Quatre Épices and Chinese Five Spice Powder

[debodun]

Anyone heard of these spices? For the quatre épices, most recipes agree that ground white pepper and nutmeg are ingredients, but some include cinnamon, ground ginger, cloves and allspice in certain combinations. I looked at different recipes for Chinese five spice powder and some of the ingredients varied in that, also. I wounder which is correct, or is there no "set" recipe for these spice blends?

 

[Judycat]

Mine has cinnamon, star anise, fennel, ginger, cloves, white pepper, and licorice root. That's more than 5 spices for sure. I don't like this one because it has too much of the licorice flavor. It's called Dynasty for the brand.

 

[Lethe200]

No, there's no one definitive recipe for either spice blend. Many chefs concoct their own mixes anyway. One claims he uses 15 different spices in his "5 spice" blend.

I prefer a Herbs de Provence blend to the Quatre-Epices. I like True, or Ceylon, cinnamon, but am not a big fan of cassia, which is much cheaper and therefore often subbed for cinnamon. And I've noticed some of the Quatre-Epices blends getting too heavy on the cassia, as popular taste shifts ever further into over-sweetened flavors.

Five-Spice blends depend heavily on star anise, and neither DH nor I like star anise except in really, really tiny amounts. A less common variant is Seven-Spice.

As the saying goes, "A little is good....but too much is NOT better!"

 

[fmdog44]

Five Spice is the strongest spice I have encountered.