Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Spice guide to Fenugreek along with all the Fenugreek containing recipes presented on this site, with 110 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.

Fenugreek, Trigonella foenum-graecum has a native realm that extends from the eastern Mediterranean across to China, though it is now cultivated worldwide. It can easily be grown as a pot-herb, both for its leaves and the seeds which are used as a spice. It is a member of the Fabaceae family that includes the nitrogen-fixing legumes. As such fenugreek can survive in very poor soil. The name itself, 'fenugreek', is derived from the Latin foenum-graecum (Greek hay).

The leaves of fenugreek (image, right) are used as an herb both in the raw and dried state. In the dried form it is often sold as 'methi' and it is this that provides the 'curry' flavour in many Indian and Pakistani dishes. The seeds are used as a spice (often sold ground as 'ground fenugreek'). This is an important element of many pickles, curry powders and pastes, and is often encountered in the cuisine of the Indian subcontinent and Thailand. The seeds have a bitter taste that mellows when cooked and a very distinctive 'curry-like' aroma which is created by the aromatic compound, sotolone. If toasted before being ground fenugreek develops substituted pyrazines (the same scent compounds as found in cumin).

Fenugreek is also one of the ingredients in the making of injera/taita, a type of bread unique to Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine. It is also sometimes used as an ingredient in the production of clarified butter (ghee).

Fenugreek seeds have a bitter and aromatic taste. The dried leaves’ fragrance slightly resembles lovage; though they are lack any remarkable scent in the fresh state. Fenugreek seeds contains only minute quantities of an essen­tial oil. In the essen­tial oil, 40 dif­ferent com­pounds were found, further­more, n-alkanes, sesqui­terpenes, alkanoles and lac­tones were reported. The dominant aroma component in fenu­greek seeds is a hemi­terpenoid γ-lactone, sotolone (3-hydroxy 4,5-dimethyl 2(5H)-furan­one), which is contained in concen­trations up to 25 ppm. It supposedly forms by oxidative deamination of 4-hydroxy isoleucine. Sotolone has a spicy flavour and was also found a key flavour in fermented protein seasonings, e. g., Maggi sauce. There is chemical similarity between sotolone and the phthalides responsible for the quite similar flavour of lovage leaves. Toasted fenugreek seeds owe their altered, more nutty flavour to another type of hetero­cyclic compounds, the so-called pyrazines. See cumin for further information.

Fenugreek is an ancient spice, used for thousands of years in the region from Central Asia to Northern India (the Egyptians also mention the spice as essential to the mummification process), though it has only recently penetrated the western market (with the increasing popularity of Indian foods). It is also used in Ethiopian spice mixtures (particularly Berbere spice), is particularly favoured in Yemeni cuisine and is used in the cuisines of West, Central and South Asia (which are now the largest consumers).

The fenu­greek plants is probably native to the Eastern Medi­terra­nean, but is today found all over Asia, from the Medi­terra­nean to China. Though not much used in Europe today, fenugreek seeds are found in many curry blends. It is also an important spice in Iranian cookery.