Simmering and boiling

Also called simmering, braising, stewing, poaching

Quick answer

Cooking a spice in water-based liquid, where what is extracted is decided by what dissolves in water rather than in fat.

What it does to spices

The technique that inverts most of the advice in this dataset, because the great majority of spice aroma compounds are fat-soluble and barely water-soluble. A spice simmered in a lean liquid gives up much less than the same spice bloomed in oil, and a different fraction of it — which is why a curry built on a tarka tastes integrated and the same spices stirred into stock sit on top. The exceptions are worth memorising: saffron extracts almost completely into warm water and poorly into fat, and liquorice and dried citrus peel likewise. Long simmering also splits volatile from non-volatile — an open pot loses its top notes in the first half hour and concentrates everything that does not evaporate, so a four-hour braise grows more clove-forward and more bitter while growing less fresh. Hence whole spices that can be lifted out, and spicing a long cook twice.

Culinary conventionFollows directly from the solubility and volatility records held on the compound layer, and is the mechanism behind the timing rules asserted individually on a hundred and nineteen profiles.On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore o…; Chemistry of Spices

Where it is used

Pairings in the dataset that specifically call for this technique.

Fingerroot with white fish — The Thai fish curries and nam ya are built on fingerroot, and the reason is specific rather than general: its bitterness cuts the oiliness and the muddiness of freshwater and oily fish in a way ginger, which is sweet, does not. It is julienned into the dish and eaten rather than infused and removed.
Fingerroot with makrut lime leaf — The two aromatics that define jungle curry, a Thai curry with no coconut milk in it. Kaffir lime leaf supplies a bright citrus lift and fingerroot supplies the bitter, peppery base, and between them they carry a dish that has no fat to round anything out. The pairing is much less prominent in the coconut curries, where galangal takes fingerroot’s place.
Hoja santa with white fish — The leaf is used as a wrapper for fish across southern Mexico, and the mechanism is worth stating: it is large, pliable and aromatic, so it perfumes the fish by steam while protecting it from direct heat. Its anise-and-mint character suits white fish for the same reason fennel does, and it does a job no ground spice can — flavouring from the outside inwards.
Epazote with hoja santa — The two green Mexican aromatics that English has no word for, used in the same regional cooking and doing different jobs. Epazote is sharp, medicinal and used by the sprig in beans and quesadillas; hoja santa is broad, anise-and-mint, and used as a wrapper or torn into a sauce. They appear together in mole verde and in the cooking of Oaxaca and Puebla.
Calabash nutmeg with uziza — The two halves of Nigerian pepper-soup spice, and they divide the work exactly: uziza supplies pungency and a green bitterness, ehuru supplies warm resinous aroma. A soup with the pepper and not the nutmeg is sharp and thin; one with the nutmeg and not the pepper is aromatic and dull.
Grains of Selim with uziza — Two spices that English has called Guinea pepper, from two families, in the same pot. Grains of selim brings smoke and a musky bitterness from the whole pod; uziza brings piperine pungency. Between them they give a pepper soup the character that chilli alone cannot.
Calabash nutmeg with white fish — Fish pepper soup is one of the dishes ehuru is most associated with, and the reason is that its warm resinous aroma sits over fish without the sweetness true nutmeg would bring — which is exactly the distinction the two spices’ shared name obscures.
Uziza with goat — Goat pepper soup is the dish, and uziza’s bitterness is doing structural work against a fatty, strongly flavoured meat that chilli heat alone would not cut. The same reasoning puts it in isi ewu.
Ají amarillo with chicken — Ají de gallina is the dish that defines the pairing: shredded poached chicken in a sauce of ají amarillo paste, bread, milk and nuts. The chilli supplies colour, body and a fruity warmth simultaneously, which is why the sauce needs no other seasoning to be recognisable.
Ají amarillo with potato — Papa a la huancaína and causa are both built on this: boiled potato under or around a sauce whose colour and fruit come from ají amarillo. Potato and chilli were domesticated in the same region and the pairing is about as old as either.
Daun salam with lemongrass — The two whole aromatics that go into an Indonesian pot together and stay there. Lemongrass supplies a citric lift that is identifiable in the finished dish; salam supplies a tea-like background that is not. Indonesian cooking layers whole aromatics deliberately and this is the base pair.
Avocado leaf with beans — A toasted avocado leaf in a pot of Oaxacan black beans is the standard preparation, and the result does not taste of anise — it tastes rounder. The leaf is doing what a bay leaf does in a European bean pot, by a different compound and in a different family.
Avocado leaf with epazote — Both go into Mexican bean pots and both are used for roundness rather than for a flavour anyone identifies. Epazote is sharp and medicinal and goes in fresh near the end; avocado leaf is toasted and goes in at the start. They are complementary in timing as well as in character.
Celery seed with mustard seed — The backbone of the American seafood-boil and pickling seasonings, and of Old Bay in particular. Celery seed is intensely savoury and slightly bitter — far stronger than the vegetable, since the flavour is concentrated into a tiny seed — and mustard supplies pungency that survives brine and boiling water. Both are used whole in a boil and ground in a rub.
Celery seed with parsley — Both are Apiaceae and both carry the green, slightly bitter note that family shares, so this is reinforcement rather than contrast — parsley extends celery seed rather than complementing it. Useful in stocks and court-bouillons, where the bundle of aromatics is meant to read as one background flavour rather than as several.
Celery seed with thyme — A savoury pairing that turns up wherever a long-cooked base is being built: the thyme is resinous and slow-releasing and the celery seed adds a vegetal depth that would otherwise require actual celery. It is much of the reason a stock made with a bouquet garni tastes of more than its bones.

Questions this page answers

do spices lose flavour when boiled
should i add spices at the start or the end of a stew
why does my curry taste like the spices are sitting on top
when to add spices to a slow cooker
why do long-cooked dishes taste more bitter