Ingredients · Spice

Fenugreek

Trigonella foenum-graecum · Fabaceae (pea family)

Fenugreek
The curry spice nobody talks about, and the one that smells like maple syrup. That is not a metaphor: the compound is sotolon, and it is the same thing used to make imitation maple flavouring. Fenugreek is bitter raw and bitter if over-toasted, and turns sweet and maple-like when soaked or gently cooked, which is the whole trick to using it. Eight products carry it. For a Calgary shop there is a second joke in it — fenugreek is grown on the Canadian prairies, so a spice from six thousand years away smells like a Canadian breakfast.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partSeed
KindSpice
CaffeineCaffeine-free
Where it is fromMediterranean and western Asia (native range)
TasteMaple syrup and burnt sugar; bitter raw or over-toasted, sweetening as it cooks

How to use it

Whole seeds dropped into hot oil for a South Indian tempering — but briefly, because they burn to bitterness in seconds. Ground into curry powder, berbere, tandoori masala and panch phoron. Soaked before use to take the edge off. A pinch is the difference between a curry that tastes homemade and one that tastes like a restaurant's. The leaves, methi, are a different ingredient again.

With food

Potato and spinach. Lentils and chickpeas. Lamb. Yogurt. Tomato. Maple and caramel, which it echoes. Cured meat.

With spices

Cumin, coriander and turmeric in curry. Mustard seed and chile. Garlic and paprika for cemen. Nigella and fennel for panch phoron.

With tea

Not a tea ingredient.

Its story

Where it comes from

A clover-like herb native to the Mediterranean region, southern Europe and western Asia. India is the largest producer, with over 80 per cent of its output from Rajasthan. Canada registered its first fenugreek variety, AC Amber, in 1992; CDC Canafen, from 2002, is the main variety grown in Western Canada, and AC Tristar is a forage variety for southern Alberta. Our lot origin is unconfirmed.

What happened

Charred seeds at Tell Halal in Iraq have been carbon-dated to 4000 BC, and desiccated seeds were found in Tutankhamun's tomb. Cato the Elder listed it as a cattle-feed crop, which is where the name comes from: faenum Graecum, Greek hay. It was a fodder plant before it was a spice. On Rosh Hashanah it appears among the simanim as rubia, eaten as a pun — may our merits increase — following Rashi's reading of the word as fenugreek. Kayseri in Cappadocia coats its pastirma in cemen, a paste of fenugreek, cumin, garlic and hot paprika. And then there is New York. From the autumn of 2005, on and off into early 2009, New Yorkers kept smelling maple syrup in the air over the city and nobody could account for it; on 5 February 2009 the city announced it had traced the smell across the Hudson to a plant in North Bergen, New Jersey, processing fenugreek seed. The mystery had already turned up on 30 Rock.

On the shelf with it

Sold on its own, and in these blends.

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