What are the natural spices used in food?

Natural spices are divided into animal spices and plant spices.

Animal perfume

More precious natural spices. In the process of fragrance blending, it not only plays the role of coordination and fragrance enhancement, but also has the role of long-term fragrance fixation (see). There are mainly four kinds of musk, civet cat, castoreum and Long Xianxiang.

Usually tincture is made of ethanol, which is used after storage and ripening. Except for the pathological products produced by Long Xianxiang for undigested food in the stomach of sperm whales, the other three are secretions that induce the secretion of the opposite sex glands. Animal spices are too rich in fragrance before dilution, but they look fishy and coquettish, and can play a unique fragrance-imparting effect after dilution.

Plant perfume

Most natural spices belong to plant spices. With the flowers, fruits, leaves, branches, barks, roots or underground stems, seeds and other organs and resin secretions of aromatic plants as raw materials, various perfume products can be made.

① Essential oil: the most commonly used form in natural perfume products. It is usually prepared by steam distillation, and a few methods are cold pressing and cold grinding. It is a transparent, clear, colorless to brown oily liquid with volatile characteristics, so it is also called volatile oil.

② Extract: prepared by solvent extraction. A viscous paste-like liquid or semi-solid, with characteristic aroma and sometimes crystal precipitation. The composition of the extract is often more complete than that of the essential oil, but it contains a considerable amount of plant wax and pigment, and its solubility in ethanol is small and its color is dark, so its use is limited, so it can be made into clean oil or decolored extract by this method. Commonly used are extracts such as jasmine and osmanthus.

(3) Clear oil: a product made by extracting the extract with pure ethanol at low temperature and then freezing to remove wax. Can be directly used for preparing various high-grade perfumes. Commonly used are tuberose, jasmine and other pure essential oils.

(4) Aromatic resin: using ethanol as solvent to extract dry substances of some aromatic plant organs, including exudates such as balsam, gum and resin and animal secretions, to obtain concentrated aromatic substances. Fragrant resin is mostly viscous liquid, sometimes semi-solid, such as oak moss resin.

⑤ Oily resin: Spices and spices are extracted with edible volatile solvents, and made into viscous liquid and semi-solid, with fragrance and taste. Most of them are homemade, such as ginger oleoresin.

⑥ Tincture: Natural aromatic substances are used as raw materials, extracted with pure ethanol with a certain concentration, and then the extracted liquid is properly recovered to make products, such as musk tincture, grass tincture, jujube tincture, etc.

Natural spices refer to the original aromatic substances made from the aromatic parts of animals and plants through simple processing, and most of their forms retain plant solids.

Some appearance features, such as fragrant wood blocks, fragrant sawdust, etc. Or aromatic substances separated from natural raw materials by physical methods (steam distillation, extraction, pressing, etc.). ), its form is often essential oil, extract, purified oil, ointment, tincture, etc. Such as rose oil, jasmine essence, vanilla tincture, balsam, turpentine, narcissus oil, etc.

There are more than 3,600 species of perfume plants found in nature, of which about 400 species have been effectively utilized. The roots, stems, branches, skins, leaves, flowers, fruits or resins of plants can all be fragrant, such as jasmine and lavender from the flowers of plants; Cardamom, fennel and chicken tongue are taken from fruits; Gan Song and Radix Aucklandiae are taken from roots, while Sandalwood and Lignum Dalbergiae Odoriferae are taken from wood; Borneol and frankincense are obtained from resin. Animal spices are mostly secretions or excretions in animals. There are about a dozen kinds, among which musk, civet cat, castoreum and Long Xianxiang are commonly used.

Natural spices are widely distributed in glandular sacs of plants or animals. Natural perfume has its unique fragrance fixing function, coordination function and unique natural fragrance rhyme, which is incomparable to synthetic perfume. The main components of natural spices are terpenes, aromatic hydrocarbons, alcohols, acids, ketones, ethers, esters and phenols.