Holiday Cooking – Allspice

This month I have explored several favorite spices that flavor my holiday baking, using J.O. Swahn’s The Lore of Spices for information. Today I’m learning about allspice, which I use in several cookie recipes. The spice is also used in many commercial products, such as condiments, pickles, sausage, and spice mixtures (including Jamaican jerk spice).

Pimenta dioica (formerly P. officinalis) is in the Myrtaceae (or myrtle) family and native to tropical West Indies and Central America. Today it is cultivated in Jamaica, Cuba, Trinidad, Mexico, and Honduras. According to Swahn, allspice was largely ignored by early European explorers in the New World. In the 1570s the scholar Francisco Hernandez observed that a spice about the size of peppercorns was an ingredient in the spiced chocolate drink made by the Aztecs. In 1600 the spice was exported to Europe and became quite popular. In the late 1600s the English naturalist John Ray called the spice “sweet-scented Jamaica pepper” or “allspice” in his Historia Plantarum.



Botanical illustration of Pimenta dioica from Koehler's Medicinal Plants.
(Published before 1923 and public domain in the United States)

Allspice is a tree that grows to 40 feet. Leaves are oblong-lanceolate, to 6 inches long, with prominent veins. Flowers are white, ¼ inch across, with four-lobed calyx. Fruit is round, ¼ inch across, and dark brown, containing two seeds. Both leaves and fruit contain the aromatic oil – eugenol, also found in cloves. The fruit is harvested before it is ripe, typically in July or August while still green, and then dried in ovens. The dried berries are used whole or ground.