Spices are an important bio-nutrients for both food ingredients and nutritional supplements. From ancient times, spices have been used as food additives to enhance the taste and be flavor of food. Apart from these uses, spices also have numerous medicinal properties and used to treat several disorders that form an important part of the Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia (Indian System of Medicine). Spices have increasingly larger role to play in Indian recipes as the bactericidal, bacteriostatic, fungistatic, antifertility, anti-helminthic and other medicinal properties and also believed to aid digestion. In the traditional Indian system of medicine, more than a few spices and herbs have hold and possess several medicinal properties such as antithrombotic, anti-atherosclerotic, hypolipidemic, anti-inflammatory, anti-aggregatory, eicosanoid inhibitor.1 Cumin is popular as culinary spice and used in folklore therapy because the presence of aromatic substances in the herb. Cumin comes under the category of traditional spice from middle ages. It was too much popular, because of its peppery flavor. During the middle ages in Europe, cumin became as an icon of love and fidelity and also some people wants to carry cumin in their pockets to give in wedding ceremonies. Cumin is a small hairy, brownish in color, boat shaped seed plant that have a spicy sweet aroma property and powerful slightly bitter and pungent flavor.

In use for over 4,000 years, Cumin was mainly used for its digestive properties and as a spice. The ancient Greeks and Romans used it much as we use black pepper. In the Holy Land, people used it to pay their debts and taxes with it. In the Middle Ages, feudal lords sometimes paid their serfs with Cumin for services rendered, before it fell out of favor with Europeans as a spice; at the same time, it began to grow in popularity in South America. Cumin seeds are obtained from the herb Cuminum cyminum, native from East Mediterranean to South Asia belonging to the family Apiaceae—a member of the parsley family. Cumin seeds are oblong and yellow–grey. Cumin seeds are liberally used in several cuisines of many different food cultures since ancient times, in both whole and ground forms. In India, cumin seeds have been used for thousands of years as a traditional ingredient of innumerable dishes including kormas and soups and also form an ingredient of several other spice blends. Besides food use, it has also many applications in traditional medicine. In the Ayurvedic system of medicine in India, cumin seeds have immense medicinal value, particularly for digestive disorders. They are used in chronic diarrhea and dyspepsia.