Mastic

• mastihaμαστίχα

  Greek — Chios

  The Greek name gives English "masticate" — the word for chewing comes from this resin, not the other way round.

• sakız

  Turkish

  Sakız means gum or chewing gum generally in Turkish, so a recipe using the bare word may mean chewing gum rather than the resin. Damla sakızı — "drop gum" — is the unambiguous term.

• miskahمسكة

  Arabic

  Also written mistika. Do not confuse with "gum arabic", which is a different resin from an acacia and is a thickener rather than an aromatic.

• mastika

  Hebrew

Pine and cedar with a cool, slightly medicinal edge and a persistent bitterness that builds if too much is used. It is not a background flavour: a quarter of a gram is a noticeable quantity in a litre of ice cream, and twice that is unpleasant.

Piney and resinous with a cedar-like coolness and a faint eucalyptus note. Distinctly aromatic and not sweet, which surprises people who meet it first in a dessert.

Pale translucent yellow to almost colourless tears, becoming opaque and white when ground. Darker or cloudy tears indicate bark and grit and a lower grade.

The property that makes it unique here. Mastic is brittle when cold and becomes chewy and elastic at body temperature — it was the original chewing gum — and dissolved into a hot mixture it contributes a distinctive stretch and body. Turkish delight and Greek kaymak ice cream get their characteristic chew from it, which no other spice in this dataset does to anything.

• Alpha-pinene — The dominant compound and the pine character.
• Myrcene and linalool — The softer, faintly floral notes sitting under the resin.
• Triterpene acids and polymer — Not aromatic, and the reason mastic behaves as it does: the resin polymer is what makes it chewy at body temperature and what gives Turkish delight its stretch.

Freeze it, pound it with sugar, and use less than you think. Mastic is sticky at room temperature and will gum up any mill, so the standard method is to chill the tears until brittle and crush them in a mortar with a pinch of the recipe's own sugar or salt, which keeps the powder separate. Add it gradually to a hot liquid while whisking — dropped in at once it clumps into strands that will not disperse. The quantity is the thing most often got wrong: a quarter of a gram is noticeable in a litre of ice cream and a gram is unpleasant, because the bitterness builds much faster than the aroma does. It survives baking well, so it belongs in an enriched dough as readily as in a custard. And it is expensive for real reasons — a mature tree yields a couple of hundred grams a year, cleaned by hand, tear by tear — so buying a few grams of good tears is better value than a larger jar of ground.

Greek, Turkish and Levantine sweets and breads above all: tsoureki and festival breads, loukoumi and lokum, stretchy ice cream, milk and rice puddings, and the liqueur mastiha. It works with milk, cream, sugar, mahleb, orange blossom, rose water, honey and cherry, and it belongs in sweet and dairy contexts far more than savoury ones — the exception being a few Levantine meat and rice dishes where a very small quantity is traditional. Its distinguishing use is textural: where a recipe names mastic in an ice cream or a Turkish delight, it is there for the chew as much as for the pine note.

• grinding — Essential, and awkward. Mastic is sticky and gums up a mill at room temperature; the standard method is to freeze the tears and pound them with a little sugar or salt, which keeps them brittle and stops the powder clumping.
• infusing — Ground mastic dissolves into hot liquid and thickens it slightly. It must go in gradually and be whisked, because it clumps into strands if dropped in at once.
• baking — Survives baking well and holds its aroma in an enriched dough, which is why it belongs in tsoureki and festival breads alongside mahleb.

Break a tear and smell the fresh surface. Good mastic gives an immediate pine-and-cedar hit; an old or poor tear smells faintly of nothing and looks cloudy rather than translucent. Chewing one is the traditional test and works — it should soften and become elastic within a minute rather than staying gritty.

• Tears fused into a single mass, which is warmth rather than spoilage and can be broken up.
• Cloudy or dark tears, which generally indicates bark and grit rather than age.
• No pine aroma on a freshly broken surface.
• Ground mastic caked solid, which means the carrier has taken up moisture.

Buy tears, without much hesitation. They keep for years where the powder keeps for months, they can be judged by eye before purchase, and — the point that decides it — commercial ground mastic is cut with sugar or starch because pure ground mastic will not stay a powder, so a recipe measuring the resin by weight is measuring something else. Grinding is genuinely awkward and the trick makes it easy: freeze the tears, pound with a pinch of the recipe's own sugar, and add gradually to the hot liquid.

• Large, pale, translucent tears rather than small cloudy fragments. Clarity is the graded property and it is visible through the packaging.
• Chios mastiha stated on the label, which is a protected designation and legally meaningful rather than a marketing claim.
• Whole tears rather than powder — powder is diluted with a carrier and fades within months.
• Buy in grams. A few grams is a year of domestic use and it is expensive by weight for genuine reasons.
• Avoid anything sold simply as "gum" without a species, which may be gum arabic and is a different product entirely.

Graded by the Chios growers' association on tear size, clarity and cleanliness, with large clear tears at the top and milled fragments at the bottom. Unusually for this dataset, the grade and the origin are both formally protected, so a label stating Chios mastiha and a grade is making a checkable claim.

Anacardiaceae

An evergreen shrub or small tree of two to three metres, slow-growing and long-lived, cultivated in walled groves on the southern half of Chios. Trees begin producing usable resin at around five years and continue for decades.

Chios, in the eastern Aegean, and specifically the twenty-four Mastichochoria — the mastic villages of the southern half of the island. The tree grows across the Mediterranean and yields commercially useful resin essentially only here.

• GR (Chios (Mastichochoria)) — origin. Chios mastiha holds a protected designation of origin, and the growers' cooperative has controlled the trade since 1938.
• TR — notable producer. Small quantities from the Aegean coast, generally of lower grade.

Kentos — the scoring — begins in July. Shallow cuts are made in the bark every few days and the resin weeps out and hardens in the air over two to three weeks into "tears". These are collected by hand from the swept ground and from the trunk, then washed, sieved and cleaned tear by tear, largely by women, in an operation that has changed very little.

1. Preparing the ground — The soil under each tree is swept flat and dusted with white calcium carbonate so that falling tears land clean and are visible.Why: Grade depends on cleanliness, and a tear that lands in dirt is worth much less.
2. Scoring and weeping — Shallow incisions made in the bark at intervals through July and August; resin exudes and hardens in air over two to three weeks.Why: The resin is a wound response, so the crop is produced by controlled injury rather than by fruiting.
3. Collection and cleaning — Tears gathered by hand, washed in cold water with soap, then sieved and picked over individually to remove bark and grit.Why: Cleanliness and tear size are what the grades are based on, and this hand-cleaning is most of the cost.
4. Grading — Sorted by size and clarity into large clear tears, smaller tears and the fine fragments milled to powder.Why: Large clear tears command a substantial premium and are sold for chewing as much as for cooking.

Graded by the Chios Gum Mastic Growers Association on tear size, clarity and cleanliness, with the large clear tears at the top. The designation is protected, so "Chios mastiha" on a package is a provenance claim with a legal meaning behind it rather than a marketing one — which is rare among the entries in this dataset.

A hand operation from beginning to end, and one of the most labour-intensive crops in this dataset. Trees are grown in walled groves, the ground beneath each is swept and dusted with white clay to catch falling tears cleanly, and the bark is scored repeatedly through the season. A mature tree yields on the order of a hundred to two hundred grams of resin a year.

Hot, dry Mediterranean summers with mild winters and calcareous soil. The tapping season depends on prolonged dry heat, which is why the harvest runs from July to October and why wet summers reduce the crop.

One of the longest continuously traded commodities in this dataset, and one of the few whose production has never successfully moved. Mastic from Chios is documented in classical Greek and Roman sources, was a monopoly of the Byzantine emperors and then of the Genoese, and under Ottoman rule the mastic villages held privileges — reduced taxes and a degree of autonomy — in exchange for the crop, which was reserved for the imperial harem and court. The villages built for that trade still stand, and the growers' cooperative founded in 1938 still controls it. Attempts to establish production elsewhere in the Mediterranean have repeatedly failed.

A controlled trade for most of a millennium, and still a cooperative one. Chios mastiha carries a protected designation of origin, and the growers' association handles collection, grading and sale — which makes this one of very few spices here where provenance on a label is legally meaningful rather than a claim.

A long and well-documented record across Greek, Ottoman and Arab medical writing, chiefly for digestive complaints, and the resin is still sold in pharmacies on Chios. Recorded as tradition and as cultural context, not as a health claim: SpiceHQ holds no clinical source on mastic and makes no assertion about any medicinal use.