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A juniper berry is the female seed cone produced by various species of junipers. It is used as a flavoring agent in northern European and Scandinavian cuisine for meat dishes. Juniper is used to flavor gin, a liquor developed in the 17th century in the Netherlands. Juniper berries are among the only spices derived from conifers, along with ...
Juniper berries are a spice used in a wide variety of culinary dishes and are best known for the primary flavoring in gin (and responsible for gin's name, which is a shortening of the Dutch word for juniper, jenever). A juniper-based spirit is made by fermenting juniper berries and water to create a "wine" that is then distilled.
The Romans used juniper berries as a cheap domestically produced substitute for the expensive black pepper and long pepper imported from India. [10] It was also used as an adulterant , as reported in Pliny the Elder 's Natural History : "pepper is adulterated with juniper berries, which have the property, to a marvellous degree, of assuming the ...
The seed cones are the largest of any juniper, berry-like but hard and dry, green ripening in about 25 months to dark purple-brown with a pale blue waxy coating; they are ovoid to spherical, 20–27 mm (3 ⁄ 4 –1 in) long and 20–25 mm diameter, and have six or nine fused scales in 2–3 whorls, each scale with a slightly raised apex.
The cones are used to flavour certain beers and gin (the word "gin" derives from an Old French word meaning "juniper"). [26] In Finland, juniper is used as a key ingredient in making sahti, a traditional Finnish ale. Also the Slovak alcoholic beverage Borovička and Dutch Jenever are flavoured with juniper berry or its extract.
Juniper berries are used as a seasoning in cooking or in alcoholic beverages, [6] particularly to flavor gin. [ 8 ] [ 9 ] Juniper berries have also been used in traditional medicine for different conditions, although there is no high-quality clinical evidence that it has any effect. [ 8 ]
A small quantity of ripe berries can be eaten as an emergency food or as a sage-like seasoning for meat. The dried berries can be roasted and ground into a coffee substitute. [10] Utah juniper is an aromatic plant. Essential oil extracted from the trunk and limb is prominent in α-pinene, δ-3-carene, and cis-thujopsene.
The common metal bathtub in use at the time would have been ideal as would have been a ceramic bathtub, hence the name, 'bathtub gin'. However, since distillation is boiling and condensation in a closed apparatus, and cannot be accomplished in an open vessel such as a bathtub, stories of distilled alcoholic products produced in an open bathtub are likely untrue.