Spices give life to food and beget excitement to our palate with their interesting flavour complexity. Any dried seed, fruit, root, bark or plant substance with the primary purpose of adding colour or flavouring is deemed or defined a spice. Spices impart aroma and piquancy to food while stimulating the appetite and adding that much needed zest and zing. Additionally, spices can disguise bad tastes in food especially foods affected by fungi.
Spices boasts various flavour characteristics such as earthy, sweet, cooling, hot, nutty, herbaceous, pungent, bitter, spicy, woody and fruity; with each spice having more than one flavour profiles.
For example, Cinnamon and Nutmeg both share a sweet yet woody flavour, turmeric has a bitter and pungent flavour.
