Spice Mixtures

Appears in

#20A New Book of Middle Eastern Food
A New Book of Middle Eastern Food

By Claudia Roden

Published 1986

  • About
Every household has favourite spice mixtures which they blend to taste and keep in jars as a ready condiment or flavouring. A few are made to be eaten with bread. This is broken into pieces, dipped in olive oil and then in the condiment to pick it up.

There are classic mixtures which vendors make up and which are often simply called ‘the three spices’ or ‘the four spices’. In Egypt what we called les quatre épices was a ground mixture of cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and pepper. ‘Four spices’ in Tunisia may mean cinnamon, pepper, rose buds and paprika, and in Morocco it may be cloves, nutmeg, ginger and pepper. ‘Curry mixtures’ of varying compositions popular in the regions neighbouring India are similar to those of that country.