Cardamom: all hail the queen of spices
Buns and biryani wouldn’t be the same without this aromatic ingredient
My favourite treat breakfast is mahamri. This deep-fried pastry is eaten all along the east African coast, from Somalia to Tanzania. Often described as a doughnut, it is traditionally served for the morning meal with a pigeon pea curry known as mbaazi.
To make mahamri, you mix flour, yeast, sugar, grated coconut and roughly ground cardamom seeds. Then comes coconut milk and, depending on the recipe, an egg and enough warm water to form a dough. After being left to rest, the dough is divided into portions, rolled out into a circle, cut into four triangles and fried in oil until they puff and turn an even, golden brown. It’s a simple process, but one that will make your house reek of cooking oil. You’ll also pile on the pounds if you do it often enough, hence my preference for buying them as a rare indulgence from a stall on Barking market, east London.
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Green or true cardamom, which gives mahamri its distinctive fragrance, are seed pods derived from the Elettaria cardamomum, a perennial herbaceous plant from the ginger family, native to southern India. It is widely known as the queen of spices — apparently taking the throne beside pepper, which is king — and the third most expensive by weight after saffron and vanilla. The larger, darker black cardamom comes from the Amomum subulatum, which is native to the Himalayan mountains. The former is used in both sweet and savoury applications. The smoky flavour of the latter, which is traditionally dried over fire, is generally reserved for robust savoury dishes.
Both are warmly floral, making them perfect complements for other aromatic spices such as cumin and cinnamon. In South Asia, they are used in curries, biryanis, halwa and chai. In the Middle East, green cardamom is often encountered in sweet dishes, such as the ubiquitous baklava, Persian love cake and Saudi Arabian kleja biscuits. Most commonly, though, it is used to flavour thick, dark-roasted coffee.
The use of cardamom on the Asian subcontinent dates back to the Vedic period (3000 BCE), when it was poured onto sacrificial fires during wedding ceremonies. The ancient Greeks and Romans used cardamom for therapeutic purposes, believing it to aid digestion and assist with a range of maladies including respiratory and kidney conditions, and as a perfume.
Early trade in the spice was dominated by Arab merchants. They were supplanted by the Portuguese in the 16th century, when Portugal established a direct trading link to India. However, it was under 19th-century British colonial rule that the global trade exploded, with traditional wild harvesting being replaced by commercial cardamom plantations.
Scandinavian countries were enthusiastic adopters of cardamom. The spice has appeared in recipes for wine and sweets since the 16th century. Nowadays, it is a staple of baking across the region and enjoyed in buns eaten during fika (coffee breaks) in Sweden. The story of cardamom’s Nordic popularity is still something of a mystery. Among many other theories, one exists that Viking traders brought it home from their voyages to Constantinople as far back as the 11th century.
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India, Nepal and Indonesia were eclipsed as the world’s major cardamom producers by Guatemala in the early 20th century when a German coffee-planter named Oscar Majus Kloeffer decided to cultivate the spice there. Now the central American country produces an average 35-40,000 tonnes per year. India produces an average of 20-22,000 tonnes per year, far ahead of Nepal at 6,000 tonnes and Indonesia at 3,000.
Like many other spices grown in the global south, however, cardamom cultivation is under threat from climate change. Its price has doubled in the past year, owing to periods of extreme heat in India.
It’s also topical in a more lighthearted way. In his previous life as a novelty rapper, New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani recorded and performed under the sobriquets Young Cardamom and Mr Cardamom. Check out Nani, his 2019 release featuring Madhur Jaffrey for the full culinary hip-hop experience. Alternatively, you could just tear into a mahamri or sip an Arabic coffee as you pay tribute to this most regal of spices.
