Home
Вход
Регистрация
Red gold: The world's most expensive spice - Carolyn Beans - Video học tiếng Anh
Практика аудирования
Практика аудирования
/
Video
/
TED-Ed
/
Red gold: The world's most expensive spice - Carolyn Beans
Red gold: The world's most expensive spice - Carolyn Beans
Выберите режим обучения:
Посмотреть субтитры
Выбрать слово
Переписать слово
Highlight:
3000 Oxford Words
4000 IELTS Words
5000 Oxford Words
3000 Common Words
1000 TOEIC Words
5000 TOEFL Words
Субтитры (149)
0:00
[music]
0:05
[music]
0:06
>> Spices are often far pricier
0:09
proportionately than the foods they
0:11
flavor, [music]
0:12
but one's cost has long topped them all.
0:16
Saffron's [music] red threads regularly
0:19
run at rates over $600
0:22
an ounce. So, why is this so-called red
0:26
gold so expensive?
0:28
Spices come from [music] different plant
0:31
parts. Saffron is the only one made of
0:34
flower stigmas. They're plucked from a
0:37
flowering plant called a crocus.
0:40
Different crocus species [music]
0:42
dot countrysides across Eurasia and
0:45
North Africa, and it appears that humans
0:48
began harvesting wild crocuses quite a
0:51
way back.
0:52
Ancient cave paintings in what's now
0:55
[music] Iraq derived colors from crocus
0:58
pigments.
0:59
However, this paint was probably created
1:02
with a different [music] type of crocus
1:04
because it's thought that the saffron
1:06
crocus developed [music]
1:08
relatively recently when a single wild
1:11
crocus produced a seed
1:13
>> [music]
1:13
>> carrying an extra set of chromosomes.
1:16
This mutation resulted in a flower with
1:19
especially [music]
1:20
long stigmas that packed high
1:23
concentrations of three compounds of
1:26
interest: crocin, [music] which lends
1:28
saffron its vibrant hue and makes an
1:31
effective dye, picrocrocin, [music]
1:34
which gives saffron its characteristic
1:36
taste, and saffronal, which imparts its
1:40
hay-like aroma.
1:42
The plant's added chromosomes also made
1:45
it sterile, so it could have simply come
1:48
and gone from the face of the Earth
1:50
pretty quickly. But scientists think
1:53
that people long ago recognized this
1:56
unique crocus qualities.
1:58
And while it couldn't reproduce sexually
2:00
[music] by seed, it could spread through
2:03
its corm, an underground stem-like plant
2:08
organ that can asexually [music]
2:10
generate new growth.
2:12
It seems people began propagating it
2:14
themselves, separating and cultivating
2:17
new corm growths.
2:20
Today's commercial saffron comes from
2:23
crocuses that are all functionally twins
2:26
from this single clonal line. Scientists
2:30
think the original plant first emerged
2:32
in southern [music] Greece. Exactly when
2:35
is unclear, but over 3,500
2:38
year-old Greek frescos depict women
2:41
harvesting the spice.
2:43
And saffron fields in modern-day Iran
2:46
seem to trace back at [music] least
2:49
3,000 years.
2:51
Before long, ancient Persian people were
2:54
stirring the spice into foods,
2:56
freshening up with saffron-infused
2:58
perfume, and draping [music] themselves
3:01
in saffron-tinged fabrics.
3:04
Ancient Greeks spread the spices
3:06
sensuous smell in courts, theaters, and
3:09
baths.
3:11
And in 4th [music] century BCE Persia,
3:14
Alexander the Great became smitten with
3:16
saffron and recommended it in baths to
3:19
treat battle wounds.
3:21
Legend says Cleopatra likewise achieved
3:25
glowing skin from soaking in the spice.
3:28
And around the 9th century, Islamic
3:30
rulers lavished each other with saffron
3:33
gifts during prisoner exchanges and
3:36
other diplomatic ventures.
3:38
Persian physician Ibn Sina included
3:41
saffron in his Canon of Medicine circa
3:44
1025 as an aphrodisiac and treatment for
3:49
ailments like depression, asthma, and
3:51
inflammation. Meanwhile, a Tibetan text
3:55
boasted saffron's immune-strengthening
3:58
and beauty-intensifying [music] powers.
4:01
In 1300s Europe, saffron was a purported
4:04
antidote to the plague.
4:06
Many of these historical accounts of
4:08
saffron's health benefits don't hold up
4:11
or are overblown, but saffron has indeed
4:14
proved to have anti-inflammatory [music]
4:17
and antioxidant properties.
4:20
In medieval Nuremberg, the [music]
4:22
government appointed inspectors to check
4:25
for saffron fraud and dole out
4:27
punishments [music]
4:28
as extreme as the death penalty. While
4:31
in the early 1700s, settlers brought
4:34
saffron to North America, where it
4:36
fetched the same price as gold at the
4:39
Philadelphia exchange. Saffron's pricey
4:42
preciousness, then and now, comes down
4:45
to its production. Most of the work
4:47
required to produce [music] saffron is
4:50
squeezed into the crocuses' roughly
4:52
two-week flowering window. Workers often
4:55
begin at dawn, hand-picking the
4:57
crocuses, usually before they blossom to
5:01
prevent wilting and preserve [music]
5:02
potency. Then, they pluck the three
5:05
stigmas from each flower and dry them.
5:09
They must process [music] around 150,000
5:12
flowers, the equivalent of over 400
5:15
hours of labor, to produce a single
5:17
kilogram of saffron.
5:20
A little goes a long way in what have
5:22
become some of saffron's [music]
5:24
signature dishes, a few threads infusing
5:27
whole trays of tahchin, pans of paella,
5:30
and bowls of bouillabaisse. [music]
5:33
But the spice's price has stayed
5:35
astronomical. Over generations, [music]
5:38
farmers have selectively bred many other
5:41
domesticated crops [music] to maximize
5:43
yields and other desirable traits.
5:46
However, because saffron crocuses
5:48
[music]
5:49
are all sterile clones, they've remained
5:52
largely unchanged, as have [music] their
5:55
labor-intensive, low stigma yields.
5:58
Some researchers [music] are
6:00
investigating experimentally inducing
6:02
mutations,
6:04
but environmental instability has made
6:06
harvests increasingly unreliable,
6:09
threatening the saffron crop and the
6:11
traditional livelihoods that have
6:14
painstakingly kept the miraculous mutant
6:16
alive for [music] millennia.
6:22
Ready to keep learning? Watch these
6:24
videos to either challenge what you
6:26
think you know, or learn more about what
6:28
you don't. Subscribe and stay curious.
6:37
>> [music]
