Round cardamom
Also known as bai dou kou, baidoukou, Java cardamom, Siam cardamom, Cambodian cardamom, krawan
Quick answer
Small, round, pale cardamom pods from a different genus from green cardamom — milder, more eucalyptus-like and less floral. The cardamom of Chinese braising spice bundles and of Thai, Cambodian and Javanese cooking.
- Tastes of
- eucalyptus, camphor, ginger, peppery, mild
- Heat
- Scoville does not apply
- If you have none
- Green cardamom — see the limits
Other names
What this spice is called elsewhere, and where the translation is not clean.
báidòukòu白豆蔻
Mandarin
Sold in English as "white cardamom", a name also used for bleached green cardamom, a different spice. Chinese trade applies the one name to both the Javanese and the Siam round cardamoms.
krawanกระวาน
Thai
kravanhក្រវាញ
Khmer
kapulaga
Javanese
In Indonesian the same word is also used for green cardamom; "kapulaga Jawa" or "kapol" is the round one.
buah pelaga
Malay
Flavour and aroma
Peppery and ginger-like, warm and mild.
Cooler and more eucalyptus-like than green cardamom, with less of its floral sweetness.
Small, round, pale cream to straw-coloured pods; the seeds inside are dark.
Papery round pods with hard seeds; the pods are used whole or cracked.
Heat
Pungency scale: none — this spice is not pungent
No heat; a mild peppery warmth.
- 1,8-Cineole — Up to about seven-tenths of the seed oil, and the source of its cool, eucalyptus and camphor smell.(what 1,8-cineole is)
- β-Pinene — A sixth or so of the oil; a resinous, piney note.
Pairings
Ranked by how well established the combination is, with the reason and the caveats attached.
Foods
Beef
ClassicBeef shin braised in a master stock is the standard use: round cardamom sits in the spice bundle with star anise and cassia, its cooling note beneath the anise.
How: In master-stock beef shin
Add alongside: Star anise, Cassia
Duck
StrongBraised and soy-braised duck in a spiced stock, where round cardamom and the other bundle spices cut the richness of the fat.
Pork
GoodPork belly and trotters braised in a master stock take the same bundle, round cardamom included.
Other spices and blends
Star anise
ClassicPartners in every Chinese braising bundle that uses round cardamom: star anise leads, and round cardamom’s eucalyptus note lightens it.
If you have no round cardamom
What to use instead, and — more usefully — where each replacement stops working.
Green cardamom
Good matchUse: ~0.5× by volume — About half the number of pods: green cardamom is stronger and more floral.
Green cardamom is the spice round cardamom stands in for in its own region, and the reverse works in a braise: the cardamom note is kept, with more flower and less eucalyptus.
| Flavour | Aroma | Colour | Heat |
|---|---|---|---|
| partial | partial | different | n/a |
Works for
- Chinese braising bundles and master stocks
- Thai massaman paste
Does not work for
- Where the cool, camphor-and-eucalyptus note is the point
- Recipes that call for "white cardamom" meaning bleached green cardamom — that is the same species already
Preparation and use
Crack the pods lightly and add them whole to a braising bundle, or grind the seeds into a paste. A few pods season a large pot.
A background aromatic in Chinese master stocks and red-braised meat, in Thai and Cambodian curry pastes, and as a warm spice in Javanese cooking. Where recipes elsewhere call for "white cardamom", check whether the round pods or bleached green cardamom are meant.
- infusing — Tied in a spice bundle with star anise and cassia and simmered for hours in a master stock, where its cooling note sits under the anise.
- grinding — Ground into Thai and Cambodian pastes with galangal and lemongrass.
Appears in: Lu spice bundle
Storage and freshness
| Form | Good for | Conditions | Fridge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pod | Not established | Cool, dark, dry and sealed. | No |
Crack a pod and smell the seeds: they should smell clearly of eucalyptus and camphor.
- A faint, dusty smell from cracked seeds
- Pods that have split in storage
- Loss of the volatile cineole and pinenes, especially once cracked
Quality is not the same as safety
Stale round cardamom is a quality matter only.
Forms
The form the sources describe, and so the one this page is about.
Whole pods
The pale round pods, used whole in braising bundles or cracked for pastes.
Species, types and grades sold under this name
Different species, origin types and processing types are different questions — whether it is the same plant, the same crop or the same product — and each is labelled as the kind of difference it is.
Siam cardamom
Different speciesAmomum krervanh Pierre ex Gagnep. · Cambodia and eastern Thailand
Sold as krawan, kravanh, Cambodian cardamom, bai dou kou
A related round cardamom of mainland South-East Asia, sold in the same trade and under the same Chinese name as the Javanese species. Its taxonomy is unsettled: the name is treated as doubtful in current checklists pending revision of the genus.
Rarely in the kitchen: the two are sold and used interchangeably, and a Thai or Cambodian recipe that names krawan means whichever round cardamom the market sells.
Commonly confused with round cardamom
Direct comparisons, each with the difference that actually changes what you cook.
Botany
Long known, and still sold, as Amomum compactum Sol. ex Maton; the genus Wurfbainia was separated from Amomum in a recent revision of the family.
Zingiberaceae
The ginger family, with green cardamom, black cardamom, tsaoko and korarima.
The dried fruit, used whole or split for its seeds. The young shoots are also eaten as a vegetable where it grows.
A clump-forming perennial herb of the ginger family, native to the lower hills of western Java, whose short fruit clusters rise from the rhizome at ground level. The fruits are small, round capsules, reddish-purple when ripe.
Commonly confused with
True cardamom, Elettaria, and the stronger and more floral of the two. Bleached green cardamom is also sold as "white cardamom" — a different spice from this one under the same English name. The two can stand in for each other, with green cardamom used more sparingly.
Another ginger-family pod in the same Chinese braising bundles, much larger, smoky and resinous. Both go into a master stock; they do different jobs in it.
A smoke-dried Amomum pod, large and smoky; nothing like the pale, mild round cardamom.
How it is grown
The plant, how it is propagated and farmed, what threatens the crop, and where it is produced now. Crop diseases here are plant health, not food safety.
The small round capsules, reddish-purple when ripe, in short clusters rising from the rhizome at ground level, and their seeds.
How it is propagated
- Rhizome division.
Mostly from rhizome cuttings or offsets of the clump rather than from seed.
Growing conditions
- Temperature · 23–28 °C annual mean
An average annual temperature of 23–28 °C, within an overall range of 10–35 °C, with constantly high humidity.
- Rainfall · 2500–4000 mm/year
Annual rainfall of 2500–4000 mm with at least 136 rainy days; arid conditions are not well tolerated.
- Altitude · 200–1000 m
Grows well at 200–1000 m in the tropics, with the greatest yields at 300–500 m.
- Light and shade
Needs partial shade; direct sunlight is not well tolerated. In Java it grows wild in primary and teak forest, and in cultivation coconut or sugar palm can provide the shade.
- Soil pH · 5–7 pH
Well-drained loamy or sandy-loam soils of pH 5–6.8, high in organic matter.
How it is farmed
- Agroforestry and shade systems · Java, Indonesia
Planted from rhizome cuttings or offsets under tree crops such as coconut or sugar palm, which provide the partial shade it needs.
Most spices are grown in more than one way; none of these is the only one.
Harvest
Harvested by hand.
Fruits are ready about one and a half to two months after flowering, when they feel firm, have shed the corolla and have wrinkled, reddish-purple skin; whole clusters are cut and the fruits removed.
From the fourth year, fruit can be picked every 35–45 days; in Java there are four small harvests in the rainy season (January to July) and three larger ones in the dry season.
Where it comes from and how it is made
The lower hills of western Java.
- Indonesia (Java and southern Sumatra) — origin. Grown commercially in Indonesia above all; production statistics seldom separate it from green cardamom.
- Cambodia — notable producer. Siam cardamom, from the Cardamom Mountains.
- China (The far south) — notable producer
Whole fruit clusters are cut about one and a half to two months after flowering, when the fruit is firm, reddish-purple and wrinkled; mature plants can be harvested every five to six weeks.
- Bleaching — The fruits are washed in a weak soda solution, or occasionally steamed with sulphur, to bleach them.Why: The pale colour the market expects — and part of why the spice is called white.
- Drying — Sun-dried for a few hours each morning and finished in the shade over five to ten days, carefully, because split fruits lose quality.
- Sorting — Sorted by size and colour.
Sorted by size and colour after drying.
Production and trade figures are unreliable because round and green cardamom are generally not distinguished; the practical substitution in trade is between the two.
Grown under shade trees such as coconut, and wild in the forests of Java.
Humid tropics with high, even rainfall and partial shade; it does not tolerate drought or full sun, and grows best in low hills.
How these steps work: garbling and grading.
Buying and quality
Whole pods. The spice is used whole in braising and cracked for pastes, and the pod keeps its aroma far better than any powder.
- Whole, unsplit pods — splitting in drying lowers quality.
- A clear eucalyptus smell from a cracked pod.
- Bought as bai dou kou or krawan rather than "white cardamom", which may be bleached green cardamom.
Sorted by size and colour; no formal grading scheme is recorded.
History and trade
Grown commercially mainly in Indonesia, where trade statistics combine it with green cardamom; the Siam round cardamom is traded from Cambodia and Thailand. Both reach China, where they are sold together as bai dou kou.
In the wider history of spices
Mid-thirteenth century; its translators place the notes between 1242 and 1258 · Java, Cambodia, Song China
Cloves for the breath at court, in a Song catalogue of foreign goods
The second part of Zhao Rugua’s Zhu fan zhi takes foreign products one at a time. Cloves, called nail incense for their shape, “have the property of removing bad smells from the mouth, and high officials at Court put cloves into their mouths when they have to lay matters before the Emperor”. Nutmegs come from foreign tribes deep in islands the translators place in the Moluccas; the tree is said to shelter forty or fifty men, its blossom is dried and sold as an article of its own, and the nut keeps a long time if preserved in ashes. The white cardamom comes chiefly from Cambodia and also from Java, where people gather it without hindrance. Cubebs are grown in Java. Asafoetida comes from the country of the Arabs, and Zhao gives two accounts of how the resin is gathered, adding that he does not know which is correct and records both.
Contemporary text · Zhao Rugua (Chau Ju-kua), Song dynasty
Cloves, Nutmeg, Cubeb, Asafoetida
Contested: Read in the English translation of 1911; the identifications of places and plants are the translators’, including the cardamom as the round or cluster cardamom. The text says cloves come from the countries of the Arabs and from Java, which names who supplied them, not where the trees grew; the translators note that Zhao elsewhere puts them in the eastern dependencies of Java.
Culture
Recorded by tradition rather than merged into one narrative — these are genuinely different practices.
Java
Java, Indonesia.
Used as a warm spice in food and to sweeten the breath; the young shoots are eaten as a vegetable.
- As a warm spice
- Shoots as a vegetable
Also documented in Java: Kencur, Litsea berry.
Chinese braising and master stocks
One of the regular components of the spice bundles for lu master stocks and red-braised meat, with star anise, cassia, fennel, sand ginger and tsaoko. It is a background note rather than a lead: its cooling, eucalyptus edge lifts the heavier anise and cassia.
- In lu master-stock spice bundles
- In red-braising
Thailand and Cambodia
Ground into Thai massaman and Cambodian kroeung-based curries, where krawan gives the paste a cardamom note different from Indian green cardamom.
- In massaman curry paste
- In Cambodian curries
The seeds are used in Indonesian traditional medicine as a stomachic and a tonic. Recorded as context only; SpiceHQ makes no health claim.
What it is called
- Mandarin: 白豆蔻 (báidòukòu)
- Thai: กระวาน (krawan)
What we do not know
Published openly. A gap we have named is more useful than a gap we have filled with plausible prose.
Not yet established for round cardamom:
- Archaeological evidence
- Historical timeline
- Ceremonial use
- Regulatory limits
- Traditional uses