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I was organizing and labeling my spices cabinet when I run into those two spices that I cannot recognize. I'm assuming one of them is fenugreek. I'm quite sure I bought them when I had 'Indian cuisine' phase.

Cropped & sharpened
enter image description here

Original - click for full size.
Seeds I don't recognize

The left item seems looks and feels like a chopped peanuts or bark. However it has a onion-like/garlic-like smell with some earth or bark component.

Maciej Piechotka
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  • Why not taste them? – Sneftel Nov 08 '20 at 08:08
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    @Sneftel because I haven't used them in long time so I don't know how to recognize them by taste? – Maciej Piechotka Nov 08 '20 at 08:51
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    Rather than taste (many spices don't taste how good expect in isolation), better to crush and smell them. Apart from taking a picture that's in focus, a ruler to give an idea of scale would make a big difference – Chris H Nov 08 '20 at 09:20
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    Could you post another photo? A clearer image and placing a pen near the spices will give us an idea of the size of it. – Nav Nov 08 '20 at 09:25
  • @ChrisH I could not recognize them by smell either (kind of like bark, earthy something). – Maciej Piechotka Nov 08 '20 at 10:00
  • Can you tell anything else about the item on the left? Is it oily, like a chopped nut, or more leathery like a dried fruit? If all else fails, you can try grinding some up to smell it, or even taking that ground up powder and putting it in some water or milk to try tasting it. – Joe Nov 08 '20 at 15:51

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Agree that stuff on the right is fenugreek.

The stuff on the left is asafoetida.

asafoetida chips

source

Asafoetida is a resin and is sometimes sold in chips as depicted. It smells strongly like onions or garlic which would not be true for any nut.

Willk
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It is quite hard to tell as the photo is blurry. The one on the right could well be fenugreek, it should be a blocky irregular shape with a division on it somewhere.

Edit: with the sharpened photos: It looks like a nut of some sort, possibly peanut because of the presence of what looks like a plumule (see 5th figure down page) in the flake at the bottom middle. I can't make out the one on the left, but it might be coconut flakes or possibly something like liqorice powder or even garlic flakes.

bob1
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    I think you're right on fenugreek, even though it's darker than I usually see. I think on the left could be just about *any* crushed nut. – Tetsujin Nov 08 '20 at 11:49