The Spice Girls

“…smell and taste are in fact but a single composite sense, whose laboratory is the mouth and its chimney the nose….”
– Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

There is nothing so heady and sultry as the right combination of spices; the kind that sends you into an ethereal high of aromatic ecstasy.

Since the beginning of civilization, spices have been used to accent meals, beverages, potions — and lovemaking. Their perfumes intoxicate the senses, evoking a primal desire for satiation. Just a whiff of a familiar scent can bring to life memories from the distant past, recreating in an instant what our minds have long since put to rest.

Spices have enjoyed a colorful history, and have served mankind perhaps more than any other kind of ingredient. Their alluring qualities helped to pave the way for international trade, and the scarcity of some varieties resulted in a new career path known as smuggling.

What most compels me, however, is their ability to stimulate the sensual side of humans. There is an inexplicable internal “Yum!” that springs forth when I smell certain spices — a full-body shudder in some cases. Scientists are hard at work to determine this relationship: in his book Scentsational Sex, Dr. Alan Hirsh published the results of a study he conducted in which certain smells, including cinnamon, sent male penile blood flow into the sensual stratosphere (ladies, take note). This gives a whole new connotation to breakfast in bed. Or cinnamon buns.

There are other spices with attributed aphrodisiacal properties, and one of the most prolific is this month’s featured indulgence: cardamom…mmm. Given its powerful, lemony-ginger bouquet, this is no small wonder. Its virtues are particularly extolled in Arabic cultures, which is clear to anyone who has perused 1001 Arabian Nights.

Curious to know what all the fuss was about, we launched a sensory expedition into the world of cardamom and its accompaniments. We knew that as the third most expensive spice on earth, its decadent properties were sure to lead us down a path of aromatic adventure.

As someone only vaguely familiar with cardamom, I was eager to understand its allure on a personal level, and set off to examine how it affected my senses. What was it that captured people? Was it the smell? The taste? I had experienced its essence in combination with other spices, as in chai tea, but never by itself.

My visit to the specialty store snapped the first piece of the puzzle into place.

As I smelled the jar of loose, green pods, I found that a deep inhale almost made me dizzy. The mélange of lemon and ginger filled my nose with a powerful punch of woody citrus. I rushed home to call Donna, and found her in the midst of taking a deep inhale from her bag of pods. “This stuff is like cocaine,” she quipped. I suddenly had the vision of us mainlining cardamom to get our fill of it.

When she told me the recipes she had in mind, I swooned. What had we gotten ourselves into?

In preparing her chai pots de crème recipe, I almost needed a straitjacket to keep me from taking little nips of the infusion while it was resting. The whole kitchen was enveloped in the kinds of scents that make me want to infuse myself in a bath of spices: cinnamon, pepper, cardamom, tea, vanilla…this was too much. That I had to let the pots rest overnight was an exercise in torture.

Now, every time I open my pantry door, I get a whiff of that magnificent lemon-ginger fragrance. Perhaps I should turn it into an air freshener for my car, but I’m worried that it might distract me.

I have now tasted this spice in so many combinations that I am convinced its virtues are justly celebrated. It adds a distinctive character to any kind of food, from the expected dessert and beverage combinations to more unusual ones for meat and vegetables.

Like anything maddeningly seductive, however, cardamom’s sultry nature is fleeting. Since it is quick to stale, I am anticipating with dismay the day I open the pantry door to be hit with a cloud of musty sawdust odor. I have decided that in the end, cardamom is like a brief but passionate romantic fling — it is best enjoyed on the spot, when one can indulge for a short time and let the memory live on.