Green cardamom

• elaichiइलायची

  Hindi

  Elaichi unqualified usually means green cardamom. Badi elaichi or kali elaichi is black cardamom, a different spice with a smoky flavour that does not substitute for this one.

• elaichi

  Urdu

• hal

  Arabic

• cardamomo

  Spanish

• kakule

  Turkish

Cooling and pungent in an aromatic rather than a pungent sense, with a lingering resinous sweetness. Powerful enough that two or three pods season a whole dish, and easily overdone.

Intensely aromatic and immediately recognisable: eucalyptus-fresh and camphorous, with citrus and floral notes and a faint sweetness.

Pale to bright green papery pods containing small, sticky black seeds.

Papery pods that are easily split; the seeds inside are slightly sticky and grind to a fine, oily powder.

• 1,8-Cineole (eucalyptol) — The dominant note — the eucalyptus-camphor character and the cooling impression.
• α-Terpinyl acetate — Sweet, floral and fruity; balances the cineole and is the other major component.
• Linalool — Floral lift.

Bruise whole pods with the flat of a knife and add them to liquid, retrieving them before serving. For ground cardamom, split the pods, take out the seeds and grind only what you need — pod husks in the grinder dilute the result with material that carries little aroma.

Used across South Asian savoury and sweet cooking, Middle Eastern coffee and blends, and Nordic baking. Whole bruised pods flavour rice, braises, chai and poaching liquids and are removed before serving; ground seeds go into masalas, baking and sweets. It has particular affinity with dairy, coffee, citrus, rose, honey and stone fruit.

• grinding — Cardamom loses aroma extremely fast once ground — faster than almost any other spice in common use. Pre-ground cardamom is generally a poor buy, and the difference is not subtle.
• toasting — Light toasting of whole pods before grinding rounds the camphorous edge. Cardamom scorches quickly.
• boiling — Whole bruised pods infuse well in liquids — masala chai, rice, poaching syrups — and can be removed. Long boiling drives off the lighter citrus notes and leaves the camphor.

Split a pod and smell the seeds immediately. Fresh cardamom is startlingly aromatic; if it takes effort to detect, it will not season anything. The seeds should be black and slightly sticky, not pale and dry.

• Faint aroma from freshly split seeds
• Pale, greyed or brittle seeds rather than black and slightly sticky
• Yellowed or bleached pods
• Pods that rattle loosely, indicating dried-out seeds

• Rapid volatilisation of cineole and the light terpenes once the pod is opened
• Oxidation of the terpene fraction on air exposure
• Bleaching of the green pod colour by light exposure

Whole pods, without hesitation. Cardamom has the shortest useful life after grinding of any spice in this dataset, and the pod is an unusually effective natural container. Buying decorticated seeds is a reasonable compromise for heavy bakers; buying ground cardamom is close to buying nothing.

• Plump, unsplit pods with a good green colour.
• Black, slightly sticky seeds inside when a pod is split — pale dry seeds mean the pod is old or was over-dried.
• A strong aroma from a freshly split pod.
• Pods that feel weighty rather than rattling loosely.

Graded on pod size and green colour, with "bold" grades at a premium, and on volatile oil content in bulk trade. Bleached white pods are a separate product rather than a lower grade.

Zingiberaceae

A large perennial herb of wet tropical forest understorey, native to the Western Ghats of southern India, producing flowering shoots at ground level from which the pods are picked.

The Western Ghats of southern India.

• Guatemala — major producer. Now the largest producer and exporter, having been established as a crop there in the twentieth century.
• India (Kerala and Karnataka) — origin. The botanical home and still a major producer, with much of the crop consumed domestically.
• Sri Lanka — notable producer
• Tanzania — notable producer

Pods are hand-picked slightly before full ripeness and in several passes over a season, because they mature unevenly and a fully ripe pod splits and loses its seeds. This repeated selective hand-picking is the principal reason cardamom is expensive.

1. Selective picking — Pods are hand-picked in multiple passes as they approach ripeness.Why: Prevents splitting and seed loss, and is unavoidably labour-intensive.
2. Curing/drying — Pods are dried at controlled low temperature, traditionally in flue-heated curing houses.Why: Preserves the green colour, which is a major commercial grading factor, and retains volatile oil.
3. Grading — Sorted by size and colour; bold, uniformly green pods command a premium.

Graded on pod size and colour, with bold green pods at a premium, and on volatile oil content in the trade. Bleached white cardamom is a distinct product produced for markets where the green colour is not wanted.

The recognised issues are spent pods from which oil has been extracted, artificial colouring to improve apparent greenness, and ground cardamom bulked with husk. Buying whole pods largely avoids all three.

Grown in shade beneath a forest or plantation canopy, coming into bearing after two to three years.

Wet tropical highlands with dense shade, high humidity and consistent rainfall.

Cardamom was traded from southern India into the classical Mediterranean world and has an extensive documented history in South Asian, Middle Eastern and later Nordic cooking. Its establishment as a major Guatemalan export crop in the twentieth century substantially reshaped the modern trade.

Cardamom is among the highest-value spices by weight in world trade, with Guatemala the leading exporter and much Indian production consumed domestically.

A long-standing role in Ayurvedic and Unani practice, chiefly as a digestive and breath freshener. Recorded as tradition, not as a health claim.