the.com/allspice
one berry pretending to be three spices, and somehow nobody questioned it
means A single dried berry from a Caribbean tree whose flavor evokes a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove — used as a warm baking and savory spice.
from A blunt English compound of 'all' plus 'spice,' coined in the 17th century when European cooks first tasted the dried berries of the Pimenta dioica tree and decided one flavor was doing the work of several. The Spanish had named it 'pimienta' — pepper — mistaking the round dark berries for true peppercorns, which is why it lingers today as 'pimento' or 'Jamaica pepper.' English speakers, less concerned with botanical precision than with the smell, simply declared it the spice that tasted like all of them.
- single source
- It's one dried berry, not a blend
- name origin
- Tastes like cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg combined
- native land
- Grows almost exclusively in the Caribbean and Jamaica
- jerk essential
- Backbone flavor of Jamaican jerk cooking
- old name
- Columbus's crew called it pimento by mistake
jamaica allspice — jamaica produces 60% of the world's allspice, primarily from the parishes of st. elizabeth and manchester
pimenta dioica tree — the sole botanical source of allspice, native to central america and the caribbean since pre-columbian times