Turkish cuisine - allspice

Allspice

The allspice tree attains a height of about 9 metres (30 feet). The fruits are picked before they are fully ripe and then dried in the sun. During drying the berries turn from green to a dull reddish brown.

The nearly globular fruit, about 5 millimetres (0.2 inch) in diameter, contains two kidney-shaped, dark-brown seeds.

Turkish cuisine

Turkish Cuisine Books

Its flavor is aromatic and pungent. The essential oil content is
about 4 1/2 percent for Jamaica allspice and about 2 1/2 percent for that of Central America; its principal component is eugenol.

The name allspice is applied to several other aromatic shrubs as well, especially to one of the sweet shrubs, the Carolina allspice Calycanthus floridus), a handsome flowering shrub native to the southeastern United States and often cultivated in England.

Other allspices include: the Japanese allspice (Chimonanthus praecox), native to eastern Asia and planted as an ornamental in England and the United States; the wild allspice, or spicebush (Lindera benzoin), a shrub of eastern North America, with aromatic berries, reputed to have been used as a substitute for true allspice.

Note:Article from Encyclopedia Britannica