Zingiberene
Also written alpha-zingiberene, zingiberene (sesquiterpene)
Quick answer
The sesquiterpene that smells of ginger — the aroma half of the rhizome, entirely separate from the pungency half, and the part that disappears in a long braise.
What it does
Zingiberene is the warm, woody, unmistakably gingery smell of fresh ginger, and it is a different thing from ginger’s heat. Gingerol supplies the pungency and zingiberene supplies the aroma, and the two behave so differently in cooking that a dish can have one without the other. It is also present in turmeric, which is the chemical reason turmeric smells faintly gingery — and the reason is not coincidence: they are close relatives in the same family.
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
- low
The split between this compound and gingerol is the single most useful thing to know about cooking with ginger. Zingiberene is volatile and heat-sensitive; gingerol is neither. So a ginger braise cooked for two hours loses its smell and keeps its warmth, which is why long-cooked ginger tastes sweet and mild rather than sharp, and why any dish that wants ginger to be identifiable needs ginger added near the end as well as at the start. Turmeric behaves the same way for the same reason: a turmeric dish cooked long keeps its colour and its bitterness — both non-volatile — and loses the earthy-gingery aroma that told you what it was.
Spices that carry it
Recorded on the compound rather than on each spice, so the two cannot disagree.
What cooking and processing were measured to do to it
Findings from studies in which this compound was followed through heat, fat, water, drying or storage. Each belongs to its study and its conditions.
Drying · Depends on conditions Zingiberene, ar-turmerone, β-turmerone (curlone), α-santalene, β-sesquiphellandrene, volatile oil
Essential oil yield was highest from freeze-dried turmeric, 4 per cent by volume, followed by microwave-dried at 3.3 per cent and infrared-dried at 2.7 per cent; sun, convection oven and vacuum oven did not differ significantly from one another. The oils fell into two groups. Freeze-dried and sun-dried turmeric kept large shares of sesquiterpene hydrocarbons, with α-zingiberene at 11.4 and 10.3 per cent and ar-turmerone at about 30 per cent. Oils from the four heated methods held only 2.4 to 3.5 per cent α-zingiberene and 49 to 53 per cent ar-turmerone, with sesquiterpene hydrocarbons falling from about 40 per cent to 13 to 16 per cent of the oil.
Conditions: in air · Six drying methods on unboiled slices; oil by hydrodistillation, composition as peak area
What this does not show: Compositions are shares of the oil by peak area, so a rise in ar-turmerone can reflect the loss of other constituents as much as a gain. Greenhouse-grown, unboiled slices from one harvest.
Measured on the spice
Drying · Depends on conditions Zingiberene, volatile oil
Among ginger dried by hot air, under vacuum, in the sun and by vacuum freeze-drying, the hot-air sample showed the highest content of volatile compounds and, in the authors’ words, the richest odour. The relative content of zingiberene was significantly higher in the hot-air sample than in the others.
Conditions: in air · Hot air, vacuum, sun and vacuum freeze-drying compared by headspace GC-MS and a fast GC electronic nose
What this does not show: Read in the abstract only, which gives no temperatures and no amounts. It disagrees with the study in which sun-dried ginger kept more essential oil than oven-dried ginger; that oven ran at 150 °C, and the two studies measured different things, headspace volatiles here and distilled oil there.
Measured on the spice
Not to be confused with
Compounds a reader is likely to take for this one, and why they differ.
Gingerol
The other half of ginger, and the one that behaves in the opposite way. Gingerol is non-volatile and survives long cooking; zingiberene does not. Nearly every practical rule about ginger follows from that difference.
Questions this page answers
- what is zingiberene
- what does zingiberene do
- which spices contain zingiberene