Cumin
Cumin – biennial umbrella plant height of 0.3-1.0 m. We grow wild in the meadows, and boundaries, are grown in gardens and as a field crop. Cumin was used as far back as the Neolithic era. Distributed almost all over Europe. Has been known since the Middle Ages.
Description.
Cumin has a naked stepel, furrowed and branched. Leaves vaginal, double or triple, pinnately. Their leaves are pinnately dissected into linear lobes. Flowers are clustered in an umbrella. It flowers in May and June. Fruit – dvusemyanki.
Growing up.
Caraway is sown in rows with aisles of approximately 0.30 m in cover crops. After collecting the cover crop weed cumin. In the autumn pripahivayut rows. Seeds harvested at the stage when they begin to acquire brown. Plants mowed, knit in snopiki and put in the dryer. Dried snopiki threshed, and then finally dried fruit completely. The largest manufacturers and suppliers of cumin include: Holland, Egypt, CIS, Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Morocco, Canada and CHNR.
The chemical composition.
The fruits of caraway seeds contain 3-7% essential oil (Oleum carvi aetherum), the main component of which is carvone, 10-20% fatty oil, proteins, resinous substances, sugar, etc. The major components of essential oils – carvone and limonene.
The action.
In the pharmaceutical industry, cumin is used to make herbal medicines against flatulence, stimulating milk production and strengthen the stomach. In folk medicine, cumin is used in spasms of the digestive organs and headache. As a spice it, along with a characteristic taste, easy digestion of fat and heavy meals.
Application.
Cumin has a strong spicy and even pungent, spicy scent. Often part of the spice mixture. Used, in whole or ground. Ground cumin is used for dishes that are not subject to heat treatment – salads, pates, cheeses, etc. In general the form of cumin is used for making various products from the test, added in red beets, fresh and sauerkraut, in potatoes, soups, salads, cheeses, sausages, all types of fatty meat, cheese in – fish, especially cooked to crayfish and carrots, mushrooms in soups and cream soup, a soup with caraway seeds, soup and stew in Irish. No cumin and garlic cooking mutton is unthinkable. Requires no special explanation, and the fact that many would have lost the taste of bread, if he was not black and cumin.