About EveryMasala

EveryMasala is a free guide to the spices and blends of the world, from every country and every kitchen, with India as one strong thread among many. It has pages on 306 spices so far, 67 blends and 88 more spices on the list to be written. The word masala means a mixture, and that is the idea: a spice is understood best next to the others it is cooked with, the places it grows, and the days it is used.

The aim is simple: anyone should be able to look up any spice and come away knowing what it is, where it grows, how it is grown and processed, how it is used at each meal, what it means in worship and celebration, and how to buy and keep it.

How it is arranged

Every spice is filed by region, country and, where the sources allow, by spice city, market or growing area; by part of the plant (seed, bark, root, flower, pod, leaf, resin); by flavour; by meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper, snacks and more); by spiritual use and by celebration. Blends are drawn as rings of their parts and made step by step, the calendar ties spices to the days that call for them, and the concepts explain the words.

Pictures and drawings

Photos come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences, each credited beside it. Every spice page also carries drawings made by EveryMasala from what the page itself says: its colour as a little pile, its shape, a heat meter on a scale from 0 to 5, and a ring chart for blends. The drawings are diagrams of a kind of spice. They are not portraits of one lot. No image on EveryMasala is made by an AI image generator.

What is live

Cooking today is rebuilt every day from the calendar: which harvests, festivals and feasts are on, what is coming, spices by meal for the hour you are reading, and a spice of the day. New spice pages are written every day, the news wire is checked every few hours, and every page is re-read against its sources over time.

How a page is made

Names and facts come from Wikidata and Wikipedia. The text is written afresh with AI assistance from those sources only: the facts are kept, the wording is ours. Every page is then compared with its source article, and a page that repeats a run of the article's words is rewritten or held back. Each page names its source and links to it and to its licence. A page is published only if it has enough to say; anything that falls short waits for a person to review it.

What EveryMasala is not

It is not a shop and it does not sell spices. It is not medical advice: traditional and medicinal uses are described as tradition, and anyone with a health condition, an allergy or a pregnancy should ask a doctor. It is not the last word on any cuisine: cooks, families and communities differ, and the people who grow and cook with a spice know it best.

Care

Spice is bound up with identity, faith and livelihood, and many dishes and blends are claimed by more than one country. EveryMasala lists a spice under every country it belongs to and reports disputed origins as disputed. The colonial and trade history of spice is told as it was, including the labour behind it. If a page about your food or your faith is wrong, write to us and we will fix it.

Who is behind it

EveryMasala is published by ClearTrust, a company that measures traffic quality for the advertising industry. ClearTrust pays for EveryMasala and keeps it free. EveryMasala is part of the ClearTrust IVT-Free Publication Network. IVT stands for invalid traffic: visits from bots and other fakes, which the network's sites are screened for. Editorial decisions are not for sale: sponsored placements are always labelled.

Get in touch

To suggest a spice, correct a page or ask a question, write to masala@cleartrust.cc.