Nettle fake curry spice?

I was just tidying a cabinet where I keep a lot of half-finished projects and materials for projects (I imagine some of you probably have a similar piece of furniture, where things just tend to end up?) Anyways, in there is a paper bag of nettle fibres. Not retted, but raw dried bark that I've pounded and combed to get rid of most of the non-fibre material. I think there are fibres in there collected both one and two years ago.

When I took this bag out of the cabinet, I caught a whiff of curry smell, so of course I shoved my nose in the bag. It did smell more or less exactly like curry powder. Since I was wondering if my nose had bugged (it does happen) I asked my brother to smell it. He confirmed that it does indeed smell like curry.

Now, this has me wondering. I don't want to eat nettle fibres obviously, but maybe you can do something similar with the leaves? Grind them into a paste, dry it in cakes, and let them sit in a paper bag for a couple of years maybe? And then grind it into a powder, add salt and something spicy like peppers? Or maybe you could use the non-fibre stuff in the bark, to get a bonus product out of your nettle processing? I find this interesting anyways, I like curry spice. Did anyone else notice this?

Since it smells like curry, did you taste it to see if it tasted like curry?

Mr Google says dried nettle when brewed in a tea taste minty.

Tried a bit just now, and it's not entirely dissimilar from curry! Of course it doesn't have the pungent/peppery taste, but that I suppose one could get from another ingredient.

Was there any old curry spice hiding in the same closet?  I would just check before you put a lot of work into drying nettle leaves, although I have read that dried nettle leaves are good for top-dressing plants as a natural pick-me-up. I have done that in the past, and I don't recall a curry smell, but mine weren't in a paper bag.

Jay Angler wrote:Was there any old curry spice hiding in the same closet?  I would just check before you put a lot of work into drying nettle leaves, although I have read that dried nettle leaves are good for top-dressing plants as a natural pick-me-up. I have done that in the past, and I don't recall a curry smell, but mine weren't in a paper bag.

Nope. No spices in there, and the smell is only coming from those fibres. I checked again just now, and it's specifically from one of the fibre bundles, not from the others. Odd. I wonder if I did anything different with those than with the rest? Maybe they were picked at a very specific stage, or got attacked by some specific strain of bacteria or fungi before they were fully dry, or something... No clue.

Well, I might try to replicate this with nettle leaves anyhow. If they don't turn curry-ish, I like using dried nettles in bread and soups and things anyways. Nothing's lost.