The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks (25 page)

ALLSPICE

Pimenta dioica

myrtaceae (myrtle family)

C
lassic cocktail aficionados are accustomed to finding strange and unfamiliar ingredients in old recipe books, but few are more confusing than pimento dram. A drink made of those rubbery red things stuffed inside olives? What could that possibly taste like?

Fortunately, pimento dram is not made of the pimento found in an olive. It is a liqueur made from rum, sugar, and allspice. And the reason allspice and mild red peppers share a name is an accident of history.

Spanish explorers traveling to the West Indies and Central America saw people adding small dark berries to their traditional meals and to chocolate. They seemed to add heat and spice to the dish, so the Spaniards assumed they were some kind of pepper. For that reason, they called the plant pimento, their word for pepper. In 1686, British naturalist John Ray described it in his monumental three-volume work
Historia Plantarum
as “sweet scented Jamaica pepper.” And, because it could be used in such a wide variety of dishes, he also called it all-spice.

The allspice tree flourishes in tropical regions of the Americas and in Jamaica. It produces pea-shaped berries that each hold two seeds. The berries are picked green in midsummer and spread on the ground to dry in the sun, or gently heated in ovens. The flavor is similar to that of cloves, and in fact the two trees, which are closely related, both produce the aromatic oil eugenol.

Early spice traders tried to plant allspice seeds around the world but found them impossible to germinate. Eventually it was discovered that the seeds must pass through the body of a fruit-eating bat, a baldpate pigeon, or some other local bird, in order to be sufficiently heated and softened for germination. Today, through the agency of birds, the tree has become invasive in Hawaii, Samoa, and Tonga.

The near devastation of the world's allspice trees occurred in the Victorian era, when trees were cut down not for their spices but for their wood. It was all the rage to manufacture umbrellas and walking sticks from the pale, aromatic sticks because they resisted bending or cracking. Millions of trees were destroyed. To protect them, Jamaica enacted a strict ban on the export of allspice saplings in 1882.

Allspice is an ingredient in perfumes and liqueurs. It is sometimes found in gins and is believed to be part of the mysterious formulas of Benedictine and Chartreuse, as well as other French and Italian cordials.

Pimento dram, also called allspice dram, is an ingredient in classic tiki cocktails and has recently become popular in warm, spiced autumnal drinks, where it gives a baked spice flavor to Calvados or apple brandy.

ALOE

Aloe vera

asphodelaceae (aloe family)

L
ike its cousin, the agave, the aloe is sometimes mistaken for a cactus. In fact, it is more closely related to lilies and asparagus than cactus. But like a cactus, it does love heat and dry weather. And while people who drink aloe juice might never guess it, aloe contains one of the most bitter flavors in the world. For this reason it turns up in more than a few bottles behind the bar.

Aloe traveled from its native sub-Saharan Africa to Asia and Europe in the seventeenth century. Today nearly five hundred species have been identified, and they span the globe, growing in tropical climates where winter temperatures stay above 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Like other succulents, aloes depend upon a special kind of photosynthesis that requires them to open their pores—stomata—only at night to breathe. They take in carbon dioxide and store some to use the next day, which allows them to essentially hold their breath all day long. When they do breathe, they release as little water as possible through those pores, relying on cooler nighttime temperatures to slow the loss of water.

And of course, they store water in their leaves, which explains the thick, juicy gel familiar to anyone who has ever attempted a little first aid in the outdoors. While the gel is useful to protect wounds—a latex made by the plant covers the wound while allowing it to breathe—its use as an internal medicine is not entirely proven. Some species are even poisonous, which makes it important to think twice before ingesting an unfamiliar aloe.

The bitter component in aloe, called aloin, is found in the latex just under the surface of the leaf. Scientists have recently learned that a particular gene allele makes some people highly sensitive to aloin's bitterness, whereas people without that allele can't even taste it except at high concentrations. This may explain why some people love Italian bitters, also called
amaro
s, and others can't stand them.

Aloe is one of the ingredients that gives Fernet-style
amaro
s, such as Fernet Branca, their bracing quality. While quinine, gentian, and a number of other plants are also used to impart bitterness, they also give a slightly vegetal or even floral flavor. Aloe brings with it no such extra notes. If bitterness had a color, aloe would be black as coal.

To make juice from aloe, the liquid is extracted from the center of the leaf and filtered to remove the aloin and the dark color it imparts. This makes it more palatable and perhaps safer: Aloin was once an ingredient in laxatives, but during a routine evaluation of ingredients that had never undergone modern safety reviews, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned its use in laxative products—not because it had been proven dangerous but because no pharmaceutical company offered to demonstrate its safety and effectiveness using modern methods. Still, its traditional use as a laxative may explain why aloe's bitter components were used in the formulas for digestifs.

ANGELICA