Starting a spice collection

Almost every spice in a kitchen is doing one or two of a small number of jobs, and recognising the job is more useful than memorising a list.

Warmth comes from the sweet aromatics — cinnamon and cassia, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, cardamom, star anise. These read as comforting and sweet even in savoury food, and they are what makes a dish taste "spiced" in the mulled-wine sense.

Heat comes from chillies via capsaicin, and from black pepper via piperine, which is a different sensation and a different chemistry. A third kind of pungency, the tingling numbness of Sichuan pepper, is neither.

Earthiness and savoury depth come from cumin, coriander seed, fenugreek, mustard and asafoetida. These are the backbone spices: rarely the thing you taste first, usually the reason the dish tastes finished.

Sourness comes from sumac, amchoor and tamarind, which are worth knowing about because most cooks reach for lemon by default and a dry souring agent behaves quite differently.

Colour comes from turmeric, paprika, saffron and annatto, and it is a real function rather than decoration — several of these contribute far more visually than they do to flavour.

Aroma, in the top-note sense, comes from things like cardamom, fennel seed and citrus peel that are volatile enough to be lost if added early.

Spices are not a general-purpose set that gets deployed at random. Each cuisine uses a comparatively small palette in characteristic combinations, and buying along one of those lines gets you to good food much faster than buying broadly.

If you are cooking North Indian food, cumin, coriander seed, turmeric, garam masala, chilli and cardamom will take you a very long way. For Mexican and Tex-Mex, dried chillies, cumin and oregano. For much of the Middle East and the Levant, cumin, coriander, sumac, cinnamon and a za'atar blend. For Chinese cooking, star anise, cassia, Sichuan pepper and white pepper. For most European cooking, black pepper, bay, nutmeg and paprika will cover a surprising amount.

The overlaps are informative in themselves. Cumin and coriander seed appear in almost every one of those lists, which is a better argument for owning them than any "top ten" ever is.

This is also why the honest answer to "what should I buy" starts with a question. Someone cooking Thai food weekly needs galangal and lemongrass far more than they need nutmeg.

The difference between whole and ground spice is larger than the difference between two brands, and it is the decision that most affects whether a collection is any good.

Ground spice has its entire surface exposed to air. The volatile compounds that carry aroma escape steadily, so most ground spices are noticeably diminished within six to twelve months and some — cardamom above all — within three. Whole spices keep their aromatics inside a seed coat, bark or pod, and commonly hold up for two years or more.

The practical consequence is that buying whole and grinding small amounts gives better food from cheaper ingredients. A cheap whole cumin seed freshly ground beats an expensive ground one that has sat open for a year.

There are real exceptions. Turmeric and dried chilli are difficult to grind domestically and are usually bought ground. Cinnamon and cassia bark resist a domestic grinder. And some spices are wanted whole in the dish anyway — bay, black cardamom, whole chillies in a braise.

A cheap electric grinder or a decent mortar and pestle is the single most useful thing a beginner can buy for a spice cupboard, and it costs less than the jars it improves.

What follows is editorial judgement rather than a finding, and it is one reasonable answer among several. It assumes broadly Western home cooking with an interest in South Asian and Middle Eastern food, because that is a common starting point and not because it is the correct one.

Black peppercorns, whole, in a mill. Cumin seed, whole. Coriander seed, whole. Ground turmeric. Sweet or smoked paprika. Dried chilli flakes. Cinnamon or cassia. Bay leaves. That is eight, it covers warmth, heat, earthiness and colour, and every one of them is cheap and used often enough to be replaced before it goes stale.

Add as your cooking pulls you: cardamom pods and garam masala for South Asian food, sumac and za'atar for the Levant, star anise and Sichuan pepper for Chinese, dried Mexican chillies and oregano for Mexican.

What is deliberately not here is a longer list. A beginner with twenty jars is usually a cook with fifteen stale ones, and the collection that improves your food is the one that turns over.

Buying too much at once. Spices are cheap individually and a full rack bought in one afternoon will mostly be past its best before it is used. Buy a few, cook with them, and let the gaps tell you what to buy next.

Keeping them by the hob. Heat, light and steam are exactly what degrade aromatics, and the most convenient place in the kitchen is the worst place to store them. A closed cupboard away from the cooker costs nothing.

Adding spices at the wrong point. Most whole and ground spices want fat and heat early — blooming cumin or mustard seed in oil at the start of a dish is not a flourish, it is how the flavour is released. Delicate aromatics and dried herbs generally want to go in late.

Not tasting before committing. An old jar smells of nothing and tastes of less, and no quantity fixes it.

Assuming a substitution is a matter of strength. Several of the most common swaps change what a dish tastes of rather than how much: cumin for caraway, green cardamom for black, ginger for galangal, nigella for black cumin.

Trusting the shelf life printed on the jar. Those dates describe an unopened package. What matters is when it was ground and how it has been kept.