Cardamom's name was already on Mycenaean spice tablets written in Linear B
Scandinavian buns, Indian masala chai and Arabian coffee all lean on the same small green pod. Cardamom ranks among the priciest spices by weight, yet a pinch goes a long way. Its word history reaches back to palace spice lists from Bronze Age Mycenae, and its first mentions come from Sumer and Ayurveda.
Cardamom comes from the seeds of plants in two genera of the ginger family, Elettaria and Amomum, native to the Indian subcontinent and Indonesia. Their pods are spindle-shaped, triangular in cross-section, with papery shells around small black seeds. True or green cardamom, Elettaria cardamomum, grows from India to Malaysia and turns white when bleached. Black cardamom, Amomum subulatum, has larger dark brown pods, comes from the eastern Himalayas, and is farmed mainly in eastern Nepal, Sikkim, Darjeeling and southern Bhutan. Its aroma is smoky but not bitter, with a minty coolness.
The English word traces through Latin to a Greek compound combining the word for cress with a second element of unknown origin. That cress word appears as ka-da-mi-ja among flavourings listed on tablets from the House of the Sphinxes at Mycenae. The genus name Elettaria, by contrast, comes from a Dravidian root.
Kitchens everywhere use it differently. Sweden, Norway and Finland bake it into treats like the Swedish kardemummabullar bun and Finnish pulla. In parts of the Middle East, coffee and cardamom are pounded together in a wooden mortar and roasted in a skillet, producing mixtures up to 40 percent cardamom. South Asian cooks use both types in masalas, sweets and rice, Thai curry pastes and Yemeni hawaij include it, and in Korea related species flavour a tea called jeho-tang. Seeds are even chewed like gum, and Wrigley has used cardamom in a breath mint.
The pod protects the flavour: loose or ground seeds fade fast, and grinding pods with seeds lowers quality. The seeds' essential oil can reach 8 percent, though its reported makeup varies between sources. World output in 2022, reported together with nutmeg and mace, was 138,888 tonnes, with India, Indonesia and Guatemala supplying 85 percent.
Source: Cardamom
