This post is a collection of pictures of various spices/powders found in the public spice cabinet in Alley 7 of the Dabney House at Caltech. Small pinches of each type of “spice” were taken from each bottle interest. Time: 4:00-6:00 pm, 5/2/19
For starters, we have a picture of cinnamon. We can see its brownish-reddish grains, pretty irregular in structure.
Next we have regular table salt. It is mostly transparent and has a slightly cubic structure, maybe a little hard to see due to clumping and grain size.
Now here’s pink Himalayan salt! You can actually see the slight pinkish color that is absent in normal table salt.
This above is pure ground black pepper…I’d imagine it to actually be darker and blacker but the grains turned out to be much lighter and variegated than expected.
One of my favorites! This above is turmeric. It has a very pretty yellowish color.
Not as exciting, but here is flour. It has small, translucent white grains as expected.
To follow up the baking spree, here is cocoa powder. In person, cocoa powder seems very soft and fine and I wasn’t surprised to see that the grains are extremely small at a more microscopic level.
Another one of my favorites! This is paprika! I really like the orangish/yellowish bits mixed in with the overall redness you expect from paprika.
Next is ground cumin powder. It does have a earthy yellowish color to the naked eye so it makes sense that the grains are a mix of yellowish, tan, and brown.
Lastly, I attempted to capture an image of dried basil leaves. They turned out a bit too dark and fuzzy for observation, but here was the attempt.
If it is of interest, here is the spice cabinet in person. I question the expiration date on some of these items.
