Spices
A spice is a dried seed, fruit, root, bark, leaf, or vegetative substance used in nutritionally insignificant quantities as a food additive for the purpose of flavour, colour, or as a preservative that kills harmful bacteria or prevents their growth.[1]
Many of these substances are also used for other purposes, such as medicine, religious rituals, cosmetics, perfumery or eating as vegetables. For example, turmeric is also used as a preservative; liquorice as a medicine; garlic as a vegetable. In some cases they are referred to by different terms.
In the kitchen, spices are distinguished from herbs, which are leafy, green plant parts used for flavouring purposes. Herbs, such as basil or oregano, may be used fresh, and are commonly chopped into smaller pieces. Spices, however, are dried and often ground or grated into a powder. Small seeds, such as fennel and mustard seeds, are used both whole and in powder form.
The cultivation and brewing of tea in India has a long history of applications in traditional systems of medicine and for consumption. The consumption of tea in India was first clearly documented in the Ramayana (750-500 BC). Research shows that tea is indigenous to eastern and northern India, and was cultivated and consumed there for thousands of years. However, commercial production of tea in India did not begin until the arrival of the British East India Company, at which point large tracts of land were converted for mass tea production.Today, India is one of the largest tea producers in the world, though over 70% of the tea is consumed within India itself. A number of renown teas, such as Darjeeling, also grow exclusively in India. The Indian tea industry has grown to own many global tea brands, and has evolved to one of the most technologically equipped tea industries in the world. Tea production, certification, exportation, and all other facets of the tea trade in India is controlled by the Tea Board of India.
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from roasted seeds, commonly called coffee beans, from the coffee plant. They are seeds of coffee cherries that grow on trees in over 70 countries. Green coffee is one of the most traded commodities in the world, often described as being second only to crude oil[citation needed] although this often repeated fact should be subjected to more careful scrutiny.[1] Due to its caffeine content, coffee can have a stimulating effect in humans. Today, coffee is one of the most popular beverages worldwide.[2]
It is thought that the energizing effect of the coffee bean plant was first recognized in Yemen in Arabia and the north east of Ethiopia, and the cultivation of coffee expanded in the Arab world.[3] The earliest credible evidence of coffee drinking appears in the middle of the fifteenth century, in the Sufi monasteries of the Yemen in southern Arabia.[3] From the Muslim world, coffee spread to Italy, then to the rest of Europe, to Indonesia, and to the Americas.[4] Coffee has played an important role in many societies throughout history. In Africa and Yemen, it was used in religious ceremonies. As a result, the Ethiopian Church banned its secular consumption until the reign of Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia.[5] It was banned in Ottoman Turkey in the 17th century for political reasons,[6] and was associated with rebellious political activities in Europe.
Oats
Oats are grown throughout the temperate zones. They have a lower summer heat requirement and greater tolerance of rain than other cereals like wheat, rye or barley, so are particularly important in areas with cool, wet summers such as Northwest Europe, even being grown successfully in Iceland. Oats are an annual plant, and can be planted either in autumn (for late summer harvest) or in the spring (for early autumn harvest).
Historical attitudes towards oats vary. Oat bread was first manufactured in England, where the first oat bread factory was established in 1899. In Scotland they were, and still are, held in high esteem, as a mainstay of the national diet. The English lexicographer Samuel Johnson, famously wrote in A Dictionary of the English Language that the oat was a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people, to which the Scottish riposte is "and England has the finest horses, and Scotland the finest men".
Fruit Juice
Juice is the liquid naturally contained in fruit or vegetable tissue. Juice is prepared by mechanically squeezing or macerating fresh fruits or vegetables without the application of heat or solvents. For example, orange juice is the liquid extract of the fruit of the orange tree. Juice may be prepared in the home from fresh fruits and vegetables using variety of hand or electric juicers. Many commercial juices are filtered to remove fiber or pulp, but high-pulp fresh orange juice is a popular beverage. Juice may be marketed in concentrate form, sometimes frozen, requiring the user to add water to reconstitute the liquid back to its "original state". However, concentrates generally have a noticeably different taste from that of their "fresh-squeezed" counterparts. Other juices are reconstituted before packaging for retail sale. Common methods for preservation and processing of fruit juices include canning, pasteurization, freezing, evaporation and spray drying.Popular juices include apple, orange, grapefruit, pineapple, tomato, passion fruit, mango, carrot, grape, cherry, cranberry, guava, and pomegranate. It has become increasingly popular to combine a variety of fruits into single juice drinks. Popular blends include cran-apple (cranberry and apple) and apple and blackcurrant. A demonstration of this trend is that prepackaged single fruit juices have lost market share to prepackaged fruit juice combinations.[citation needed] A number of new companies have had considerable success supplying prepackaged fruit juice permutations on the basis of this transition.
Juice bars have also become commonplace across most of the western world and offer similar juice blends. Juice is also commonly found in many cooking recipes from various cultures. The most popular are lime and lemon juice which help to add a slightly more sour or acidic taste to dishes.