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SPICE, MIXED (another way.)
Take three-quarters of an ounce of ground allspice, three-quarters of an ounce of ground black pepper, three-quarters of an ounce of grated nutmeg, an ounce and a half of ground ginger, a dozen cloves powdered, and nine ounces of salt. Mix these ingredients thoroughly, put the powder into a dry, closely-stoppered bottle, and keep it corked for use.
This is a seasoning blend rather than a dish — what earlier English cookbooks called "kitchen pepper." The one thing to register before you mix it is the proportion: three-quarters of the finished weight is salt.
- It is mostly saltNine ounces of salt against roughly four ounces of spice means this is a seasoned salt, not a spice mix. Treat a spoonful as a spoonful of salt that happens to carry flavour, and reduce or omit the salt elsewhere in whatever you are seasoning.
- Weights in gramsThree-quarters of an ounce is about 21 g, an ounce and a half about 42 g, nine ounces about 255 g. The batch comes to roughly 360 g, which is a generous jarful.
- A dozen cloves powderedTwelve whole cloves ground down yield something under a teaspoon — a deliberately small note against the allspice and pepper. Grinding them yourself in a spice mill or mortar is worth the minute; pre-ground clove fades fast.
- Grated nutmegThe original says grated. Buy whole nutmegs and grate the 21 g you need; jarred ground nutmeg loses much of its aroma over a few months.
- Salt type matters to the volumeFine table salt packs far denser than flaky or coarse salt, so if you scale this by spoonfuls rather than by weight the balance shifts. Use a scale, and choose a fine-grained salt so the mixture stays uniform and does not separate in the bottle.
- Dry bottle, tight stopperThe instruction to use a dry, closely-stoppered bottle is presumably about keeping damp out; salt can draw moisture from the air and cake. A screw-top jar kept away from the stove works; a few grains of rice in the jar are a traditional remedy in a humid kitchen.
- Shelf lifeThe salt keeps indefinitely but the ground spices are noticeably flat after about six months. Mix half quantities if you cook in small volumes.
- How it was meant to be usedA mixture of this kind would have been used a pinch at a time in forcemeats, potted meats, meat pies, brown gravies and hashes, saving the cook from weighing out five separate jars. It suits sausage mixtures and beef stews; it is too clove-and-ginger forward for delicate fish.
Blends of this kind were known in English kitchens as "kitchen pepper" from at least the eighteenth century, and the heading "another way" shows that Cassell's gives more than one version. The point of the mixture was labour: a cook working through a long list of made dishes reached once for a single bottle instead of opening allspice, pepper, nutmeg, ginger, cloves and the salt box in turn. The heavy proportion of salt also stretched the spices, which were the expensive part of the jar. That the spices named here are all warm tropical imports, and that the ginger is used in double the quantity of either the pepper or the allspice, is characteristic of nineteenth-century British savoury seasoning.