All About: Holiday Seasonings

Cinnamon Nutmeg Cloves Allspice

Fall and winter are the seasons for nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice. Creating flavorful dishes, for the holidays or any day, is easy if you know the tools of the trade. Check out our simple guide to these seasonings and spice up your meals.

Cinnamon

Possibly the most common baking spice, cinnamon is used in cakes, cookies, and other desserts and in many savory chicken and lamb dishes from the Middle East. True cinnamon is native to Sri Lanka, but most of the cinnamon used in North America is from the cassia tree, grown in Vietnam, China, Indonesia, and Central America. The sweet-spicy flavor of cinnamon has been popular since ancient times when Egyptians imported it from China. In Rome, the spice was believed to be sacred. Roman emperor Nero burned a year's supply of the spice at his wife's funeral, and finding cinnamon was a primary motive for world exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries. Today, we use cinnamon to add flavor to a variety of dishes and beverages.

Holiday Uses

Chocolate and cinnamon always make a great team. You can add cinnamon sticks to hot chocolate and other holiday beverages, such as cider, coffee, or tea.
Use cinnamon to mellow the tartness of apple pie, enhance the taste of fruit and vegetables, and flavor mashed pumpkin, winter squash, or sweet potatoes.
Use cinnamon on your fingers when pinching the edges of a piecrust. The crust will be browned and taste great.

Nutmeg

Nutmeg comes from the hard pit of the fruit of the nutmeg tree, indigenous to the Banda Islands, a tiny archipelago in Eastern Indonesia. Today, most of the nutmeg in the United States comes from Grenada. In Western cuisine, nutmeg is popular for cakes and stewed fruits and is sometimes used to flavor cheese. The combination of spinach with nutmeg is a classic in Italian dishes. The Dutch use nutmeg for cabbage, potatoes, and other vegetables, but also for meat, soups, puddings, and sauces. Remember, a little nutmeg goes a long way, so use it sparingly. For full flavor, grate fresh nutmeg as needed.

Holiday Uses

Sprinkle a little over veal, fish, or chicken for added flavor.
Use as a topping for whipped cream, custard, pudding, and eggnog.
Ground nutmeg is a great baking spice and especially tasty in sweet breads, cakes, muffins, cookies, and fruit pies.

Cloves

Cloves, a rich east African spice, are used whole or ground to flavor sweet and savory dishes. According to one of the earliest references, the Chinese had to have a few cloves in their mouths to sweeten their breath if they wanted to approach the emperor. It was once a very costly spice; wars were fought in Europe to secure rights to the profitable clove business. Today, the pungent spice is used in apple desserts, gingerbread, and pumpkin pie.

Holiday Uses

Use in cocktail sauces for holiday appetizers.
Blend ground cloves with maple syrup and drizzle over cooked sweet potatoes and winter squash.
Make an all-natural pomander. Insert cloves into an orange and hang it to dry.

Allspice

Used in both savory and sweet foods, allspice is the pea-sized berry of the evergreen pimiento tree, native to the West Indies and Central and South America. Allspice gets its name because it tastes like a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. The spice is used as a condiment, a flavor in baked goods, in processing meats, and in pickling. The whole or ground spice is also used in preserves and chutneys.

Holiday Uses

It can be used with hamburger or meat loaf, in marinades for chicken and pork, and for simmering beef stew, pot roasts, or bean soups.
Allspice makes a great addition to prepackaged or homemade potpourri.
Use allspice (and any of the other holiday spices) to flavor punch.
Enhance desserts such as applesauce, fruit compotes, and oatmeal cookies with the sweet flavor of ground allspice.
Add a pinch of allspice to barbecue and tomato sauces as well as cooked winter squash and carrots.

Seasoning & Spices

Holiday Seasonings