If you want to make crumbly, tasty, and especially fragrant cookies, I recommend these delicious spiced cookies with almond shortcrust and cloves.

In Greece, this cookie is called kourabiedes, and the uniqueness is the clove inserted in each cookie.

I preferred to use a lighter shortcrust, but the idea of the small clove (which, of course, is removed before enjoying the cookie) is nice.

Today, we talk about cloves with friends from herbs and flowers on the plate (at the end of the article, you’ll find the very interesting recipes with cloves from blogger friends).

How strange and beautiful is the clove, but do we know its origin and history?

The Syzygium aromaticum (or Eugenia caryophyllata) belongs to the Myrtaceae, comes from Indonesia, and is cultivated in tropical areas.

From the dried buds of this tree, we produce cloves because when dried, they take on that reddish color, resembling an iron nail. Therefore, there is no relation to the carnation flower we know.

It is said that cloves were found in the 6th century in France in a tomb, a small gold box containing two cloves. In the past, it was one of the most precious spices; in the Middle Ages, a handful of cloves was worth a sheep or half a cow.

Besides being a very fragrant spice widely used in cooking, the clove is valuable as a medicinal herb, used, for example, in Ayurveda for nausea and digestion. It is also widely used in TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) because it’s warming and useful for encouraging the flow of qi.

I often use it as a ground spice in mixes along with ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, while alone, I might use the clove in vegetable broths or with vegetable stews or soy.

I’ll leave you with some spiced recipes where I also use cloves in spice mixes.