Carvone
Also written d-carvone, l-carvone, carvone (caraway/spearmint)
Quick answer
The compound that exists in two mirror-image forms smelling of caraway and of spearmint respectively — the cleanest demonstration in food that the nose detects shape, not composition.
What it does
Carvone comes in two forms that are identical in every measurable respect except handedness, as a left hand is to a right. One smells unmistakably of caraway and dill; the other smells unmistakably of spearmint. Nobody who has smelled both would guess they were the same compound. This is the standard textbook illustration of why olfactory receptors must be detecting molecular shape rather than atomic composition, and it is also the practical reason caraway and dill seed taste related to each other and unrelated to mint despite sharing their principal aromatic.
How it behaves when cooked
Four properties of the molecule, and what they mean at the stove.
- Volatility
- high
- Fat solubility
- high
- Water solubility
- low
- Heat stability
- moderate
Carvone is volatile and fat-soluble and behaves as most terpenoids do — bloomed in fat it distributes, boiled in water it escapes. Two consequences are specific to these spices. Caraway is added whole to breads, cabbage dishes and braises where its seed coat protects the carvone through long cooking and releases it gradually, and ground caraway in the same dish is both stronger at the start and gone by the end. And dill leaf, which carries carvone alongside far more fragile aromatics, must be added at the end of cooking, while dill seed can be added at the beginning — the same plant, two ingredients, opposite timing.
Spices that carry it
Recorded on the compound rather than on each spice, so the two cannot disagree.
- CarawayPrincipal component
- Dill seedPrincipal component
- DillMajor component
- MintMajor component
Spearmint is carvone-led. Peppermint is not — it is dominated by menthol, which is a different compound producing a different cooling sensation, and this is the chemical basis of a substitution readers make casually and should not.
Not to be confused with
Compounds a reader is likely to take for this one, and why they differ.
Menthol
Peppermint and spearmint are routinely treated as interchangeable. Peppermint is menthol-dominant and cooling; spearmint is carvone-dominant and is not. Substituting one for the other in a dish built on either is noticeable.
Questions this page answers
- what is carvone
- what does carvone do
- which spices contain carvone
- what is d-carvone
- what is l-carvone