Before refrigeration, spice was preservation. Before globalisation, spice was identity. The history of how Korean and Asian cultures developed their spice traditions is inseparable from the history of the cuisines themselves.
In Korea, the arrival of chilli peppers from the Americas via Japan in the 16th century fundamentally changed the cuisine. Before gochugaru, Korean food was less red, less intensely spicy. After it — kimchi, gochujang, tteokbokki — the spicy, red, fermented identity of Korean food was born.
Chinese Five Spice has its roots in ancient Chinese medicine, where each of the five flavours — sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami — was believed to correspond to different organs of the body. Cooking with all five was seen as nourishment in the deepest sense.
Lemongrass in Southeast Asian cooking traces back thousands of years — a spice that travelled trade routes long before the Europeans ever mapped them.
Every jar in your spice rack carries this history. Cooking with it is participating in something much larger than dinner.