Allspice, also known as Jamaica pepper or pimento, is the dried unripe berry of Pimenta dioica, a midcanopy tree native to the Greater Antilles, southern Mexico, and Central America. Named by the English in 1621, it is prized as a spice combining the flavors of cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove, though it is not a mixture of them. Additionally, unrelated plants like Calycanthus floridus ("Carolina allspice"), Chimonanthus praecox ("Japanese allspice"), and Lindera benzoin ("wild allspice") share similar common names but are distinct species.
Production
Allspice is the dried fruit of the Pimenta dioica plant. The fruits are picked when green and unripe, and are traditionally dried in the sun. When dry, they are brown and resemble large, smooth peppercorns. Fresh leaves are similar in texture to bay leaves and similarly used in cooking. Leaves and wood are often used for smoking meats where allspice is a local crop.
Care must be taken during drying to ensure that the volatile oils in the fruit, such as eugenol, remain in the end products rather than being driven out by the drying process.5
Uses
Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on- Allspice
Allspice is one of the most important ingredients of Jamaican cuisine. Under the name pimento, it is used in Jamaican jerk seasoning, and traditionally its wood was used to smoke jerk in Jamaica. In the West Indies, an allspice liqueur is produced under the name "pimento dram". In Mexican cuisine, it is used in many dishes, where it is known as pimienta gorda.6
Allspice is also indispensable in Middle Eastern cuisine, particularly in the Levant, where it is used to flavour a variety of stews and meat dishes, as well as tomato sauce.7 In Arab cuisine, for example, many main dishes use allspice as the only spice.
In Northern European and North American cooking, it is an ingredient in commercial sausage preparations and curry powders, and in pickling.
In the United States, it is used mostly in desserts, but it is also responsible for giving Cincinnati-style chili its distinctive aroma and flavor. Allspice is commonly used in Great Britain, and appears in many dishes. In Portugal, whole allspice is used heavily in traditional stews cooked in large terracotta pots in the Azores islands.
In the United Kingdom it is a dominant flavour in the condiment Brown sauce.
Allspice is also one of the most used spices in Polish cuisine (used in most dishes, soups and stews) and is commonly known under the name English herb (Polish: ziele angielskie) since Britain was its major exporter.
Allspice is an important part of Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian cuisine. Whole allspice is used to flavour soups as well as stews such as Karelian hot pot. Ground allspice is also used in various dishes, such as minced meat sauces, Swedish meatballs, lutefisk and different cakes.8
Cultivation
The allspice tree, classified as an evergreen shrub, can reach 10–18 m (33–59 ft) in height. Allspice can be a small, scrubby tree, quite similar to the bay laurel in size and form. It can also be a tall canopy tree, sometimes grown to provide shade for coffee trees planted underneath it. It can be grown outdoors in the tropics and subtropics with normal garden soil and watering. Smaller plants can be killed by frost; larger plants are more tolerant. It adapts well to container culture and can be kept as a houseplant or in a greenhouse.
Pimenta grows in Tonga and in Hawaii, where it has become naturalized on Kauaʻi and Maui.9 Jamaica remains the leading source of the plant, although some is grown by other countries in the same region.
Allspice was found only on the island of Jamaica, where birds readily spread the seeds. To protect the pimenta trade, Jamaican growers guarded against export of the plant. Many attempts at growing the pimenta from seeds were reported, but all failed. Eventually, passage through the avian digestive tract, whether due to the acidity or the elevated temperature, was found to be essential for germinating the seeds, and successful germination elsewhere was enabled.
See also
Notes
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Allspice. Wikispecies has information related to Pimenta dioica. Look up allspice in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.- Allspice at the Wikibooks Cookbook subproject
- "Pimenta dioica". Floridata Plant Encyclopedia.
- "Pimenta dioica". Plants of Hawaii. Hawaiian Ecosystems at Risk project (HEAR).
- "Allspice". Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages.
- "Allspice". Trade Winds Fruit.
- "Allspice". The Encyclopedia of Spices. Epicentre.com.
References
Outside Jamaica, pimento typically refers to a red, heart-shaped sweet pepper. /wiki/Pimento ↩
Riffle, Robert L. (1 August 1998). The Tropical Look: An Encyclopedia of Dramatic Landscape Plants. Timber Press. ISBN 978-0-88192-422-0. 978-0-88192-422-0 ↩
Oxford English Dictionary (2 ed.). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. 1 March 1989. ISBN 978-0-19-861186-8. Archived from the original on 25 June 2006. Retrieved 12 December 2009. 978-0-19-861186-8 ↩
Francis, Ali (1 December 2021). "Allspice Is the Berry—Yes, Berry—That Can Do It All". Bon Appetit. Archived from the original on 8 April 2024. Retrieved 24 June 2024. https://www.bonappetit.com/story/what-is-allspice ↩
Branch, Legislative Services. "Consolidated federal laws of Canada, Food and Drug Regulations". laws.justice.gc.ca. Retrieved 19 July 2018. https://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/C.R.C.,_c._870/page-36.html#h-70 ↩
Diana Kennedy, The Essential Cuisines of Mexico, 2009, ISBN 030758772X, passim /wiki/ISBN_(identifier) ↩
Diane Kochilas, My Greek Table, 2018, ISBN 1250166373, p. 22 /wiki/ISBN_(identifier) ↩
"Mitä eroa on mustapippurilla ja maustepippurilla?". iltalehti.fi (in Finnish). Retrieved 9 September 2022. https://www.iltalehti.fi/ruoka-artikkelit/a/201611162200028102 ↩
Lorence, David H; Flynn, Timothy W; Wagner, Warren L (1 March 1995). "Contributions to the Flora of Hawai'i III" (PDF). Bishop Museum Occasional Papers. 41: 19–58. ISSN 0893-1348. Retrieved 12 December 2009. http://hbs.bishopmuseum.org/pdf/op41-19-58.pdf ↩