Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Spice guide to Black Cumin along with all the Black Cumin containing recipes presented on this site, with 14 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Cornish recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain as a major flavouring.

Black Cumin (also known as Kashmiri Cumin and Kala Jeera) represents the fruit (more typically called 'seeds') of the Elwendia persica (syn Bunium persicum) plant which is a member of the Apiaceae (also known as Umbelliferae) family. It is therefore related to carrots, caraway and fennel. As a result Bunium persicum is also related to true Cumin Cuminum cyminum in that they belong to the same family though they are not closely related to one another. Thus, in strict botanical terms black cumin is not actually a cumin at all.

The plant itself is native to a wide region that extends from southeastern Europe to southern Asia. In its native regions it reaches about 60 cm tall and 25 cm wide, bearing frilly leaves and hermaphroditic flowers. Like it's closely-related cousin the Pignut (Conopodium majus) this plant's small, rounded taproot is edible either raw or cooked, and is said to taste rather like sweet chestnuts. The fruit are slender, dark brown in colour, and crescent shaped.

The spice itself consists of the dried fruit of the plant and it is used as a culinary spice in Northern India, Tajikistan and Iran. It is an essential ingredient in Persian cookery and can be substituted for cumin in many Northern Indian recipes to yield a more authentic taste. Black cumin has a warm and sligh bitter taste with a sweet aroma.

This is an unusual spice, in that the fruits’ aroma is earthy and heavy (really not pleasant at all. However, on frying or cooking, the taste becomes nutty and pleasant. Ripe black cumin fruits are reported to contain an essential oil (up to 7%) rich in monoterpene aldehydes; the main components are cuminaldehyde, p-mentha-1,3-dien-7-al and p-mentha-1,4-dien-7-al (up to one third each); terpene hydrocarbons are the main components of fruits collected in the wild or harvested unripe (γ-terpinene, p-cymene, β-pinene, limonene). The latter compounds are thought to reduce the quality of the spice.

The plant is believed to be native to a region extending from Central Asia to Northern India. Its use is most closely associated with the cuisines of Iran, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the western part of Northern India (Kashmir, Punjab).

Black cardamom, Elwendia persica, is often conflated with Nigella (Kalonji, onion seed) which is also sometimes called 'black cardamom'. However, recipes from the Indian subcontinent that refer to 'black cardamom' always mean the seeds of Elwendia persica, as described here.