The Unexpected Spice That Brings Out The Best Flavors In Chocolate

Many people associate chocolate with sweet treats, but anyone who's ever had a high percentage piece of dark chocolate can tell you that chocolate is an ingredient that's good for a lot more than just desserts. The cocoa butter and solids that flavor all chocolates have a remarkably earthy flavor that helps it to pair with a wide variety of unexpected flavors. Some of the earliest recipes centered around chocolate focused on these flavors and were paired with spices instead of sweets like marshmallows and caramel. One of the most unexpected of these great pairings is cumin.

Cumin is an earthy, warming spice with a hint of citrusy brightness that is common in many savory dishes. While there might be some debate about what constitutes a proper bowl of southwest chili, cumin is one of the few spices that have come to define its flavor. It also pairs extraordinarily well with chocolate and can lend a pleasing complexity to recipes featuring chocolate-like styles of Mexican mole.

These ingredients also have truly ancient origins that go back several millennia but would only be united for the first time about 500 years ago.

Cumin is a spice made by grinding the dried seeds of the cuminum cyminum plant into a fine powder. The oldest evidence of cumin seeds dates back 8,000 years. It's impossible to say whether the nearby Neolithic communities harvested these ancient seeds, but we know it was enjoyed by the ancient Egyptians and Syrians about 4,000 years later.

This spice wouldn't be introduced to chocolate for several thousand more years. Cocoa beans are native to Central and South America, where civilizations like the Maya and Aztecs cultivated them as a crop. Cocoa was most often enjoyed in an early form of hot chocolate that would have been flavored with water, cornmeal, and chili peppers.

Spanish settlers coming to this region in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would bring cumin to trade, and the spice would make its way into the regional cuisine. Chocolate and these spices brought by European traders would then define many of the region's most famous dishes. Adding cumin to chocolate brings out its natural, earthy notes for complex sauces and can help balance the sweetness present in many chocolate desserts.

One of the most fundamental foods that make use of this combination is mole. Mole is a variety of sauces commonly used in Mexican cuisine. One of the most famous of these variants is mole poblano which uses cocoa or chocolate to give it a deep, rich color and sometimes contains up to 20 ingredients (including cumin) to create a complex sauce that can be featured alongside roasted meats and other staples.

While cumin might not be at the top of many people's favorite hot chocolate toppings, it can serve as an earthy and robust complement to a sweet cup of cocoa. All it takes is a pinch sprinkled over the top to transform your hot chocolate into a drink with more complexity and character. Adding other spices like cinnamon and chili powder creates a style of Mexican hot chocolate that will keep you warm on even the coolest nights.

Cumin and chocolate also pair well in desserts like Great British Chef's chocolate and cumin fudge, as well as Moroccan chocolate mousse from Giada de Laurentiis. Both of these desserts use cumin's earthy zing to balance the richness of chocolate desserts.

These spices can also be added to other favorite recipes to create a mole or Mexican hot chocolate-inspired treat that will blow guests away.