by Amy Stewart
Artichokes and cardoons have a long history as ingredients in digestive tonics. In fact, recent research shows they may stimulate bile production, protect the liver, and lower cholesterol levels. The active compounds are cynaropicrin and cynarin, both of which are found in higher levels in the leaves. Artichokes also play a well-known trick on the taste buds, temporarily suppressing taste receptors on the tongue that detect sweetness. The next thing to come across the palate—a drink of water, a bite of food—tastes unusually sweet as those receptors start working again. This makes artichokes notoriously difficult to pair with wine, but the strange blend of bitter and sweet is perfect in a cocktail.
Several Italian amaros rely on artichoke and cardoon. The aptly named Cynar is the best example; it’s wonderful on its own or in soda, and works very well as a Campari substitute in a Negroni. Cardamaro Vino Amaro, made in Italy’s Piemonte region, is a wine-based infusion of cardoon, blessed thistle, and other spices. It has a lower alcohol content (17 percent ABV) and an oxidized sweetness similar to that of sherry or sweet vermouth. Other regional versions are usually labeled simply “Amaro del Carciofo.”
BLESSED THISTLE: BECAUSE ONE GREAT THISTLE DESERVES ANOTHER
The word thistle is not a botanical term; it’s more of a popular word used to describe plants with prickly leaves and spiky flowers atop a round, bulbous base. Artichokes and cardoons are often called thistles, but a close relative actually goes by the name blessed thistle, or Centaurea benedicta. The two foot-tall, yellow-flowered herb resembles a hairy dandelion—and like dandelions, it is both weedy and bitter. All parts of the plants are used in digestive tonics, vermouths, and herbal liqueurs; the active ingredient seems to be a compound called cnicin, which is being evaluated for its anti-tumor properties.
BAY LAUREL
Laurus nobilis
lauraceae (laurel or avocado family)
The leaves of this Mediterranean tree were once used to fashion a crown for winners of Greek and Roman sporting events, but they are also used to flavor stews, sauces, and meat dishes. The small black berries are an ingredient in traditional French cooking. The tree’s essential oils include eucalyptol, which explains its strong eucalyptus essence. Smaller quantities of linalool and terpineol give it a green, spicy, pungent, and piney taste.
Bay laurel infuses vermouths, herbal liqueurs, amaros, and gins. A French distiller, Gabriel Broudier, makes a pear and bay leaf liqueur called Bernard Loiseau Liqueur de Poires Laurier. The Dutch liqueur Beerenburg contains a distillate of laurel leaves with gentian and juniper berries.
The California bay laurel (also called the Oregon myrtle), Umbellularia californica, is sometimes used as a substitute. However, other plants that are called laurels, including the cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) and the mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) are extremely poisonous—so a home infusion of just any random laurel plant would be ill advised. Fortunately, the real bay laurel grows throughout Europe and in parts of North America, and both leaves and berries are sold as kitchen spices.
BETEL LEAF
Piper betle
piperaceae (pepper family)
This small, dark green vine, a close relative to the vine that produces black pepper, is best known as the wrapper in which the betel nut, Areca catechu, is placed. The two comprise a little bundle known as a quid or paan. The combination delivers a mild, addictive stimulant enjoyed by four hundred million people around the world, primarily in India and Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, the quid also causes cancer, turns teeth black, and produces a steady flow of red saliva that is often spat out on the street.
The betel leaf is also used to wrap other things. A “sweet paan” refers to a betel leaf filled with fruit and spices; it might be served to guests after dinner as a (nonstimulating) dessert. Betel leaves can also be filled with tobacco, another custom that alarms public health officials for the high rates of oral cancer it causes.
Paan liqueur is made in Sikkim, a region that borders Nepal. While home brewers and commercial distillers are equally reluctant to divulge their recipes, locals are certainly under the impression that they are drinking a spirit steeped in or distilled with the betel leaf, and perhaps the nut as well. A few paan liqueurs are distributed internationally, and while the distillers make no claim about ingredients, it is unlikely that that the betel leaf is used in those versions. Neither the leaf nor the nut are approved food ingredients in the European Union or in the United States. In fact, both are included in the FDA’s database of poisonous plants. (This is not to say that they are illegal to grow; a few tropical nurseries sell them.) In 1995, the Los Angeles Times reported on the launch of Sikkim Paan Liquor, which apparently contained no betel leaf at all, but cardamom, saffron, and sandalwood, bringing to mind a combination of Drambuie and an Indian spice shop.
The leaf may prove to have some redeeming qualities. A 2011 medical study published in the journal Food & Function investigated several spices for possible protective effects against alcohol-induced liver damage. A number of Indian spices and herbs looked promising, including turmeric, curry, fenugreek, tea—and the leaves of Piper betle.
BISON GRASS
Hierochloe odorata
poaceae (grass family)
This tough, perennial grass, also called sweetgrass, is prized for its vanilla-like fragrance. It is native to both North America and Europe and has been used by Native Americans to make baskets and incense. In Poland, it is an ingredient in a traditional flavored vodka called zubrówka. A wild stand of the grass still grows in the Białowieza Forest, between Poland and Belarus, where it feeds a herd of wisent, the endangered European bison.
A limited amount of the wild grass can be gathered every year to make zubrówka. Once harvested, it is dried and macerated in rye vodka. A single blade of grass floats in every bottle. The spirit has been unavailable in the United States since 1954 because the grass contains coumarin, a banned substance that can be turned into a blood thinner in the laboratory or in the presence of certain species of fungus. While the conversion of coumarin to a blood thinner is easily avoided, the ban on anything containing coumarin remains. Recently Polmos Białystok, the makers of zubrówka, found a way to remove the coumarin, making it legal once again in the United States.
The traditional way to drink it is to mix one part zubrówka to two parts clear, cold apple juice. This recipe is simply a variation on that tradition:
BISON GRASS COCKTAIL
1½ ounces zubrówka
½ ounce dry vermouth
½ ounce apple juice
Shake all the ingredients over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.
CALAMUS (SWEET FLAG)
Acorus calamus
acoraceae (sweet flag family)
Sweet flag is a highly fragrant grass or rushlike plant that grows in marshy areas throughout Europe and North America. The rhizome has a complex, spicy, bitter flavor that lends itself to amaros like Campari and herbal liqueurs like Chartreuse, as well as gin and vermouth. The flavor has been described as woodsy, leathery, and also creamy; perfumer Steffen Arctander described it as smelling like a milk truck or the inside of a shoe repair shop.
Some varieties of the plant contain a potentially carcinogenic compound called Β-asarone. For this reason, the FDA has banned it as a food additive. However, not all sweet flag is equally dangerous. The American variety, called A. calamus var. americanus or A. americanus, does not have any significant quantity of the potential toxin, and European strains also have relatively low levels. The European Union acknowledges that the plant is widely used in bitters, vermouths, and liqueurs, and has set limits regulating the amount of Β-asarone in alcoholic beverages and encouraging the use of less toxic varieties. In the United States, distillers sidestep the ban by producing liqueurs that contain undetectable levels of the toxin.
CARAWAY
Carum carvi
apiaceae (carrot family)
Norwegian distillers don’t recount myths of lost princes and ancient recipes to ex
plain the mysterious origins of their classic spirit. Instead, they tell the story of a trading expedition gone wrong. According to the makers of Linie Aquavit, a trading ship bound for Indonesia in 1805 carried used sherry casks filled with the caraway-flavored spirit aquavit in its cargo hold. The traders were unable to sell their national drink in Indonesia and returned home with it.
When they arrived in Norway, they found that the long, rollicking sea voyage had greatly improved the aquavit. To reproduce the flavor, they tried simply storing the aquavit in sherry casks, but it wasn’t the same. The brutal sea voyage, with its time in warm equatorial seas and in cold Nordic waters, combined with the tossing and turning of the ship, caused the casks to expand and contract in a way that released more flavor from the oak. For that reason, casks of Linie still voyage around the world for four and a half months on the decks of cargo ships, crossing the equator twice and visiting thirty-five countries. The distiller once kept this strange method of aging the spirit a secret, but now a log of the voyage is printed on every label.
Aquavit is flavored with caraway, an annual herb that is a close relative of parsley and cilantro. What people refer to as the seed is actually a fruit that contains two seeds, along with essential oils that give it its spicy, toasted flavor. Most people associate the flavor with rye bread, but it is also used in sauerkraut, coleslaw, and some Dutch cheeses.
Caraway is native to Europe. Archeological evidence in Switzerland points to the use of the seeds as a spice as many as five thousand years ago. There are two types: a biennial winter type that is sown in spring or fall for a harvest the following winter and an annual type that is sown in spring for a fall harvest. The winter type is the traditional choice in eastern Europe and is most widely available from seed companies.
Aquavit is made with a potato vodka base. Caraway is the predominant flavor, but fennel, dill, anise, cardamom, cloves, and citrus might also be added. Another caraway-based spirit is allasch, a Latvian liqueur also made with anise, and the better-known kümmel, a sweet, grain-based liqueur that dates to sixteenth-century Holland, which is usually served on the rocks after dinner.
CARAWAY/CUMIN CONFUSION
Caraway and its close relative cumin (Cuminum cyminum) are often confused with one another, even though cumin has a much stronger, more peppery flavor. The common name for the two plants has historically been the same or nearly identical in many eastern European languages. In Germany, for instance, cumin is Kreuzkümmel and caraway is Kümmel. Although cumin is one of the world’s most popular spices, it is not widely used to flavor spirits.
CARDAMOM
Elettaria cardamomum var. Minor or var. Major
zingiberaceae (ginger family)
If you’ve never seen a cardamom plant, picture a clump of tall, weedy orchids. As a member of the ginger family, cardamom produces the third most expensive spice in the world, after saffron and vanilla. Its high price comes in part from the tropical locations it prefers and in part because the fruit is painstakingly difficult to harvest.
Cardamom has been collected in the wild for hundreds of years but was brought into cultivation in the nineteenth century. The plant reaches nearly twenty feet in height and blooms over a long season, requiring pickers to return again and again to the same plant to harvest individual fruits. They must be picked while they are still slightly green, then dried and split carefully apart to remove the seeds within. The pods are also sold intact, with the seeds still inside, which preserves more of the flavor.
Cardamom from India is considered the best quality, although Guatemala has become a major producer as well. There are two types: the Malabar type has a slight eucalyptus flavor, while the Mysore type is warmer and spicier, with citrus and floral notes. A related species, Amomum subulatum, also called large cardamom or black cardamom, is typically dried on an open fire and has a much smokier flavor as a result.
The spice contains high levels of linalool and linalyl acetate, which are fragrant compounds also found in lavender, citrus, and a wide range of other flowers and spices. Japanese scientists recently showed that these compounds reduce stress, as measured by direct testing of subjects’ immune system response. That’s as good a reason as any to add it to a drink.
Cardamom flavors a wide range of spirits, including gins, coffee and nut liqueurs, vermouth, and Italian amaros. The best way to use it in a cocktail is to heat green cardamom seeds with simple syrup and experiment with it in a wide range of spicy, tropical, and fruit-based drinks.
CLOVE
Syzygium aromaticum
myrtaceae (myrtle family)
A clove is not a seed or a fruit or even the bark of a tree. It is, in fact, a tightly closed flower bud that has been plucked from an Indonesian tree and spread out in the sun to dry before it ferments (in the way that, seemingly, anything will ferment if left unattended.)
Cloves come from the Indonesian spice islands of Ternate, Tidore, Bacan, Makin, and the Maluku Islands, which have been the source of spices for Asia and Europe since at least the third century BC. The Romans eagerly traded with Arab merchants for exotic botanicals from these islands, and by the seventeenth century, the Dutch and Portuguese were fighting over the territory. In an attempt to control the market, the Dutch cut down clove trees on all but the islands they controlled. French and British traders eventually got hold of some clove seedlings and exported them to their own tropical colonies, including Sri Lanka, India, and Malaysia. Sadly, this had the effect of wiping out the rich genetic diversity that may have once existed among wild clove trees. The only wild trees that remain contain no trace of eugenol, the distinctive flavor extracted from modern cloves. This suggests that a second wild ancestor, which did produce eugenol, was wiped out entirely by the spice traders.
The clove tree itself is quite beautiful; the leaves transition from pale gold to pink to green throughout the season. The buds also change color as they bloom and must be harvested at the precise moment they turn light pink. Because of the tree’s long blooming cycle, the flowers are picked as many as eight times in a season, yielding only about ten pounds of cloves per year. Clove stems are sometimes used as a cheap substitute for the buds, and clove oil may also be extracted from the leaves and branches.
The varieties of cloves sold in the trade today are Zanzibar, Siputih, and Sikotok, with the Siputih being the largest and most pungent of the three. Clove extract has been used throughout history—and continues to be used today—as a dental anesthetic because of its numbing and analgesic effects. In fact, that distinctive dentist office smell comes in part from cloves.
However, there are much more pleasant ways to enjoy cloves than a trip to the dentist’s office. The flavor is wonderful in combination with other spices. It intensifies vanilla flavors and adds a level of complexity to citrus. Many nutty and spicy liqueurs rely on cloves to support and amplify other flavors, including amaretto, alkermes, and some vermouths and amaros.
COCA
Erythroxylum coca
erythroxylaceae (coca family)
No plant is more symbolic of our endless war on drugs than this small, dark green Andean bush. When the leaves are chewed, they act as a gentle stimulant and may offer protection against altitude sickness. Archeologists have found evidence that Peruvians used the plant in this manner as early as 3000 BC, and they were still using it when the Spaniards showed up in the sixteenth century. The Catholic church tried to ban it but quickly realized that enslaved Peruvians could be made to work harder if they had their coca, so it remained a part of the culture.
Europeans, always on the search for a new plant that could be put to some medical or recreational use, found a way to extract the pure cocaine alkaloid, creating a drug with a much more powerful effect than the leaves alone. Cocaine became a pain reliever, antiseptic, digestive tonic, and all-around cure. Freud liked it; in 1895 he wrote that “a cocainization of the left nostril had helped me to an amazing extent.”
The leaves were used in wines and tonics as well, the mo
st famous being the French Vin Mariani, whose advertisements promised that it was an “Effective and Lasting Renovator of the Vital Forces.” In 1893, the company published a charming illustrated book of testimonials for its product that began with an introduction about the coca plant (“Not Cocoa or Cacao,” it emphasized), in which it claimed that “the most effective form of administering Coca is the vinous one.”
The commendations came from celebrities like Sarah Bernhardt, who declared that the wine “helped to give me that strength so necessary in the performance of the arduous duties which I have imposed upon myself.” The French cardinal Charles Lavigerie, who oversaw missionaries in Africa, wrote that “Your coca from America gives to my ‘White Fathers,’ sons of Europe, the courage and strength to civilize Asia and Africa.” The best endorsement came from controversial French politician Henri Rochefort, who said that “Your precious Vin Mariani has completely reformed my constitution; you ought certainly offer some to the French Government.”
Coca continues to flourish in its native range in the Andean mountains. The shrubs grow to about eight feet in height, producing small white flowers and seeds. Only the young, fresh leaves are harvested, usually three times a year, beginning with the rainy season in March. There are seven species in all, including at least one other, Erythroxylum novogranatense, that also contains the cocaine alkaloid. E. rufum, or false cocaine, is entirely free of the alkaloid and is grown by some botanical gardens in the United States.
