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Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice

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Re: Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice

#111

Post by wl »

glitchc wrote: post #33
perihelions wrote: post #14

- "One of the earliest references to saffron dates to 2300 BCE, in The Legend of Sargon of Akkad, a Mesopotamian work that describes the birthplace of the founder of the Akkadian empire as “city of saffron.”" This doesn't seem right: Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest known Mesopotamian work of fiction and it's a more recent ~2,100 BCE [0]. The historic person Sargon of Assad lived in the 24th/23rd century BCE [1]—are t…

Any dates before recorded/written history should be assumed to have a large margin of error, on the order of +/-500 years, especially true for all dates earlier than 1000 BCE. We don't have a precise way of dating. Carbon dating requires longer timescales and the writing substrates used (typically stone) contain minimal traces.

Late third millennium BCE is the era of written history in Mesopotamia. There are documents with dates. There’s some debates about how we might line up their dates with our calendar, but the discrepancies are nowhere near 500 years.

Re: Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice

#113

Post by aaronblohowiak »

JohnFen wrote: post #56
Aloisius wrote: post #2

Years ago, I was convinced that saffron's "taste" was more mental than anything else, so I ran a little matched pairs experiment to see if anyone could taste the difference between a rice dish with saffron or one without. No one could. Admittedly, it was too small of an experiment to be sure, but it just seems like a very expensive food dye to me. I'll just stick to turmeric.

Here's a weird thing: I don't have any idea what saffron tastes like. Ignoring saffron rice (which to me seems exactly like ordinary rice, but yellow -- which probably means it didn't really have saffron in it?), I've only had dishes that include it (that I knew of) a couple of times in my life. Those dishes had many different flavors going on, so I couldn't tell which of those flavors were saffron. I need to just ge…

St Lucia’s buns

Re: Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice

#114

Post by StevePerkins »

yumraj wrote: post #82
Aloisius wrote: post #2

Years ago, I was convinced that saffron's "taste" was more mental than anything else, so I ran a little matched pairs experiment to see if anyone could taste the difference between a rice dish with saffron or one without. No one could. Admittedly, it was too small of an experiment to be sure, but it just seems like a very expensive food dye to me. I'll just stick to turmeric.

Turmeric and Saffron are completely different. Turmeric has an earthy taste Saffron is mostly fragrance/smell . No idea what it tastes like. We use it in rice dishes or sometimes in my turmeric milk drink. Edit: In other words, to figure out if something has saffron, you smell it.

> No idea what it tastes like.

Then what's the point of including it in dishes like paella, where any fragrance will be drowned out by all of the other spices and flavors in the dish?

Re: Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice

#116

Post by tech_ken »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #39

Here's what I don't get... so here in the US, saffron is generally speaking, extremely expensive and rationed carefully by cooks. Meanwhile, I watch these cooking videos on YouTube and people in villages in places like Azerbaijan are casually throwing the equivalent of $10,000 worth of saffron into their tea. Granted, I understand places like Iran (spoiler alert: not the best relationship with the US) are major produ…

Some types of saffron are fake I think. I don’t know the difference, but some cooking blogs I’ve read mentioned that “too good to be true” saffron deals always just are.

Re: Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice

#117

Post by BobaFloutist »

hammock wrote: post #65
hammock wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be fake, adulterated or poisonous somehow?

BS to downvote me for this comment. Cheap olive oil is counterfeit. Cheap milk, honey and coffee are adulterated with fillers. Cheap tumeric is colored with lead oxide

Cheap olive oil from Costco is not counterfeit. Cheap honey from Costco isn't counterfeit. Cheap vanilla from Costco is...once again, not counterfeit.

Moral: Buy things from Costco.

Re: Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice

#118

Post by yumraj »

StevePerkins wrote: post #114
yumraj wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turmeric and Saffron are completely different. Turmeric has an earthy taste Saffron is mostly fragrance/smell . No idea what it tastes like. We use it in rice dishes or sometimes in my turmeric milk drink. Edit: In other words, to figure out if something has saffron, you smell it.

> No idea what it tastes like. Then what's the point of including it in dishes like paella, where any fragrance will be drowned out by all of the other spices and flavors in the dish?

It doesn't get drowned. Spices add both taste and aroma, and saffron has a pretty strong aroma that you can taste the aroma.

Hard to describe, easier to experience..

Re: Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice

#119

Post by Anotheroneagain »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #101
yifanl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying I don't believe you, but how credible are these cooking videos? $10000 of saffron could provide enough flavour for easily 6 months worth of tea.

I’m just saying - you watch these people pull out some giant jar that is more saffron than I’ve ever seen in my life and they use it like it’s no big deal. Meanwhile I’m pulling out individual threads with tweezers because the cost is so high

The west isn't that rich anymore - I think it's mostly an artifact from only taking western things into account. The numbers would look very different if the methods weren't biased.

Re: Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice

#120

Post by gnicholas »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #117
hammock wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BS to downvote me for this comment. Cheap olive oil is counterfeit. Cheap milk, honey and coffee are adulterated with fillers. Cheap tumeric is colored with lead oxide

Cheap olive oil from Costco is not counterfeit. Cheap honey from Costco isn't counterfeit. Cheap vanilla from Costco is...once again, not counterfeit. Moral: Buy things from Costco.

Olive oil should be used within a reasonably short time of opening, which makes Costco-sized bottles less practical. We buy honey and vanilla extract from Costco, but we don't use olive oil anywhere near fast enough to justify buying Costco-sized jugs.
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