Find Your Spice

Where do spices come from?  Different parts of the world. And different parts of the plant.

Click on each spice to find out more about it

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CINNAMON:  True cinnamon is a  product of a tree that is native to Sri Lanka.  It now also grows in Myanmar, the West  Indies, South America, and on the Malabar  Coast of India. But most of the world’s  common cinnamon is made from the bark  of the spicier cassia tree. It grows mostly  in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam. You don’t take a bite of the tree, of course.  Slice and peel the inner bark. Flat sheets  of bark curl into quills as they dry in the  sunlight. Voila! You have a cinnamon stick! The bark is also ground into powder. 

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Denis Moskvinov/Shutterstock

CLOVES:  Cloves come from the Maluku Islands  in Indonesia. They get their name from the French  word clou. That means nail. These “spice nails” are  the pink flower buds of the evergreen clove tree.  Pick and dry them before they have a chance to open. 

HORSERADISH:  Dig up the  horseradish plant. Peel and grate  the gnarly roots. Oil comes out.  Take a good sniff. Your sinuses will  tingle and your eyes will water! Mix shredded horseradish with  vinegar to keep it from getting  bitter and browning. Roots can  also be dried and ground into  powder. The plant is native to  Southeastern Europe and Western  Asia, but you can grow it in your  own backyard if you have sunlight  and deep soil.

Horseradish grows on a farm in Wisconsin.

Vanilla pods being processed in Madagascar

VANILLA:  Vanilla comes from the fruit pod of a  member of the orchid family. Growers get one chance!  If Vanilla planifolia flowers are not pollinated within  hours of blooming at sunrise, the flowers wilt, close,  and fall to the ground by the next morning. Most vanilla  pods come from Mexico, Madagascar, and Tahiti.  To add vanilla to a recipe, scrape pods with a knife.  Liquid extract is made by soaking the pods in alcohol.

PEPPER:  This familiar shaker spice comes  all the way from Southern India. Pepper  vines climb up man-made structures or  trees. The vines produce tiny fruits.  A dried pepper fruit is called a peppercorn.  Each peppercorn contains a large whitish  seed. Seed and fruit are ground into pepper.

GINGER:  Ginger grows in South Asia, East Africa, and the Caribbean.  The spice comes from the knobby rhizome of the Zingiber officinale plant.  (A rhizome is an underground stem.) And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the Earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.” — Genesis 1:29