meanings includes gratification, pleasure,
satisfaction, enjoyment. It’s the nature of fruit
to taste good, to appeal to our basic biological
interests, while vegetables stimulate us to find
and create more subtle and diverse pleasures
than fruits have to offer.
Herb and Spice The terms herb and spice are
more straightforward. Both are categories of
plant materials used primarily as flavorings,
and in relatively small amounts. Herbs come
from green parts of plants, usually leaves —
parsley, thyme, basil — while spices are
generally seeds, bark, underground stems —
black pepper, cinnamon, ginger — and other
robust materials that were well suited to
international trade in early times. The word
spice came from the medieval Latin species,
which meant “kind of merchandise.”