Allspice is one of those ubiquitous things you probably know of but don't really know about.

Most kitchens have it in the spice rack, and if you take the top off, it'll smell a little like cloves mixed with cinnamon, nutmeg, juniper berries and pepper. The thing is, it's none of those things, and it's definitely not a mixture of any of them -- allspice is a fruit picked before it's ripe from a tree (the flowering tropical evergreen Pimenta dioica), dried and either sold as whole "berries" or ground up. It takes about 5,700 berries to make a pound of ground allspice .