OK, so I know that I am gullible.  My Dad told me, when I was very young, that men grew moustaches to sweep the crumbs off their toast while eating.  I believed him, mainly because I couldn’t imagine any other logical reason, and it was several years before I finally figured out that the real reason was male vanity!  Every year at Thanksgiving, my mother, after searching through her cupboard for the allspice for her pumpkin pies, finally settled on nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves, telling me that they were the same thing.  She told me that allspice was really a mixture of the three spices anyway, and so you really didn’t need to keep allspice in the cupboard.  And I have always believed that to be true, until just a few weeks ago.

My job here at our catering business is best described as a glorified receptionist/book-keeper.  But one of the things that I am respected for is my knowledge of cooking facts (and music of the 60's & 70's).  It is very rare that I can’t answer a question, and if I don’t know the answer, I will make it my mission to find it.  So when one of our cooks was making a jerk sauce, and couldn’t find allspice in the pantry, I suggested that he didn’t really need it as long as he had cinnamon, cloves, & nutmeg.  But then I looked closely at the recipe and realized that all 4 of the spices were called for, and I remembered that allspice is often called for when the other 3 are already listed as ingredients.  I thought that I had better investigate before I said anything more.  It took only one reference book to find out that allspice was a pepper.  Boy, were the staff surprised when I ran into the kitchen and told them that I was wrong.

Allspice was named by the first Europeans settling in the Caribbean Islands in the 1600's.  They found this new spice growing wild all over the islands, and thought that it tasted like cinnamon, nutmeg, & clove, so named it all-spice.  The allspice berries grow on an evergreen pimento tree, native to the West Indies and South America.  The tree is a type of myrtle, and the best berries come from Jamaica, which produces most of the world=s supply.  The cultivated trees grow in what is called an allspice walk, and when they are flowering the air is filled with perfume from the aromatic bark, leaves, flower, and later, the berries.  The West Indian Arawak and Carib tribes used allspice, and it is more that likely that it was also used in Aztec and Mayan kitchens.

 The berries are also known as Jamaican pepper or pimento.  The spice is best used as whole dried berries, ground freshly in a pepper mill. Native cooks also use the fresh leaves in their cooking, and the oil extract from the leaves is used to make a Jamaican liqueur called Pimento Dram.  Allspice is used in both savoury and sweet recipes, including pumpkin and gingerbread recipes, most Caribbean recipes such as jerk sauces, chutneys and pickles.

So I suppose that the moral of this story could be “Don’t trust your parents!”, but I’ve forgiven them. I stopped years ago staring at moustachioed men eating toast.  I just can’t believe that for all these years, I’ve missed out on using allspice in my cooking.  I have now got a jar of allspice in my spice cupboard, and I used it for my Thanksgiving pies this year.  In the glossary of my Jamaican cookbook, they say that allspice can be substituted by the other 3 spices, so my mother was only partially wrong, but I think that you would be missing out on the added peppery zip that this spice can add to many of your recipes.