282 Handbook of herbs and spices
The flavouring of different kinds of alcoholic beverages has a long tradition
particularly from Denmark and other Scandinavian countries. The popular products
described as akvavit or aquavit are flavoured using neutral alcohol distillates of
caraway. Caraway is added only before distillation (Ney, 1987) and in this way the
flavour of the drink is attributable to the distillates of caraway. Some well-known
alcoholic beverages world wide are listed in Table 15.2. In American Gin the flavour
additives mostly used include juniper berries and cardamom as well as caraway seeds
(Cole and Nobel, 1995).
15.4.2 Ground caraway
Ground caraway is produced by grinding dried, cleaned and sterilized fruits. The fine
powder product is mostly used for seasoning of foods whereas the coarse product is
used for the purpose of extraction of essential oil, oleoresin and other extractives.
The pre-chilling and reduced grinding can be used to overcome the loss of volatiles.
Cryo-grinding, can better help in reducing the oil loss during the process of grinding
and maintaining the particle size to optimum so as to ensure the free flow for the
duration of its shelf-life (Russo, 1976). Moreover, cryoground caraway dispenses
more uniformly in spice formulations and is therefore used as a spice for seasoning,
at both the household and commercial levels. Ground caraway is mostly used for
adding taste and aroma to various food preparations at home level, in bakery products
and alcoholic beverages.
15.4.3 Essential oil
Caraway essential oil is obtained by steam distillation or hydro-distillation of fruits
or chaff or herb and root according to the market requirement and particular use. But
the essential oil extracted from seed is superior in quality and commercially valued
more. In general, the essential oil content in caraway seed ranges from 2.9 to 5.1%
with major components of d-carvone up to 65% and d-limonene up to 40% but these
proportions are variable. The high-quality seed may contain up to 7% volatile oil and
up to 15% fixed oil. Sedlakova et al., 2003b reported that seed samples collected
before maturation had lower essential oil content than samples harvested in full
ripeness. Samples collected before harvest had elongated, narrow seeds, while those
gathered after ripeness had rounder seeds. The recovery of essential oil content was
also more from supercritical fluid extraction than steam distillation on caraway and
the essential oil content extracted was comparatively more from ground caraway
rather than whole seeds in both of the methods of essential oil extraction.
In whole caraway extracts, the carvone content was 81.53%; in ground caraway
Table 15.2 Popular alcoholic beverages using caraway (Clutton, 1995)
Beverage name Origin Remarks
Akvavit or aquavit Scandinavia Caraway with aniseed and fennel 40% alcohol
Allash Russia Sweet kummel with bitter almonds and aniseed
Cloc Denmark Kummel 31% alcohol, colorless
Kummel Netherlands Caraway with some anise and cumin minimum
5% alcohol, one of the oldest liqueurs with digestive
properties.