1,8-Cineole
Also written cineole, eucalyptol, 1,8 cineole, eucalyptol (1,8-cineole)
Quick answer
The eucalyptus-and-camphor note found in ten spices here — the compound that makes cardamom cooling, rosemary medicinal, and bay leaf recognisable in a stock you cannot see it in.
What it does
Cineole smells sharply of eucalyptus and camphor and produces a genuine cooling sensation in the mouth and nose, distinct from its smell — a trigeminal effect of the same general kind as menthol’s, though weaker. It is the compound that gives cardamom its cool lift, rosemary and sage their medicinal edge, and bay its clean penetrating quality. In excess it is the reason rosemary and sage taste soapy or like furniture polish when overdone: the threshold between aromatic and medicinal is narrow, and it is crossed by quantity rather than by technique.
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
Cineole is volatile but noticeably more persistent than limonene, and that difference in staying power explains a great deal of how these spices are used. In a long braise or stock the lighter, fresher aromatics of bay and rosemary disappear within the first half hour and the cineole remains, which is why a bay leaf is worth adding to a four-hour stock and a basil leaf is not, and why long-cooked rosemary tastes flatter and more medicinal than rosemary added at the end. In cardamom, where the cineole sits alongside a fruitier fraction, this is the argument for using whole pods and cracking them rather than buying ground: pre-ground cardamom keeps its cooling note and loses its sweetness, which is the wrong half. Cineole is also strongly fat-soluble, so rosemary and bay give far more to an oil, a butter or a fatty braise than to a lean poaching liquid.
Spices that carry it
Recorded on the compound rather than on each spice, so the two cannot disagree.
- Bay leafPrincipal component
- RosemaryPrincipal component
- Green cardamomMajor component
- SageMajor component
- AllspiceContributing component
- Black cardamomContributing component
Present, but overwhelmed by the smoke compounds acquired during drying over fire — which is why black cardamom is not a substitute for green and why the substitution fails in the smoky direction rather than the cooling one.
- GalangalContributing component
- Grains of SelimContributing component
- KorarimaContributing component
An Ethiopian relative of cardamom with a smokier, earthier profile in which the cineole is present but not the headline.
- LavenderContributing component
- Mexican oreganoContributing component
- MintContributing component
- TsaokoContributing component
Reads as medicinal here rather than as fresh, because it sits under the smoke acquired in fire-drying rather than over a sweet aromatic fraction.
Not to be confused with
Compounds a reader is likely to take for this one, and why they differ.
Linalool
Isomers sharing the formula C10H18O, one floral and one eucalyptus-like.
Camphor
They travel together in rosemary, sage and lavender and are jointly responsible for what people call the medicinal quality of those herbs. Camphor is the heavier and more persistent of the two and is what remains when a herb has been cooked too long.
Questions this page answers
- what is 1,8-cineole
- what does 1,8-cineole do
- which spices contain 1,8-cineole
- what is cineole
- what is eucalyptol