Spiced

A modern guide to cooking with spices, featuring more than 300 globally inspired recipes designed for home cooks

Elevate your everyday cooking with this comprehensive, visually stunning celebration of spices from around the world. Spiced focuses on 50 key spices, offering a deep dive into each. Home cooks will find annatto from Central and South America, cardamom from India, grains of paradise from West Africa, nutmeg from the Banda Islands, and more, all accompanied by texts that cover the spice’s history, origin, and impact on world cuisine.

Each entry includes a suite of recipes in which the spice plays a starring role, presenting a mix of traditional and modern dishes – from Risotto alla Milanese (saffron), Jollof rice (calabash nutmeg), Massaman curry (white cardamom), Chicken paprikash (chile), Touba coffee (Grains of Selim), Golden milk (turmeric) and Eggnog (nutmeg). The book also includes 20 recipes for spice blends, including garam masala, Chinese five-spice, baharat, and ras el hanout, which evoke the distinctive flavors of regions across the globe.

Part recipe collection, part culinary history, Spiced gives fascinating cultural context for its subject. Author and food historian Priya Mani provides deeply researched insights into the complex history and origins of spices, inviting home cooks to consider the evolution of flavors that have shaped today’s culinary landscape, and to expand their palates by adding new spices to their pantry.

Together with a foreword on the science of spices by Harold McGee, there are historical essays sprinkled through the book written by Andrew Dalby, Dr. Anna Spudich and Ken Albala, as well as personal essays from a roster of chefs and food writers, including Petty Elliot, Susan Jung, Virgilio Martínez, Kamal Mouzawak, Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir and Ozoz Sokoh.

Beautifully photographed and thoughtfully designed, Spiced is a kitchen shelf essential for contemporary home cooks.