Cardamom

The small green pod of a ginger-family plant from the forests of south India — intensely aromatic, cooling, eucalyptus-and-citrus — the world’s third most expensive spice and the scent of Indian sweets, Arab coffee and Scandinavian buns.

Where it comes from

Green cardamom is native to the Western Ghats of Kerala and has been gathered there since antiquity; it reached the Greeks and Romans and later the Arab world, where it became inseparable from coffee. Guatemala, where it was planted in the early twentieth century, now grows more than India. The pods are picked by hand just before they ripen and dried; each holds a dozen or so tiny black seeds where the flavour lives.

Black cardamom is a different, larger species from the eastern Himalayas, dried over fire, with a smoky, camphorous character suited to savoury braises and biryanis rather than sweets. The Vikings are credited with bringing green cardamom to Scandinavia from Constantinople, and Sweden and Finland still use more of it per head than anywhere outside the Middle East and India — in cardamom buns, in coffee bread and in mulled wine.

Varieties

• Green cardamom — Small pale-green pods; sweet, floral, camphorous. For sweets, rice, chai, coffee and baking.
• Black (brown) cardamom — Large, dark, wrinkled pods dried over fire; smoky and savoury. For biryani, dal and northern Indian braises.
• White cardamom — Green pods bleached for looks. Milder; not worth the premium.
• Ground cardamom — Very quick to fade; a fine grind of pod and seed together is usual in Scandinavia, seed alone in India.

In the kitchen

Crack the pod, tip out the seeds and crush them — or, for a rice, a braise or a syrup, bruise the whole pod and add it, to be fished out or left as a warning. The seeds ground with a little sugar in a mortar release the most aroma. Whole pods go in at the start; ground cardamom goes in late, since heat carries off its scent.

Six to eight pods perfume a pot of rice; the seeds of two or three go into a cup of chai or a pot of Arab coffee; a teaspoon of ground seed scents a batch of buns. It is potent — twice as much is not twice as good.

Choosing and keeping

Buy whole green pods, plump and bright green, and grind the seeds as needed; pods keep for a year or more, ground cardamom for a few weeks. Pale, split or straw-coloured pods have lost their oil.

Black cardamom keeps almost indefinitely. Both should be stored sealed, in the dark, away from the stove.

Cardamom is tagged on 363 dishes from 81 countries in the atlas. These notes are written from general knowledge and carry no per-fact citation — see About.