Seven spice (sabaa baharat): the Levantine blend, explained

What's commonly in a seven spice blend

Recipes and trade guides commonly cite allspice, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, cumin and nutmeg as the core of a seven spice blend — with cardamom or ginger sometimes standing in for one of these depending on the household or the region. The "seven" is a naming convention more than an audited count, and no two spice houses land on exactly the same list.

What holds across nearly every version is the character rather than the exact roster: warm rather than hot, aromatic rather than pungent, built to season meat and rice without announcing any single spice by name.

That variability is worth being upfront about with customers, too — a shopper who grew up with their grandmother's seven spice will notice if a jar tastes different from what they expect, and the honest answer is that it's supposed to, because the blend was never standardized to begin with. Framing it as "a family of blends" rather than one fixed product sets the right expectation.

How seven spice is used

It's a workhorse all-purpose seasoning — a pinch browned into ground meat for kibbeh or kofta, stirred into stews and soups, dusted over roasted vegetables, or added to the pot when a rice dish needs warmth without heat. It plays the same role in a Levantine kitchen that a curry powder or a five-spice blend plays elsewhere: the one jar reached for when a dish needs rounding out rather than a single strong flavour.

In Gulf-leaning kitchens, a related but distinct blend often goes by the name kabsa spices rather than seven spice — related in spirit, but built around its own ratio for rice-forward dishes.

What we stock instead of a pre-mixed seven spice

The closest stocked equivalents in our range are Mixed Spices — a general seasoning blend mixed and ground in-house by AbdulRahim Mills — and Kabsa Spices, the related rice-dish blend described above. Neither is marketed as "seven spice" specifically, so if your concept needs that exact profile, say so in your inquiry: it's available blended to order, sourced on request through our supplier houses rather than held as stock.

Build your own from the ground-spice range

For kitchens that prefer to control the ratio directly, a house seven spice can be built from individually stocked ground spices — allspice, cinnamon, clove, coriander, cumin, nutmeg and ginger — all milled and packed by AbdulRahim Mills. The rest of the ground-spice range covers the household variants that swap in cardamom or extra pepper.

• Start with equal parts of allspice, black pepper and cinnamon as the backbone.
• Add smaller measures of clove, coriander, cumin and nutmeg to round it out.
• Adjust by dish — a kibbeh mix and a rice pilaf rarely want the exact same ratio, which is the main advantage of building your own over buying one fixed jar.

Sourcing it by inquiry

Whether you're building a house blend from individual spices or asking for a pre-mixed seven spice sourced through our supplier houses, the process is the same as the rest of the catalogue: add what you need to an inquiry with quantities, and one written quotation covers every line, typically within a business day. There are no list prices anywhere in the range.

It costs nothing to ask for products we don't list — see what happens when you request something not in the catalogue — and a finished seven spice blended to a specific ratio is exactly the kind of request our supplier houses are set up to handle. If your kitchen already has a ratio it trusts, note the proportions in your inquiry so the quotation reflects a like-for-like match rather than a generic house version.