Cloves

Whole cloves turn up in a narrower set of Greek dishes than cinnamon does, reserved mostly for slow braises and for the festive baking that clusters around Christmas, where they sit alongside cinnamon and allspice in the same general family of warm spicing. Corfu's pastitsada, reflecting the island's Venetian trading history, leans on this same combination more heavily than most mainland dishes do.

The whole bud, rather than ground clove, is standard practice, dropped into a simmering pot to release its flavour slowly over a long cook and removed before serving. Ground clove is sharp and can turn medicinal quickly if overdosed, which is presumably why Greek cooking has generally preferred the gentler release of the whole spice.

A little goes a genuinely long way. Two or three whole cloves are enough to season a large pot of stew for several hours, and doubling that quantity out of enthusiasm is one of the more common ways a home cook oversteps with this particular spice.