Saffron (Kesar) is the most expensive spice and it is a colour too. Saffron has a very subtle flavour and aroma. It is used as a culinary seasoning for chicken and meat, biriyani, pulao, etc. It adds taste, colour, and aroma to Indian sweets like Rasmalai, Kesar Pista etc. and flavours kheer, badam milk, saffron milk, etc.
While nutmeg is a shelled dried seed of a plant, mace is a dried netlike covering of the shell of the seed. While nutmeg has a distinctive pungent fragrance and a warm slightly sweet taste, mace has a more delicate flavour and gives a saffron-like hue to dishes. Both are used as a condiment for sweet products such as baked items, custards, puddings, jellies, etc.
A sweet-tasting spice with a warm and woody aroma, cinnamon chips are rough non-peelable barks scraped off from the thicker stems. Cinnamon is a wonderful spice with a pleasant taste that makes it a great ingredient to be used in cakes and desserts. It is widely used in Hyderabadi Biriyani, gravies and curry dishes in India.
Pleasantly aromatic, the Bay leaf/ tejpata has a clove-like taste and a faint pepper-like odour. The glossy, dark-green Bay leaf is oval, pointed and smooth, 2.5 â?? 8 cm (1 to 3 inches) long. Bay leaves give off a pleasing and sweet aroma that makes it a great flavouring condiment for soups, sauces, stews and pickles.
Dark-brownish in colour, cloves are the dried aromatic flower buds of the clove tree. They have elongated bodies with a flowery head and look like small nails. They have a strong taste and sweet pungent smell that gives spicy warmth to soups, sauces, curries, meat, pickles and also to flavour sweet dishes like cookies, cakes and fruit pies. Cloves act as antioxidants, cure mild toothaches, aid digestion and help control blood pressure, etc.
Resembling cumin, in shape and size, fennel is a different spice altogether. Fennel (saunf) exude an anise-like sweet fruity aroma that makes them a widely-used savoury spice in pizzas, soups, sauces, confectioneries, etc. They are added in cooking, mainly as a flavouring base. They are used as a condiment after food to improve digestion and also as a mouth freshener.
Coriander seeds are utilised in a variety of dishes around the world, particularly curries from India. These little oblong seeds are green to yellowish - brown in appearance and have distinct citrus flavor. When used in cooking, the essential oils found in the hollow chamber of the Coriander seed, which plump and brown in colour , provide flavour to the food.