Growing up in India, I had a habit of picking out green cardamom pods from any sweet or savory dishes that my mother put them in. I would stick my tongue out when I bit into the seeds, hoping the sharp eucalyptus flavor would vanish. The pods had a special spot in my mother’s spice caddy. She used them generously in desserts she would make on festivals and religious holidays, and crushed the pods in her mortar and pestle to spice the chai she made for occasional guests at home. It took me a while to appreciate the complex mix of sweet, spicy, piney, citrus, floral notes and aromas packed in the pods that combine to make the spice versatile.
The term cardamom refers to the plants of two genera, Elettaria Cardamomum, green cardamom and Amomum Subulatum, black cardamom. They are a part of the ginger family and are recognized by their spindle-shaped pods with small black seeds and a characteristic aroma. Black cardamom is native to the Himalayas and cultivated in Nepal, India, and Bhutan. Green cardamom’s origins lie in the forests of the southwest regions of India and is now cultivated extensively in Central America (Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras), Sri Lanka, and Tanzania. It is the third most expensive spice in the world, after saffron and vanilla.
Like other spices, green cardamom is no longer grown exclusively where it originated. Due to changes in agricultural technologies and global market demand, cardamom is now farmed on non-native lands that more or less match the climate where it can thrive. In this way, we see how the spice trade and its ancient impact of world history continues to affect the modern world today.
Demand for their potent flavors, complex aromas, and vibrant colors from across oceans transformed every cuisine touched by the spice trade. The import of spices is impossible to separate from the quest for wealth through colonization. Spices weren’t just used to feed culinary appetites. They have long held medicinal value for treating diseases and were incorporated into cosmetics, perfumes, and aromatics, often burned as incense for religious rituals.
They became status symbols used by elites to display their wealth and were a way for the ruling class to flaunt their riches and were often consumed in a showy manner. Long before the Portuguese, Dutch, and English worked their way in, there was a flourishing spice trade that existed between India, China, and the Islands of Southeast Asia.
Following cardamom through the spice routes, I’ve come to learn of its countless cuisines and non-culinary uses. Ancient Ayurvedic texts outline the medicinal use of cardamom to aid digestion and relieve cough and cold, whereas Greeks and Romans used its volatile components for making perfumes and oils. Native to the evergreen forests of the southern state of Kerala in India, cardamom is believed to have traveled through the trade routes established by Mediterranean merchants and later by European colonizers. It was embraced by Persian, Arab, Middle Eastern, North African, and Scandinavian cuisines.
Although it was once considered a minor forest crop, the growing popularity and demand for cardamom led to the establishment of plantations in south India’s Kerala, pockets of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, and in Sri Lanka. In 1914, German plantation owner Oscar Majus Kloeffer planted green cardamom from Kerala at his coffee estate in Cobán, Guatemala where it thrived in the cool, humid climate and high altitudes in the mountains of Alta Verapaz. By the 1970s, Guatemala ended India’s cardamom monopoly and became the leading exporter of the crop, and since the year 2000, the country has been the world’s top producer of green cardamom.
Other Central American countries like Nicaragua and Honduras offer a similar climate to Guatemala for growing cardamom. In northwest Honduras, the light loamy soil of Santa Barbara’s cloud forests have made it possible for cardamom to become a part of the region’s new spice trade. While crops like cardamom are new to Honduras, coffee is the primary cash crop and a source of income for most farmers. However, climate change has caused typical weather patterns to fluctuate, making it difficult for farmers to predict or sustain seasonal harvests, crop quality, and market prices..
Many coffee farmers across Latin America are beginning to supplement or completely switch to crops that generate steady income and help improve soil quality, are less susceptible to diseases, and boost crop yield. My day job is with the company Dona Teas, and we source our cardamom from Don Jesús Gutiérrez in Trinidad, Santa Barbara, Honduras. Dona purchased 60% of his first harvest, grinding whole cardamom seeds in-house at the Dona HQ in Brooklyn to brew in tea concentrates and blend with loose leaf teas.
His story is illustrative of a wider trend. A veteran coffee farmer, Gutiérrez decided to diversify his crops with cardamom after coffee leaf rust disease and price instability threatened his ability to farm. Now, timber and bananas are companion crops to the cardamom he grows. Being cultivated alongside fruit trees, cardamom pods develop fruitier flavors and more pronounced aromas. Agroforestry cultivation is also used for a sustainable production of the spice. Forest cover provides a canopy that shades the plants on the forest floor and adds organic matter to the soil. Gutiérrez grows a jumbo variety of cardamom that has bigger seeds compared to other varieties. When harvested, a cardamom pod is 85% water, husk and a bunch of seeds. When dried, the water is extracted and the pod is reduced to its ribbed husk entirely sealing the seeds inside. Cardamom pods are picked by hand and go through a process of oven drying for 26-36 hours. Hot air is blown in the drying chamber to eliminate impurities, after which the pods are ready and clean for packaging.
In a lot of ways this is reminiscent of the work specialty coffee has done to create a direct link between quality-focused consumers and coffee producers: folks know where their coffees are from, and that they’re enjoying it fresh. By working with the farmer—in this case, a cardamom farmer—modern spice and tea companies are able to ensure that the hard work of growing the crop is paid fairly, while shortening the supply chain, maintaining transparency and traceability of this incredible spice.
As I get ready to organize any tea tasting, I set out cardamom in a tiny dish for people to look at and snack on. Eating the seeds is a sensory experience as the aromas fill the mouth slowly releasing a mix of floral, citrus and spicy notes. On chewing the seeds, the taste becomes more concentrated, peppery and minty with subtle earthiness. There is so much history and flavor contained within these tiny pods—and much more still we can learn.
Navdeep Kapur is a freelance journalist based in New York City. Read more Navdeep Kapur for Sprudge.
Sprudge Media Network is proudly partnered with Dona Teas of Brooklyn, New York.
