On Food and Cooking

enjoyed in foods before agriculture made
eating both more reliable and more
monotonous. And because smell is one of the
senses through which we experience our
immediate surroundings, herbs and spices
delight by lending our foods hints reminiscent
of the forest, the meadow, the flower garden,
the seacoast. They can conjure a familiar part
of the natural world in a bite or sip.
This chapter surveys herbs, spices, and
three other important flavorings derived from
plants. Tea and coffee are such prominent
ingredients in their own right that we don’t
think of them as herb or spice, but that’s
essentially what they are: tea is a dried leaf
and coffee a roasted seed, and we use them to
flavor water (and infuse it with a useful drug,
caffeine). And wood smoke is a flavoring
created when intense heat breaks plant tissues
down into some of the same aromatics found
in true spices.