Low Carb Vegan

I can remember when I was a kid on the infrequent occasions my mother would get her spices out, I’d love to look through them and smell them. My mother wasn’t big on actually using the spices mind, so that was usually all I’d get to do. I remember seeing the little bottle of allspice and thinking, “If that’s all the spices, why do we need the rest?”

I have, fortunately, gotten a bit wiser as my age has increased so I understand allspice isn’t really all spice but rather that’s the name of a certain kind of spice. It’s actually the dried fruit of a plant native to the Caribbean region. It’s just called allspice because the English thought it tasted like several other spices. As you would expect it plays an important role in the cooking of that area, especially jerk seasoning. And, this is the part I found interesting, is important in Middle Eastern cooking as well.

That struck me as a bit odd because I at least tend to assume that these cultures have established their eating and cooking habits long ago. Well, if allspice is native to the New World, then it can’t really have been introduced to other areas before 1492 and likely several years later. So it seems likely that dishes featuring allspice can’t have been a part of these cultures for more than a few hundred years.

Allspice is sometimes called pimento in some areas but shouldn’t be confused with the red fleshed pepper used in stuffing olives. Two very different things.