SC - spice question

[Gerekr at aol.com]

On 2/3/99 10:38 PM you wrote:

>From:	stefan at texas.net (Stefan li Rous)
>
>I also have another bag that seems to have lost it's label.
>Little chunks of something. Sigh. Maybe if I can find my
>receipt I can figure out what I'm missing.

"Little chunks" rang a bell, 8-) so I just checked on all the stuff I 
have whole...

If your "little chunks" are a medium red-brown color and -very- small 
(about 1mm) it might be fenugreek.  Mine smells very faintly like sweet 
curry even after many years...

The Frankincense and Myrrh are quite large chunks; look like the 
consistency of pine sap, obviously.  The Frank is very pale yellow, the 
myrrh is more amber-orange to mud brown, and I don't have any chunks as 
big as the biggest frankincense ones.  Both of these come in irregular 
chunks that may be as big as 3/8 inch in one direction, down to under 1 
mm-size.

Relatively speaking, the fenugreek is very regular-sized bits, and the 
F&M, depending on how fine your source size-sorted, can be very irregular.

If it's galingale, there may be fibrous bits visible in the raw chunks; 
mine is mostly medium tan colored; chunks sized rather like the F&M, but 
matte and opaque, where the F&M looks sort of translucent -- well, some 
(mostly the frank.) looks like glass bits that have been sandblasted, and 
some (mostly the myrrh) looks like it still has sparkly surface bits -- 
if that makes sense.

Interesting; my grains of paradise are quite uniformly very dark 
red-brown, about the same size but more seed-shaped than the fenugreek. 

Good luck, 8-)
Chimene
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================