European cooking during the Middle Ages,
though the Spanish kept it long enough to help
it take root in Mexican cooking. The Dutch
still make a cumin-flavored cheese, and the
Savoie French a cumin bread, but cumin now
mainly marks the foods of North Africa,
western Asia, India, and Mexico. Its
distinctive aroma comes from an unusual
chemical (cuminaldehyde) that is related to
the essence of bitter almond (benzaldehyde).
It also has fresh and pine notes.
The Flavor of Anise
The volatile chemical that creates the
typical aroma of anise — as well as of
fennel, star anise, the Central American
pepper relative Piper marginatum, and the
herb sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata) — is
called trans anethole. It is one of a group of
compounds that are not only distinctively
aromatic, but also intensely sweet — 13
times sweeter than table sugar, weight for