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.
