Ingredients · Spice

Cardamom

Elettaria cardamomum · Zingiberaceae (ginger family)

Cardamom
Green pods holding small black seeds, from a ginger-family plant of the Western Ghats — floral, resinous and eucalyptus-cool, quite unlike anything else in the cupboard. It is the third most expensive spice in the world after saffron and vanilla, which is why it is used by the pinch. Thirty-five products here carry it, and it is a genuine bridge ingredient: it belongs equally to a Swedish grandmother's buns, a Gulf coffee pot and a chai stall, which is a claim almost no other spice can make.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partSeed pod
KindSpice
CaffeineCaffeine-free
Where it is fromIndia, Guatemala
TasteFloral, resinous, eucalyptus-cool and sweet-warm; the main volatiles are terpinyl acetate and eucalyptol

How to use it

Crush whole pods under a knife and use the seeds; pre-ground cardamom fades fast. Into masala chai, Turkish and Arabic coffee — some Gulf blends run as high as 40% cardamom — and Scandinavian baking, where kardemummabullar are the national argument for it. In biryani, pilaf and garam masala. In custards, rice pudding and poached fruit. A cracked pod in a pot of coffee.

With food

Coffee. Orange and lemon. Cream, custard and rice pudding. Pistachio and almond. Honey. Saffron. Lamb and chicken. Sweet dough of any kind.

With spices

Cinnamon, cloves, ginger and black pepper in chai and garam masala. Saffron and rose. Vanilla. Fennel and coriander.

With tea

Masala chai, which is its home. Assam and Ceylon. Darjeeling, with which it shares linalool. Rooibos for a caffeine-free spiced cup.

Its story

Where it comes from

Native to southern India. The Cardamom Hills of Idukki, Kerala, in the southern Western Ghats, are named for the spice and grow about 70% of India's crop. Guatemala has led world production since 2000, from Alta Verapaz around Coban, where nearly 70% of the country's cardamom comes from some 300,000 smallholders, most of them Q'eqchi' Maya, working under ten acres each. Shop notes name no lot origin.

What happened

Cardamom's old nickname is the Queen of Spices. In April 1822 the Kingdom of Travancore made the Cardamom Hills a special administrative territory, ran the spice as a royal monopoly and put soldiers on the passes against smugglers; the monopoly lasted until 1896, and the hills' forest cover fell from 87% in 1905 to 33% in 1973. In 1914 a German coffee planter, Oscar Majus Kloeffer, carried Kerala seed to his estate at Coban in Guatemala to undercut India's near-monopoly; the German planters of Alta Verapaz farmed communal Maya land granted to them by the state, with Q'eqchi' workers held under the mozo colono system. By 2000 Guatemala led the world. In Scandinavia the first record is a Danish monk's thirteenth-century cookbook; many Swedes will tell you the Vikings brought it back from Constantinople, though a culinary archaeologist finds little evidence of imported spices in the Viking age. Sweden now eats about eighteen times more cardamom per head than the median country, and Norway nearly thirty.

On the shelf with it

Sold on its own, and in these blends.

Every ingredient in the shop

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Other ways in

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