PIMENTO, OR ALLSPICE
WHAT’S in a name? That which we call allspice by any other name would
have as fine a flavor.
_Pimento officinalis_ (_Myrtus Eugenia pimenta_), an order of Jamaica
Pepper (_Icasandria Monogyia_).
_Pimenta vulgaris myrtaceae._ (These are names applied to the immature
fruit of _pimento_.)
Spanish name, _Pimento_.
French, _Piment des Anglais Toute epice Poivre de la Jamiaque_.
German, _Nelkenpfeffer_, _Nelkenkopfe_, _Neugewurz_.
The pimento tree belongs to the myrtle family and is one of the most
beautiful trees known as an evergreen. It grows to a height of from
twenty to thirty feet and occasionally it reaches a height of forty
feet. It is slender, straight, and upright, with many branches at its
top. The trunk is covered by a smooth, gray, or ashen-brown aromatic
bark which peels off in flakes as the tree grows. The leaves are
opposite, stalked from four to six inches long, and are oblong,
lanceolate, and somewhat tapering. The petioles are blunt and rather
emarginated at the apex, and entire, smooth on both surfaces, with
deep-green, pale, and minute glands, dotted beneath, with the midrib
prominent. They are particularly aromatic when fresh, abounding in
essential oil which is the aromatic property of all kinds of fragrant
fruits.
This tree is a native of the West Indies, and is found most abundantly
on the limestone hills on the Island of Jamaica. It is the only common
spice having its origin in the New World. It is found, but not in
abundance, in most of the West India Islands, as well as in Mexico,
Costa Rica, and Venezuela. It takes its name, pimento, from the Spanish
word for pepper. This name was given to it by early explorers of the New
World because of its resemblance to pepper corn. It is called allspice
because of the combination, or of the supposed combination, of various
flavors.
Some writers have claimed that it is a child of Nature, and that it
defies cultivation, but this is a mistake, as may be seen by comparing
the illustrations of the garden berry (Fig. 1) with those of the wild
berry (Fig. 2). It is seldom cultivated, however, and it is found at its
best growing wild 6,000 feet above the sea and very near the coast line,
on a poor rocky lime or chalky soil, with a very shallow surface mold.
The tree will not do well in a clay or sandy or marshy soil, but the
soil must be kept well drained, and a hot, dry climate is the best.
Since the pimento seeds are scattered by birds, the trees are found in
greater or less numbers in many parts of the Island of Jamaica. They
sometimes are found in groups of from five to twenty, and again in great
forests. It is the predominating tree on the island and is seldom found
alone.
After the tree has obtained a certain growth the underbrush and other
wood, with some of the pimento trees, are cut out, leaving the trees
from twenty to twenty-five feet apart, as they will not yield so well if
left closer. It is in this way that the beautiful pimento walks
(Pi-men-to-wak) are formed which we read of in Jamaica.
The pimento tree flowers twice each year, in July and April, but it
bears only one crop annually and begins to bear when three years old,
and arrives at maturity at seven years, when it abundantly repays the
patience of the planter.
In July the tree is covered with small greenish-white fragrant flowers
of four reflected petals. The flowers are in bunches or trichotomous
panicles at the extremities of the branches with a calyx divided into
four roundish segments. The filaments are numerous and longer than the
corolla, spreading, and of the same color as the petals, supporting
roundish white anthers. The style is short and single and erect with an
obtuse stigma. As the tree branches symmetrically, and has a very
luxuriant foliage, its rich green leaves and profusion of small white
flowers give a very handsome appearance. The air is freighted with its
fragrance for quite a long distance, and every breeze which disturbs its
branches conveys the delicious odor.
The fruit which appears soon after the blossoms, is a smooth, glossy,
succulent, globular berry, from two-tenths to three-tenths of an inch in
diameter, or about the size of a small pea. Planters do not allow the
berries to ripen fully, because in that case they would be difficult to
cure and would become black and tasteless, losing their aromatic
property. When the berries have their full size in the month of August,
though yet green in color, they are gathered.
The harvesting is done by hand, by breaking off the twigs and stems
which bear the berries. These are placed on a raised wooden floor or
terrace to dry on mats for from seven to twelve days in the sunshine.
Great care should be taken to turn them, so as to expose them fully to
the sun, to prevent their quality being injured by moisture. Some
planters dry them in kilns.
The one who removes the berries from the trees keeps three persons busy
gathering them below, who are usually women or children. Care must be
taken to separate, as far as possible, all ripe berries from those which
are green, as otherwise the crop will be made of inferior quality. The
fruit, which necessarily ripens on the tree, before the bulk of the crop
is harvested, falls to the ground and is of no commercial value, as it
has lost its aromatic properties. The problem which the planter has to
contend with of harvesting his crop before it ripens is a serious one,
for the harvesting often must be done rapidly, and it is often difficult
to obtain help enough among the indolent natives to pick the crop. Thus
many thousand pounds often go to waste. In wet weather the system of
smoking is sometimes adopted for drying. The proper degree of dryness is
ascertained by the wrinkled appearance and by the dark or reddish-brown
color of the spice and the rattling noise made by the seeds when they
are shaken. When the berries begin to dry they are frequently laid in
cloths to preserve them from the dews. They are exposed to the sun’s
rays every day and removed under cover every evening until sufficiently
dry. They lose one-third of their weight in drying. The breaking of the
branches in gathering the fruit answers to a rude kind of pruning. The
crop is very abundant, some trees yielding as high as 150 pounds of
green or 100 pounds of dried berries.
[Illustration: ISLAND OF JAMAICA WEST INDIES]
Pimento is exported chiefly from Kingston, Jamaica, in 120 to 130-pound
bags. About one-third of the crop comes to the United States; most of
the balance goes to England, whence it is exported to other countries.
The pimento del tobasco tree, a native of Mexico, produces a larger
berry than the true pimento, but it is less aromatic and is often used
to adulterate the allspice of commerce, but the true pimento is so cheap
that it is adulterated but very little. The pimento is ground on common
burr stones. It is used for medicinal purposes to prevent the taste of
nauseous drugs, and it stimulates and gives tone to the stomach. It is
sometimes used in tanning some kinds of leather. The small trees are
used for walking-sticks and for umbrella handles. The berry is crowned
with a persistent calyx of a black or dark-purple color when ripe, and
when the four short thick sepals are rubbed off a scar is left like an
elevated ring. At the other extremity of the fruit there is a shorter
stalk attached.
The berry has a brittle, woody shell or pericarp, easily cut, of a dark
ferruginous-brown color externally. The roughness on the surface is
caused by the small essential oil receptacles. The berry is less
aromatic than the pericarp. Its hull consists of a delicate epidermis of
large thin-walled cells with light or dark red contents which are called
portwine cells (see illustrations). Fig. 46, Chap. III.
[Illustration: HARVESTING OF ALLSPICE]
The fruit is two-celled, each cell containing a single flattish or
kidney-shaped berry. The embryo is large and spirally curved, and the
berry, when ripe, is filled with a sweetish pulp, which has then partly
lost the aromatic property which it contained in the unripe state. The
aroma is supposed to be a mixture of the aromas of nutmegs, cloves, and
cinnamon.
The microscope shows that the outer layer of the pericarp just beneath
the epidermis contains, with its collection of brown cells, an interior
mass of fibro-vascular bundles traversing a mass of tissues of
constructed parenchymous-walled cells, containing resin and tannin and
small crystals of calcic oxalates. The seed contains much starch in
minute grains, and yields from 3 per cent. to 4¼ per cent. of volatile
oil, by distillation. This oil is composed mainly of eugenol
C_{10}H_{12}, and very closely resembles the oil of cloves in all
respects, but in odor, the difference being in the nature of the
sesquialteral accompanying the eugenol. Its specific gravity is 1.04 to
1.05 at 15 degrees C. The yield of oil from the leaves is nearly 1 per
cent.
Polarized light is a most important aid in examining powdered allspice,
as it brings out strongly the stone cells and ligneous tissue (Fig. 1,
Chap. III), and differentiates these from the great mass of other
matter. It also makes the oil cavities distinct.
It is hard to give a true chemical composition of pimento, but a good
understanding of the tannin should be known, and especially a good
estimation of the volatile oil. The amount of ash found in pimento is
about 6 per cent. in the whole and 5 per cent. in the powdered state.
The chemical composition of a sample of whole pimento was found to be as
follows:
Water, 6.19
Ash, 4.01
Volatile Oil, 3 to 4½
Fixed Oil, 6.15
Crude Fiber, 14.83
Undetermined, 59.28
Albuminoids, 4.38
Nitrogen, .70
Tannin Equivalent, 10.97
Oxygen Required, 2.81
The best adulterant is baked barley.
The specific gravity of the volatile oil is 1.04 to 1.05 at 15 degrees
C.
Pimento meal loses its aromatic flavor very rapidly.
[2]The taste of allspice is warm, aromatic, pungent, and slightly
astringent, and it imparts its flavor to water and all its virtue to
alcohol. The infusion with water is of a brown color, and reddens litmus
paper. Allspice yields volatile oil by distillation, a green fixed oil,
a fatty substance in yellowish flakes, and tannin, gum, resin, sugar,
coloring matter, malic and galic acids, saline matter, moisture and
lignin.
-----
Footnote 2:
State of Michigan, Dairy and Food Commission.
The green oil has the burning, aromatic taste of pimento, and is
supposed to be the acrid principle. Upon this, therefore, together with
the volatile oil, the active properties of the berries depend. The shell
contains 10 per cent. of volatile oil, and perhaps a little chlorophyl.
Allspice is reported to contain an alkaloid having the odor of caneine.
The volatile oil, which is used as a flavoring in alcoholic solution, is
of a brownish-red, clear appearance, and has the odor and taste of
pimento, but is warmer and more pungent. It is readily soluble in
alcohol, and if two drops of the oil be dissolved in one fluid drachm of
alcohol, and a drop of ferric chloride test solution be added, a
bright-green color will be produced. If one C. C. of the oil be shaken
with twenty C. C. of hot water it should not give more than a scarcely
perceptible acid reaction with litmus paper.
If, after cooling, the liquid be passed through a wet filter, the clear
filtrate will produce, with a drop of ferric chloride test solution,
only a transient greyish green, but not a blue or violet color, a fact
which indicates the absence of carbolic acid.
Pimento oil consists, like the oil of cloves, of two distinct oils, a
light and heavy oil, separated by distilling the oil from caustic
potassa. The light oil passes over, leaving the heavy oil behind,
combined with the potassa. The heavy oil may be recovered by distilling
the residue with sulphuric acid. The heavy oil has the acid property of
combining with the alkalides, forming crystallized compounds, which is
identical with the eugenol from the oil of cloves, from which is
prepared the vanillin of commerce. Powdered allspice is often
adulterated with clove stems, peas, almond shells, cracker dust, etc.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: CINNAMON AND CASSIA
1 Ceylon
2 Batavia
3 Cassia Liguea
4 Java
5 Saigon
6 Cassia Liguea bud
7 Leaf stalk or flowering twig]