Safrole
Also written shikimol
Quick answer
The principal aromatic of sassafras root bark, prohibited as a food ingredient in the United States — and the reason filé powder, made from the leaf, remains perfectly legal.
What it does
Safrole is the warm, sweet, root-beer-like smell of sassafras, with a resinous edge. It is the aroma most Americans over a certain age associate with old-fashioned root beer, which was flavoured with sassafras before the prohibition and is now flavoured with substitutes. In hoja santa it sits within a broader green, anise-and-mint aromatic that reads as much fresher than sassafras root does.
How it behaves when cooked
Four properties of the molecule, and what they mean at the stove.
- Volatility
- moderate
- Fat solubility
- high
- Water solubility
- low
- Heat stability
- moderate
For the two leaves in this catalogue that carry safrole, the behaviour that matters is not the compound’s but the leaf’s. Filé powder is added off the heat at the end of a gumbo because heating it after addition makes the dish ropey — a thickening property of the ground leaf entirely unrelated to its aroma — and hoja santa is used as a wrapper or a lining where its aroma transfers into the food by steam. In both cases the safrole is a minor aromatic contribution rather than the point.
Spices that carry it
Recorded on the compound rather than on each spice, so the two cannot disagree.
- Hoja santaContributing component
Present in an unrelated plant, part of a much broader aromatic profile in which anise and mint notes dominate.
- Filé powderPresent in small amounts
Ground sassafras leaf carries far less safrole than the root bark, and the leaf is not covered by the United States prohibition — which is precisely why filé powder is still sold and used.
Not to be confused with
Compounds a reader is likely to take for this one, and why they differ.
Eugenol
A close structural relative with an accepted intake as a flavouring. The pair is the clearest demonstration that regulatory treatment in this family turns on small structural differences rather than on family membership.
Myristicin
Another restricted relative, in nutmeg and mace. Both are regulated, by different authorities, in different ways, for different reasons — and neither restriction is a statement about the spices in a kitchen.
Regulatory position
Held on the compound, because the restriction is a fact about the molecule rather than about any one spice.
United States
prohibited21 CFR 189.180
Safrole, and sassafras bark and oil, are prohibited from use in food in the United States following carcinogenicity findings in animals. The prohibition covers the bark and the oil. Sassafras leaf, which carries far less safrole and is the raw material of filé powder, is not covered.
Safety
What the concern is. The dose, the population and the evidence level live on the spice profiles, which is where a reader with that question actually arrives.
The regulatory action rests on animal carcinogenicity data for the isolated compound and for sassafras oil. SpiceHQ records the prohibition, which is a fact about what is permitted, and records the leaf-versus-bark distinction, which is the part readers actually need. It states no dose response, because the sources here support none.
Questions this page answers
- what is safrole
- what does safrole do
- which spices contain safrole
- what is shikimol