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My exploration into Tea India’s Chai blends continues today with Cardamom Chai. It’s nice to see cardamom taking a lead in a spice-blend brew for a change. It’s quite the secondary character on the spice rack compared to the showy attention-grabbing antics of, say, cinnamon and ginger. We all know what ginger and cinnamon taste like but you’d have to be quite the foodie to declare of something: “You can really taste the cardamom in this!”
It makes for an interesting taste experience. Unlike its coconut counterpart, Cardamom Chai very definitely tastes like a chai tea, which is odd because none of the usual ingredients are here. The ingredients are simply Assam tea, cardamom and natural cardamom flavour.
The ‘flavouring’ part of the ingredients list is a bit weird, isn’t it? Surely cardamom is already a flavouring. It’s a spice. Flavouring stuff is literally its job.
This has sent me down a rabbit hole of internet research, trying to understand what natural flavourings actually are and how they differ from non-specific (usually artificial) flavourings. Bird & Blend have a pretty good explanation on their website, if you’re interested. According to the USAID Environmental Working Group (which isn’t terribly impressed with flavouring in any of its forms):
The EU has produced a 116 page document on flavouring regulations, if you want some really good bedtime reading. This contains a brilliant flavour wheel example, which lists the elements of ‘strawberry flavour’ as ‘fruity, green, juicy, ripe, jammy, and caramel’. It then explains the chemical processes required to make it riper or more jammy.
Blends Limited, a trade supplier of colourings and flavourings, list dozens and dozens of different flavourings on its website. Interestingly, one of these is ‘tea flavour’ which means, hypothetically, it should be possible to produce a cup of tea that doesn’t have any tea in it at all.
Not that I am accusing Tea India of such shenanigans. Cardamom Chai is a gorgeous, rich, mellow chai that will be a welcome addition to my tea shelf. I do like Masala Chai better though.
I know I compared Tea India’s Chai collection to a sitcom last time but now I think they might be a RomCom. Cardamom Chai is the heroine’s best friend, who is almost right for her but not quite. And who, magnanimously, step steps back in order to pave the path for her one true love. In a world where Masala Chai is Prince Charming, Cardamom Chai is Buttons.
Today’s featured book is Something Childish But Very Natural by Katherine Mansfield.
