Baharat, the seven-spice blend

When a Syrian recipe says baharat it means a blend, not a single plant. In Arabic bahar is a spice and baharat is the plural; the word came in from Persian. Four items carry the mix: cloves, black pepper, allspice and cinnamon. Everything after that changes with the counter, the city and the dish.

What goes into it

Alongside the four come coriander, cumin, cardamom, nutmeg, ginger, turmeric and ground red pepper. The proportions are not fixed. Two herbalists in the same souq will sell you two different blends.

The version that settled in the Levant is named after its count: sabaa baharat, seven spices. The list is cinnamon, black pepper, white pepper, allspice, cloves, nutmeg and coriander. Some makers add ground red pepper or cassia bark on top of that, and the name stays at seven anyway.

Blends for sweets are made separately, and there cinnamon, anise, mahlab, cardamom, saffron and mastic take the lead. Dipping the meat jar into a tray of pastry is the mistake cooks warn about most.

Where the name came from

The blends are older than the word. Kitab al-Tabikh, written in the 10th century by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq, and Al-Wusla ila’l-Habeeb, written in Aleppo in the 13th century, both give recipes for spice mixtures — but they are not called baharat. Their name is atraf al-teeb. One recipe in Al-Wusla lists nutmeg, cloves, rose buds and green cardamom. Baharat only came to mean a spice mix under the Ottomans.

One part of today’s blend is far more recent. Allspice reached the region from Central America in the 16th century, and appears in no recipe written before that. So one of the four core items joined the table centuries after the blend itself.

Which dishes carry it

This mix is what gives kebab halabi its identity: the minced lamb is worked with the city’s own blend, and what sets the plate apart is spice rather than sauce. In makanik, the small fried sausages, cinnamon and cloves come forward. Stuffed vegetables, rice, lamb stew and lentil soup all take their share from the same jar.

There is an instructive counter-example. No blend goes into the kebab of Deir ez-Zor: salt and a pinch of black pepper, and nothing else, because the meat is not meant to be covered. The mix is a choice, not a rule.

Buying it at the counter

At the herbalist the blend sits open on a tray, and in most shops it is ground in front of you. Having it ground rather than buying a packet is worth it. The aroma is at its strongest for a few weeks after grinding and drops away quickly after that.

The colour should be a matt brown. A powder tending to bright orange usually means a heavy hand with ground red pepper; it makes the mix cheaper and turns the taste towards pepper. You can say how much cinnamon you want, and the blend is adjusted to order. Keep the jar sealed and cool.