Saffron
Saffron is the name given to the dried stigmas and part of the style of the saffron crocus, traditionally called Crocus sativus, which are harvested, dried, and used for cooking. Saffron has a pleasant spicy smell, and it contains a dye that colors food a distinctive deep golden colour. Safflower, Carthamus tinctorius, is often used as a less expensive substitute for saffron, as is turmeric, Curcuma longa, which mimics saffron's color well but has a very different flavour.
In European cuisine, Saffron is, for example, used in many Spanish recipes, including paella and Fabada Asturiana or in the most famous saffron-based Italian dish, the risotto alla milaneseand. Outside Europe, it is a vital ingredient of many Indian, Arabian or Central Asian dishes. In herbal medicine, saffron is used for its eupeptic, carminative, and emmenagogic properties.
The saffron crocus is a natural chromosome mutation, a sterile triploid variant of an eastern Mediterranean autumn-flowering crocus, C. cartwrightianus that may have originated in Crete. Being sterile, the plant must be propagated by human aid, lifting and dividing the corms. Saffron stigma found in Sumerian sites provide evidence that saffron was an article of long-distance trade before the Minoan palace-culture reached a peak in the 2nd millennium BCE. Written records show that saffron has been used medicinally in the treatment of 90 illnesses for over four millennia. According to recent research based on Minoan frescoes on the island of Santorini in the Aegean, saffron may have been used as a medicine in the 15th century BC. The word ‘saffron’ comes from the Arabic word asfar, or za‘faran, which means yellow.
The word ‘saffron’ in English is also used for a shade of yellow as well as to refer to the plant. Though it is the most expensive spice in the world, saffron has also been used as a fabric dye. Traditionally, clothes colored by this particularly luminous dye were worn by the noble classes, giving the plant a ritualized caste significance.
Spain and India are major producers of saffron. Saffron owes its fantastic price to the difficulty of extracting the stigmas of the crocus individually by hand and how many it takes to make up a given weight, because they are so small. To make a pound of saffron requires approximately 25,000 stigmas; each crocus contributes three.
In England during the 15th–18th centuries, saffron was grown extensively in parts of Cambridgeshire and Essex. The Essex town of Saffron Walden got its name as a market center for the saffron trade.
Saffron is, at least superficially, the subject of Donovan’s song “Mellow Yellow”.
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