This is an expensive spice because each seed pod must be snipped off the plant by hand. The pods are then dried and bleached until they are buff-colored. Inside the pods are small black seeds which have a warm, slightly pungent and highly aromatic flavor and taste. Use whole seed pods in rice dishes, pickles, spiced wine, punches, and coffee. Use ground in curries, meat loaves, kebabs, hamburgers, baked apples, apple pie, pumpkin pie, sprinkled over melon, in spiced fruit salads and in Danish pastries.
Cayenne is the very hottest member of the pepper family.
Depending on which brand you buy and how much you use in your cooking, chili is for all practical purposes exchangeable with cayenne. Cinnamon comes from the bark of an evergreen tree that is a member of the laurel family and native of the Far East. Cloves are the dried unopened flower buds of an evergreen trees that originally grew on the Moluccas or Spice Islands but are now also found in Indonesia, and the West Indian Islands. Whole cloves are stuck into an onion for making soups and sauces, in boiling beef, for baked ham, spiced tongue, beet salad, pickled vegetables, baked and stewed fruits and apple sauce. Coriander which is known in Arabic and everyday Hebrew as cusbara is an herb but the seeds of the shrub are used as a spice.