The Apiaceae are a family of aromatic flowering plants with over 400 genera and 3,700 species.
Coriander fruits, Khan-El-Khalili spice market, Cairo. (Author)
The family has global distribution, but the largest number of native genera (including most of the well-known spices) occurs in the temperate Eurasian region.
They include numerous well-known herbs and spices, including anise, coriander, cumin, fennel, parsley and others. Carrots and parsnips also fall into this group. The family is also known by its former name of Umbelliferae, based on the common morphology of the flowers, which are arranged in terminal ‘umbels’, with short flower stalks spreading from a common point, resembling umbrellas or parasols. The group also includes a few highly toxic species, such as hemlock and giant hogweed.By nature of their general native distribution in the Mediterranean to Middle East/Western Asia region (Figure 2), the Apiaceae spices were among those available at the very start of civilisation (and food production) in the Fertile Crescent. Other centres of origin of food production arose in at least four other areas in the world, but the Fertile Crescent, which saw the earliest domestication around 8500 BCE, is the oldest.1
An interesting story illustrating this arose in 2019, when a team of international scholars recreated dishes inscribed in cuneiform writing on clay tablets from Yale University’s Babylonian Collection.2 These could justifiably be labelled the world’s oldest recipes. The tablets are all from the Mesopotamian region, covering parts of Iraq, Syria and Turkey, and three date from around 1730 BCE, while a fourth is about a thousand years later. One of the older tablets is mostly intact and contains a list of ingredients that correspond to twenty-five stews and broths; the other two contain a further ten recipes. Four recipes were recreated by repeated experimentation in a modern kitchen: Pashrutum (a vegetable soup containing kurrat (spring leek), leek, garlic, coriander, salt and sourdough bread); Me-e puhadi (a lamb stew with salt, dried barley cakes, onion, Persian shallot, milk, leek and garlic); Elamite broth (a blood-based broth with dill, kurrat, coriander, leek, garlic and sour milk); and Tuh’u (a borscht-type dish containing leg meat, salt, beer, onion, rocket, coriander (spice and fresh), Persian shallot, cumin, red beet, leek, garlic and kurrat).