Cumin & Coriander

I have a pot of sweets on my desk, uneven sugared balls in shades of chartreuse, amber, chalk, orchil and Indian yellow. Just as their pretty, dirty colours are quirky next to the usual jewel tones of boiled sweets, so their taste is unexpected. Jeera goli are a South Asian digestive made from sweetened rose paste rolled around a toasted cumin seed and spiked with black pepper, each colour signalling a different flavour, including tamarind, sour mango, ginger and black grape.

Musky, pungent cumin is usually at home with resoundingly savoury flavours, lending a sun-baked earthiness to cooking from Mexico to Sri Lanka. Likely to have originated in the Nile Valley, where the cumin harvest is described in the Bible, it is now widely cultivated across Asia, North Africa and the Americas.