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The spice saffron, as well as being famously expensive, is packed with antioxidants. It is said to help combat depression and lower blood pressure, to soften your skin and hair and is essential in a broad range of dishes from Swedish buns to paella. So what's stopping it becoming as fashionable as turmeric and cinnamon? Is it just its high price?

In my palm I have five tiny strands, like pieces of slightly fraying dark red sewing thread, which smell rather like a fruity tobacco.

Four of them I'm placing into a cup and dousing with warm water; they're destined for the cooking pot. The fifth I place on my tongue.

I'm told this taste test is essential to check that what I'm using is proper saffron. After all, if you've spent more than £5 for a gram of anything, you want to be sure it's the real thing.

And after a few seconds I'm gratified that, despite having languished at the back of my spice cupboard for quite some time, the tiny threads are still capable of imparting the heady floral aroma, the honey notes, and the slight astringency I've been promised.

And the strands in the water are leaching an orangey hue, as they should.

Saffron is central to national cuisines from Morocco to the Himalayas, essential to dishes from risotto Milanese to Kashmiri curry. As well as being a sought-after culinary ingredient the versatile spice is also increasingly being added to medications and cosmetics.

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What is saffron used for?

Cleopatra used it to infuse her bathwater.

Alexander the Great bathed his battle wounds with it and drank saffron tea.

In the 14th Century it was used to combat bubonic plague

It is a key ingredient in dishes from Spanish paella, to Persian rice dishes and Indian curries

It is added to products from coffee to salt, skin creams to shampoos.

Saffron has been used in traditional medicine to treat menstrual problems, depression, asthma and sexual dysfunction

It has been trialled in research for conditions from memory loss to cancer, but the evidence so far is inconclusive