Have you heard the rule of thumb that you should replace your spices and herbs once a year? I've heard that a lot around the new year, from multiple sources, and this only makes me deeply suspicious that there's some trade association behind it, sending out press releases and planted experts on the food channels and newspapers and so forth to spread the meme, so they can make more money. Spices aren't as expensive as they were once upon a time, and dried herbs are universally obtainable, and fresh herbs nearly so. But they're still expensive. I just counted, and we have 56 different spices or spice mixtures in our cabinet, not counting salts and peppers and our own mixed bottles, and neither am I counting refrigerated seasonings. Between $2 and $5 a pop, that's expensive advice to change your spices once a year. I'm not throwing out my individually-housed safron threads, at ninety-eleven dollars a pop or whatever they were, that's for sure.
Now, there's a lot of spices in our house we run through a bottle of more than once a year. This may vary with whatever trend or fad we're in the middle of, or happenings in the family (fewer hot cajun dishes, for instance, with spice-averse kids in the house). But when we ran out of ground nutmeg during the Christmas baking season, I did pause to consider the age of the spices in our larder.
The nutmeg jar was one of three spices we've had for at least 15, probably 19, years. The other two, ground clove and allspice, are pictured at right. We remember this because the store we bought them at (the old Swarthmore Co-op) had a distinctive brand with the recognizable design we haven't had at any of our other stops. Now, these spices, like our garlic powder and ginger powder, do not get a lot of use because we mostly grate fresh seeds or pods or whatever now. But a dusting of nutmeg in a pinch is a lot quicker out of the bottle, so they're still used.
I checked all three of these relics. The nutmeg was still perfectly fine on the bottom. The ground cloves were extremely pungent, the allspice seemed a little flat but increasing the amount seemed to compensate fine in the recipes we were using.
Where did this advice about changing once a year come from? It's easy to remember and a good idea for, say, smoke alarms. But spices?
Now, this is why your cookbook collection should include a lot of old cookbooks and old editions. Harold McGee, my oracle from "On Food and Cooking", has nice generic advice about handling and storing herbs and spices, noting that the freezer in glass is the best way to store dried aroma compounds (as he calls them), although as a practical matter a cool dark cabinet is fine. Yet he also maintains that whole spices "keep well for a year" and ground spices "for a few months." (I wonder if what I learned in medieval history is all wrong, about the years it took spices to travel over the spice routes to Europe, and how this was such a big incentive for European exploration, to reduce the travel time to a mere 6-18 months?)
This certainly makes sense to me, things degrade when exposed to light and air. But in a year? What kind of rule of thumb is that?
Well, I went back to my 1961 edition of Craig Claiborne (New York Times cookbook) and he, while quoting the spice trade association directly, has no hard and fast advice, rather saying that the shelf life is quite relative to the particular spice or herb. Claiborne does include a brief history of spices in the American kitchen, noting that fresh herbs and kitchen-dried herbs were a common thing from the 18th century, but had virtually disappeared by the 1920s, only to make a comeback after World War II in the newly cosmopolitan post-war culture. Here's what my venerable Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook says: "Spices should be stored in containers with well-fitting lids in a dark cool place, away from the heat of the stove. Red spices hold their color and keep their flavor longer if refrigerated. Whole spices retain their aroma and flavor almost indefinitely." (The new edition, by the way, has a lovely color plate of a lot of whole spices.) I can find no particular advice about discarding spices in my earlier cookbooks, which strongly suggests the home economy of the time said, hang on to the few spices you use. Certainly my grandparents' kitchen had some aged (and yes, I admit it, often some suspect) spices.
The evolution, now that we're a much more highly ingredient-aware food culture, seems to suggest that with a greater variety of spices in regular use, and the emphasis on freshness in the local/organic/whole-unprocessed/slow/sustainable end of things, maybe we consider throwing out spices and replacing them. Maybe. But I have a hard time doing this.
So, I will admit: maybe I should toss the allspice and buy a new jar, or use fresh allspice nuts and grind them. And that gigantic bag of Gram Marsala I bought at the Indian grocery for $2 five years ago, maybe it's time to toss that one, or at least plan on it since I use it about twice a year. But the nutmeg was fine to the bottom, and the ground cloves are most obviously still usable. Maybe it's good housekeeping to have annual schedules for things like rotating the kitchen spices and cleaning the bottom of your drawers and so forth, just to keep the discipline and not let things slip too far. But I think this is a blunt instrument of the calendar, and ignores the cook's nose and tongue when considering whether something is ready to be thrown out.
The same is most obviously true of things in your fridge. Ever throw something out of the fridge that seemed OK just because it had an expired "sell by" date? Sure! But that doesn't mean it's gone bad. The nose is still your best instrument here. Yes yes, I know, if we're talking about mayonnaise better to toss it out on the better safe than sorry principle, but if we're talking about pickles, I say use the sense of smell and sight and not the number on the package. "Sell by" dates are a game of chicken the manufacturers play with consumer safety against their bottom lines; the longer items can sit on the shelf, the better the profit margin due to lack of lost inventory, but a sickened customer is generally bad for business, and returned products are as well. So it's real clear that the "sell by" dates are not "will spoil by" dates.
So here's the aha moment I had: NONE OF MY SPICE BOTTLES HAVE A SELL-BY DATE ON THEM. God knows how long they've sat in the store before I bought them. Sure, they're "sealed" but they're not vacuum seals. A tight seal in my cupboard has got to be nearly as good as the original seal by the processor of the spice. This of course only means that you won't get sick or die if you eat old spice, not that it's tasty, but even so, "freshness" of dried spices is not on the table to begin with.
What probably is a good idea, and one I've started taking up in the last couple of years, is labeling your spices with the date when you buy them. That way you can use the buy date as extra data -- to supplement your nose and tongue, not replace them.
