This is a mouth-watering and monumental work – two large volumes totaling over 1,100 pages. Despite the word order of the title, the emphasis of The Encyclopedia of Herbs & Spices is on spices, and only aromatic herbs are included – those which “impart flavour, aroma and taste”. Herbs which are only used for medicinal purposes, such as echinacea or black cohosh, are not covered.
The text consists of 240 entries for spices/herbs, usually of about four pages in the following format: sketch drawing, taxonomy including variant and regional names, introduction, botanical notes, chemical notes, functional properties, uses – medicinal, culinary and other, safety issues and references – often more than 30 from a wide range of literatures.
There is a 15-page introduction which appears in both volumes and includes information on classification of spices by various methods. There is a section on the history of the spice trade and then on spices as nutraceuticals – foods which provide medical or health benefits – and a table of important nutraceutical spices and their biological properties. There is a discussion of spices in cooking with further tables on flavours, functions and colours.
This Encyclopedia is clearly a wonderful source of information on all aspects of spices but the main entries are in alphabetical order by English common name and there is no index or any form of cross-referencing. It seems bizarre that such an authoritative work published by CAB International, a body with long involvement in high quality information provision, should not even include an index of Latin names. The only help in this regard is a table of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) list of 109 spices in Latin name order with common English name translations.
Most items listed have long lists of variant names: for example, mint marigold (Tagetes minuta) has ten English names, eight Portuguese, seven South African, plus others listed in Quichua, Russian, Spanish and Mexican. The common ground is the Latin name and this surely would be the obvious main entry point. Reference is made in this entry to “related species, Tagetes erecta, Tagetes patula” but to identify these in the text requires use of a separate source (probably via an internet search) to see what common name is most likely to be used for these species.
In conclusion, once you have identified an item of interest, you will find a wealth of information about it in a standard format which makes for easy comparisons. It is baffling that the publishers have made the process of identifying items such a challenge.
