Spices for feasts and banquets
Biryani, tagine, roast and holiday tables: the big dishes of celebration.
Feasts are meals planned around abundance and ceremony. Spices appear in the dishes that mark weddings, religious holidays and harvest, from biryani and sadya to Christmas roasts.
Rice and meat feasts
Biryani in South Asia, plov in Central Asia, jollof in West Africa and paella in Spain are large dishes shared at gatherings. They are scented with saffron, cardamom, clove, cumin or pimenton, depending on place.
Vegetarian feasts
The Kerala sadya, served on a banana leaf, has dozens of dishes using coconut, curry leaf, pepper and mustard seed. Jain and Hindu festival meals use spices in careful ways, in line with the rules of each community.
Festival tables
Christmas and Easter tables use cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and ginger. Eid, Diwali, Passover and Lunar New Year each have their own dishes, covered in the occasions section.
Feasts and banquets on EveryMasala
The spices written up so far, best known first.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Roselle: Bamouzou, CC BY-SA 4.0, source