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Spices and seasoning
All Containers›Shop by use case›Spices and seasoning›Tools and directories›The words, in the order you meet themShop all spices and seasoning →
Tools

The words, in the order you meet them

By Dwight Davis, Founder

Updated

On this page5

The vocabulary of this trade is small and precise, and most of it arrives in supplier conversations where not knowing a term is expensive.

Buying

ASTA cleanliness. The American Spice Trade Association's specifications limiting physical contamination by spice, written to meet or exceed FDA defect action levels.

Defect action level. FDA's published maximum for a natural or unavoidable defect before a food is considered adulterated.

Certificate of analysis. The document carrying cleanliness, volatile oil, treatment and lot. The thing to ask for by name.

Treated. In this trade, specifically a microbial reduction step: steam, irradiation, or ethylene or propylene oxide. Not cleaning and not drying.

The material

Volatile oil. The essential oil fraction, as a percentage. The trade's quality measure, with an ASTA minimum per spice.

Water activity. How available the water in a material is, which decides caking and whether anything can grow. Distinct from moisture content.

Mesh. Openings per linear inch in a screen. Higher mesh is finer powder.

Bulk density. Weight per unit volume. Why a correctly filled jar of leaf looks empty.

Making

Cryogenic grinding. Grinding with liquid nitrogen cooling, which preserves volatile oil that ambient grinding boils off.

Segregation. A uniform blend coming apart afterwards because components differ in size, density or shape.

Coefficient of variation. The measure of blend uniformity across samples. Lower is better.

Retained sample. A sealed sample of every batch, kept so you can taste what you actually made rather than what you meant to.

Packing and selling

Slack-fill. The difference between a container's capacity and the volume of product in it. Nonfunctional slack-fill is misleading fill.

Neck finish. The thread specification, written as diameter and profile, for example 48-400. Jar and closure must match.

Principal display panel. The part of the label the customer sees on shelf, where the identity and net weight must appear.

Cottage food. A state exemption permitting certain shelf-stable foods to be made at home, usually with channel and revenue limits.

References

American Spice Trade Association. Cleanliness Specifications for Spices, Seeds and Herbs, written to meet or exceed FDA Defect Action Levels. astaspice.org
Balasubramanian, S. et al. Key issues and challenges in spice grinding; Singh & Goswami, Design of a cryogenic grinding system for spices, Journal of Food Engineering.
Written from published specification and peer-reviewed work, not from a laboratory of our own. Your supplier's certificate of analysis, your own moisture readings and your state's rules override anything general said here.