
... and much more. Originally from India, at
present Guatemala is the large producer
of cardamom in the world. It is
often referred to as the
"Queen of
Spices", and
Grains of Paradise
 VANILLA
Madagascar
is the World
Vanilla
capital and is currently
responsible for the vast
majority of the world's bourbon
vanilla production
and about 58% of the world's
total
vanilla
bean production.
The vanilla
flower only lasts about one day,
sometimes less! Therefore, farmers
have to inspect their vanilla plantations
every day for open flowers on the
vanilla plants, a labor-intensive
task.
 WILD
MADAGASCAN VOATSIPERIFERY and
REGULAR BLACK PEPPER
Black pepper is native to India
and is extensively cultivated there
and elsewhere in tropical regions
and is the worlds one of the most
traded spice so much so that it has
often been referred to as the "king
of spices".
Although South East
Asia is the largest producer of
black pepper, the
Madagascar
black pepper prides in its aristocracy.
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