P erhaps more nonsense has been written about spices than any other food product. A participant in a French radio quiz show contrived to win 500 francs for ascribing the invention of pepper (poivre) to Pierre Poivre, governor of the Mascarene Islands, 1 in the eighteenth century. The magazine Elle claimed that 'Marco Polo was the first to bring spices into Europe', adding a list of the places where what it described as the classic spices came from: 'saffron from Greece or Spain, nutmeg from the West Indies, etc.'
It is true that the world of spices, aromatics and condiments is not an easy one to explore, particularly when viewed from a great height. Such a symphony of scents rises from it that the head soon swims, and it is difficult to pick out the separate notes in the fragrance.
Dictionaries are not much help. LittrΓ© defines 'spice' as 'any aromatic or piquant drug used for seasoning', and 'aromatic' as 'any substance of vegetable origin giving off a penetrating and pleasant odour'. (But there are also aromatics of animal origin such as ambergris and musk, and these were once used in food as well.) The Oxford English Dictionary defines 'spice' as 'one or other of various strongly flavoured or aromatic substances of vegetable origin . . . commonly used as condiments or employment for other purposes on account of their fragrance and preservative qualities', and 'aromatic' as 'a substance or plant emitting a spicy odour; a fragrant drug; a spice'. LittrΓ© again, forgetting how to count, calls quatre-Γ©pices, literally 'four spices', 'a mixture of cloves, nutmeg, black pepper, cinnamon and ginger'. Larousse does no better, defining it as 'the common name of the cultivated nigella'. It is actually the sweet Jamaica 'pepper', Pimenta dioica, whose unripe berries, dried and crushed, are called allspice in English because, according to the OED, they were 'supposed to combine the flavour of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves'.
To Larousse, a condiment (from Latin condimentum) is 'a seasoning, such as pepper, salt and garlic'; to the OED, 'anything of a pronounced flavour used to season A History of Food Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat