A list of tasty words

The English Spice Index manages to combine my culinary obsession with my etymological one with an enormous list of spices, their common names, their names in 30 or more foreign languages, and of course descriptions of how the spice, herb, or fruit is used. Science nuts can get their fix, too–each spice’s chemical breakdown is explored, in a way that’s entirely fascinating to this linguaphile. For example, on Indonesian Cinnamon:

The essential oil from Indonesian cinnamon bark (1 to 4%) is dominated by cinnamaldehyde, but does not contain eugenol. Slime content is 8%.

I think the only word I recognized in this paragraph is “slime”–and I’m having trouble visualizing slimy cinnamon. But I can see myself wandering around this weekend muttering “cinnamaldehyde” over and over and over again.

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