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FOOD ACCESSORIES AND SPICES 225 



posed to be of value in attracting insects to flower parts, thus 

 insuring pollination; this is based upon the supposition that an 

 odor which is pleasing and attractive to man's olfactory sense 

 would register in like manner upon an insect's organ of smell. 



Since spices contain practically no food value, they cannot in 

 a strict sense be classed as foods, although their aroma, when used 

 with foods, stimulates the appetite. Consequently spices and 

 other flavoring materials are commonly called food accessories. 

 During the Middle Ages, spices were regarded as being of con- 

 siderable medicinal value, but today relatively few are to be 

 found in official drug lists and these are used mainly to hide the 

 unpleasant tastes of other drugs. A few have antiseptic properties, 

 and many are used by the perfume and soap industries (see 

 Chapter 23). 



The classification of spices and other flavoring materials is 

 very difficult, since so many diff'erent plant parts furnish spices 

 that are put to similar uses. A pumpkin pie may be flavored with 

 cinnamon from bark, nutmeg from a fruit, and ginger from a root. 

 However, two groups are usually recognized; one comprises the 

 spices, hard or dried plant parts that are generally added to the 

 food in a powdered form; and the other is made up of flavoring 

 materials, substances used whole or in the form of a liquid extract 

 to give flavor to the food. There are hundreds of such substances 

 used, but less than twenty — the more common ones used in the 

 preparation of American dishes — are important enough to merit 

 discussion. 



Spices 



The most commonly used spice in America is pepper, derived 

 from the small, berry-like fruit (fig. 160) of the pepper plant 

 belonging to the family of the same name. This is one of the oldest 

 of the world's spices and long constituted the main item of trade 

 between India, native home of the plant, and Europe. The 

 history of pepper is the history of spices in general, control of the 

 pepper trade having passed from one nation to another in 

 exactly the same order as that outlined in the opening pages of 

 the chapter. Today the pepper plant, a woody climber whose 

 vines are trained and trimmed to facilitate gathering of the fruit, 



