Spices in Caribbean cooking

The everyday yellow rice of South Asia and the Caribbean, and the affordable answer where saffron is the expensive one. It colours reliably and adds an earthiness saffron does not — they are not the same dish.

Add alongside: Cumin, Green cardamom, Bay leaf

• Turmeric is not a saffron substitute in flavour, only in colour. Recipes that say otherwise are describing the look of the pot.

The Caribbean and North American treatment, rasped over a milky coffee rather than boiled with the grounds. It works on the milk as much as on the coffee — the same reason nutmeg belongs in a bechamel.

Add alongside: Cassia, Green cardamom, Vanilla

• A rasp over the top. Nutmeg boiled with coffee turns bitter and soapy.

Jerk is the flagship, and allspice is doing more of the work in it than the chilli. Pork fat carries the eugenol, and the berry's clove-cinnamon-nutmeg breadth is broad enough to season a whole shoulder without a blend behind it.

How: Ground into a jerk rub with scotch bonnet, thyme and spring onion

Add alongside: Thyme, Black pepper, Onion

The single-spice answer to apple, and useful precisely because it is one jar rather than three. It reads as cinnamon, clove and nutmeg at once because it genuinely shares compounds with all three — which is why it can stand alone where any one of them would need company.

Add alongside: Cassia, Ginger, Sugar

Turkey is lean and mild and takes a warm spice without being overwhelmed, which is why allspice appears in so many stuffings and brines. It is also the bridge to the sweet accompaniments — cranberry, apple, chestnut — that would otherwise sit apart from the bird.

Add alongside: Cassia, Cloves, Thyme

Yucatecan cooking pairs habanero with sour orange constantly, and the reason is that both are citric — the chilli is not being tamed by the fruit so much as amplified along an axis it already has. This is the pairing that shows why a hotter, blander chilli is not a substitute.

How: Chopped raw into a table salsa with onion and sour orange juice

Add alongside: Onion, Coriander leaf, Allspice

Cochinita pibil and the slow-cooked pork traditions of the Yucatán. Pork fat carries capsaicin through the whole dish, and the long cook lets the chilli fruit come forward rather than reading as pure heat.

Add alongside: Orange, Allspice, Garlic

A stand-in here for the tropical fruit habanero belongs with — mango, pineapple, papaya — none of which SpiceHQ profiles yet. The principle is the same and worth recording: sweet fruit and habanero work because the chilli brings its own fruit to the meeting, and sugar blunts capsaicin enough to make the heat approachable.

Add alongside: Lemon, Coriander leaf, Onion

• Recorded against apple because it is the fruit SpiceHQ holds. Mango is the canonical partner and has no record yet.

Jerk chicken, and the pairing is inseparable from the method: the marinade sits on the bird for hours and the chilli fruit works into the meat rather than staying on the surface. Chicken is mild enough that the scotch bonnet sweetness reads clearly.

Add alongside: Allspice, Thyme, Onion

Jollof in West Africa and rice and peas in the Caribbean, and in both the whole-pod technique matters: an intact scotch bonnet simmers in the pot and comes out before serving, giving heat and aroma without a single fierce mouthful.

How: A whole pod simmered with the rice and lifted out before it bursts

Add alongside: Onion, Thyme, Allspice

The base of West African pepper stews and of jollof: blended raw with tomato, onion and sometimes red pepper into the mixture everything else is built on. The tomato acidity and the chilli fruit are doing the same job from two directions.

Add alongside: Onion, Garlic, Ginger

Two different kinds of heat used together deliberately. Ginger is pungent at the back of the throat and citric on top; chilli is pungent on the tongue and fruity behind. Neither masks the other, which is why South and Southeast Asian cooking uses both rather than choosing.

Add alongside: Garlic, Turmeric, Coriander seed

• Both are pungent and the effects add rather than cancel. A dish adjusted for one before adding the other will usually end up too hot.

Heat against sweetness is one of the most reliable pairings there is, and sweet potato is sweet enough to take a good deal of it. Chilli also gives the dish somewhere to go: a plain roast sweet potato is one-note in a way few vegetables are.

How: On roast wedges with lime; In a sweet potato and coconut curry

Add alongside: Cumin, Lemon, Garlic

The pairing annatto is best known for outside Mexico. Rice is pale and absorbent and takes colour completely, and Puerto Rican and Filipino rice dishes are expected to be orange — a pale pot reads as wrong however it tastes.

How: Achiote oil stirred into the rice at the start; Ground annatto with sazón in arroz con gandules

Add alongside: Cumin, Coriander seed, Garlic

• Warm the seeds in fat rather than adding them to water — the pigment is fat-soluble and the seeds themselves are never eaten.

Chicken is pale and mild and shows both the colour and the mild earthiness. Annatto marinades are standard across the Yucatán, the Spanish Caribbean and the Philippines, and the fat in the skin carries the pigment through.

How: In an achiote marinade for grilled chicken; Achiote oil brushed on before roasting

Add alongside: Garlic, Cumin, Orange