Laung
The Hindi word for clove, a dried flower bud with a strong, sweet, numbing scent.
Also: clove, lavang, krambu, karayampoo
Laung is clove, the unopened flower bud of Syzygium aromaticum, a tropical evergreen once found only on a few Indonesian islands in the Moluccas. Buds are picked by hand, then sun-dried until they turn dark brown. The dominant flavour compound is eugenol, which smells sweet and medicinal and gives a mild numbing sensation on the tongue. In Indian cooking one or two cloves go into rice, tea, garam masala and meat dishes. In Europe and America clove is a baking spice, studded into hams and oranges. Zanzibar and Madagascar are now major producers, while Indonesia consumes much of its own harvest in clove cigarettes.