grains of paradise

Grains of paradise — Aframomum melegueta — are the seeds of a plant in the ginger family, native to West Africa. The name grana paradisi appears in Medieval Latin texts from the fourteenth century. Spice merchants told European buyers that the seeds came from paradise itself — the Garden of Eden, located somewhere at the edge of the known world. The claim was false. The seeds came from the Guinea coast of West Africa. But the name stuck.

The trade was lucrative. The Grain Coast — modern Liberia and Sierra Leone — took its name from the grains of paradise exported through its ports. The seeds were a cheaper alternative to black pepper, with a warm, peppery flavor that also carries notes of cardamom and ginger. In medieval England, they flavored hippocras (spiced wine) and were used in brewing before hops became standard. Grains of paradise were everywhere in fourteenth-century European cooking.

When the Portuguese reached the source of the spice in the fifteenth century, the paradise myth collapsed. The seeds grew in West African swamps, not in Eden. But the name did not change. Even after everyone knew the origin was ordinary, 'grains of paradise' remained the standard commercial name. The marketing survived the debunking.

Grains of paradise nearly disappeared from Western cooking after the 1600s, when black pepper became cheaper and more available. They survived in West African and North African cuisines — they appear in Moroccan ras el hanout and in many West African soups and stews. In the twenty-first century, craft brewers and cocktail bartenders rediscovered them. A medieval spice made its way back into glasses in Brooklyn and London.