Ingredients · Spice

Cumin

Cuminum cyminum · Apiaceae (carrot family)

Cumin
A small ridged seed with a deep, earthy, faintly smoky smell — cuminaldehyde is the compound doing most of it. Cumin is one of the oldest travelling spices there is, and in this catalogue it is one of the busiest: twenty-three products carry it, which is most of the curry powders, all of the Tex-Mex blends and much of the Middle Eastern and North African shelf. Whole seeds and ground cumin behave quite differently. Whole, they pop in hot fat and stay as crunchy points of flavour; ground, they dissolve into the background and make a blend taste like a blend.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partSeed
KindSpice
CaffeineCaffeine-free
Where it is fromWest Asia (native range)
TasteDeep, earthy, warm, a little smoky and bitter, with a musky edge

How to use it

Toast whole seeds in a dry pan or bloom them in hot oil or ghee until they crackle — the first sound of an Indian dish. Ground into chili powder, taco seasoning, curry powder, garam masala, baharat and adobo. On roasted carrots and cauliflower. In hummus and any chickpea dish. Rubbed on lamb. In Morocco a dish of cumin sits on the table the way pepper does here.

With food

Lamb and beef. Chickpeas, black beans and lentils. Tomato. Carrot, cauliflower and sweet potato. Yogurt and lime. Corn tortillas. Aged cheese — Leyden is studded with the seeds.

With spices

Coriander, its constant partner. Chile and oregano for Tex-Mex. Turmeric, fenugreek and mustard in curry. Cinnamon and allspice for baharat. Paprika and garlic.

With tea

Mint tea after a cumin-heavy meal, in the North African way. Assam or masala chai with an Indian one.

Its story

Where it comes from

Native to the Irano-Turanian region, likely originating in Central Asia, southwestern Asia or the eastern Mediterranean. India produces about 70% of the world's cumin today, then Syria, Turkey and the UAE. Shop notes name Indian, Mexican and Middle Eastern tables; lot origin is unconfirmed.

What happened

The English word comes, through Old English, Latin and Greek, from Akkadian kamunu and Sumerian gamun — the name is older than most of the languages it passed through. Wild cumin seeds from the early sixth millennium BC were found at Atlit-Yam, a village now under the Mediterranean off the coast of Israel. Ramesses III offered cumin to Ra; Linear A tablets on Minoan Crete list it among palace stores. Isaiah's careful farmer threshes it with a rod, never a cart wheel — a seed too small and precious for the wheel. In Matthew the Pharisees pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin and omit the weightier matters of the law: cumin as the smallest thing a careful person could count. Rome had the same idea about misers — the emperor Antoninus Pius, who kept a famously tight purse, was nicknamed the cummin-splitter. Spanish and Portuguese colonists carried it to the Americas, where it became so fixed in Mexican and Tex-Mex cooking that most people now think of it as native there.

On the shelf with it

Sold on its own, and in these blends.

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