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Concept
Cardamom
Summary
Cardamom (ˈkɑrdəməm), sometimes cardamon or cardamum, is a spice made from the seeds of several plants in the genera Elettaria and Amomum in the family Zingiberaceae. Both genera are native to the Indian subcontinent and Indonesia. They are recognized by their small seed pods: triangular in cross-section and spindle-shaped, with a thin, papery outer shell and small, black seeds; Elettaria pods are light green and smaller, while Amomum pods are larger and dark brown.
Species used for cardamom are native throughout tropical and subtropical Asia. The first references to cardamom are found in Sumer, and in the Ayurvedic literatures of India. Nowadays it is also cultivated in Guatemala, Malaysia, and Tanzania. The German coffee planter Oscar Majus Klöffer introduced Indian cardamom to cultivation in Guatemala before World War I; by 2000, that country had become the biggest producer and exporter of cardamom in the world, followed by India.
The word "cardamom" is derived from the Latin cardamōmum, which is the Latinisation of the Greek καρδάμωμον (), a compound of κάρδαμον (, "cress") and ἄμωμον (), which was probably the name for a kind of Indian spice plant.
The earliest attested form of the word κάρδαμον signifying "cress" is the Mycenaean Greek , written in Linear B syllabic script, in the list of flavourings on the "Spice" tablets found among palace archives in the House of the Sphinxes in Mycenae.
The modern genus name Elettaria is derived from the root attested in Dravidian languages.
The two main types of cardamom are:
True or green cardamom (or when bleached, white cardamom) comes from the species Elettaria cardamomum and is distributed from India to Malaysia. What is often referred to as white cardamon is actually Siam cardamom, Amomum krervanh.
Black cardamom, also known as brown, greater, large, longer, or Nepal cardamom, comes from species Amomum subulatum and is native to the eastern Himalayas and mostly cultivated in Eastern Nepal, Sikkim, and parts of Darjeeling district in West Bengal of India, and southern Bhutan.
Official source
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