SPICEographyMaster your spice rack

Tools

The Spice Lab

Put specimens on the bench, set the parts, and read the instruments: the aroma molecules they share, the shape of the blend, and whether anyone already cooks it. 180 specimens, 255 molecules and 56 classic blends.

Specimen shelf

What's a bridge spice? Two spices that share no aroma molecules can feel unrelated. A bridge is a third spice that shares a molecule with each of them, so the blend has a thread running from one to the other.

The bench

Tap a jar to add it · ± sets the parts · up to 10 specimens

Spectrometer · shared aroma molecules

Balance gauge

Which way the blend leans: each specimen's sourced flavor descriptions, sorted into twelve directions and weighted by parts. The outline is scaled to the strongest direction.

Lab report

Awaiting specimens
Formula —

An empty bench

    Lab notebook

    Saved in this browser
      How the lab works

      Molecules. Each specimen carries the aroma and taste compounds its SPICEography profile names with a footnoted source: the main constituents of its essential oil, the compounds behind its signature smell, and the compounds behind heat or color. A molecule's description ("smells floral") appears only where a profile states it.

      Balance gauge. The gauge counts the flavor words each profile attributes to a source (warm, lemony, bitter, smoky and so on), sorted into twelve directions by a fixed word list, up to three per direction, and weights them by the parts on the bench. The outline is scaled to the blend's strongest direction. It shows which way a blend leans, not measured intensity, and a specimen whose profile gives no sourced flavor words adds nothing to it.

      Verdicts. Classic: every specimen on the bench appears in one documented version of a blend on the site. Uncharted: the specimens share molecules, but no blend on file combines them all. Loose bond: at least one specimen shares no molecule with the rest.

      Classic blends. Each version is a recipe or component list from a named source on that blend's page. Ingredients that are not single specimens on the shelf (nuts, nori, sugar) are listed as off the shelf.

      The figures come from the reviewed pages; see the editorial standards.