Spices in Greek cooking

Surprising to many Western cooks but long established: cinnamon appears in Greek beef stews such as stifado, in Moroccan tagines and in Vietnamese phở broth. Used in small quantity it reads as depth rather than as sweetness.

Add alongside: Star anise, Black pepper, Onion

• The margin between "adds depth" and "tastes like pudding" is narrow. Use a single stick, not ground cinnamon.

A defining combination in Moroccan tagines, Levantine rice-and-lamb dishes and Greek cooking. Cinnamon's sweetness balances lamb's fat and its slightly gamey character in a way that no Western pairing convention would predict.

Add alongside: Cumin, Apple, Saffron

The long braise is where bay earns its place, and beef is what is usually in it — Greek stifado, French daube, British stew. Hours of gentle extraction is exactly the treatment bay wants, and it lifts the heavy savoury background without ever announcing itself.

How: One or two whole leaves added at the start of the braise and removed before serving

Add alongside: Black pepper, Onion, Cinnamon (Ceylon)

• Remove the leaves before serving. They stay stiff and sharp-edged however long the braise runs.

Greek fakes is close to a demonstration dish for bay: lentils, olive oil, onion, vinegar and bay, with almost nothing else to hide behind. Pulses cook long and taste flat without an aromatic, and bay is the one that adds length without adding a flavour of its own.

Add alongside: Onion, Garlic, Black pepper

A slowly reduced tomato sauce is acidic and one-dimensional on its own. Bay is the standard corrective across the northern Mediterranean, and it works because it contributes length rather than a competing flavour — which is also why it is so rarely credited.

Add alongside: Black pepper, Garlic, Oregano

Court-bouillon and Mediterranean fish stews are built on it. Fish cooks too fast to take a long infusion, so the bay goes into the liquid first and the fish goes in after — one of the few cases where the aromatic and the main ingredient are never cooked together.

How: Simmered in the poaching liquid before the fish is added

Add alongside: Black pepper, Lemon, Parsley

The two things in almost every stock in European cooking, and the pair a cook reaches for without thinking. Peppercorns give a slow warmth and bay a resinous length; neither is identifiable in the finished liquid and both are missed if left out.

Add alongside: Onion, Thyme

Used together in some Mediterranean baking and charcuterie, where they reinforce rather than complement — both are anethole spices, so the combination is a matter of degree rather than of contrast. Worth knowing before adding both to the same dish expecting complexity.

Add alongside: Black pepper, Coriander seed, Orange

• These are not a contrast pair. Using both mostly makes the dish more anise-flavoured, not more interesting.

A pairing that runs from Greek and Levantine pastry through to spiced honey for cheese. Honey is floral and one-dimensionally sweet; cassia gives it a warm edge and makes it read as less cloying without reducing the sugar.

Add alongside: Cloves, Orange, Green cardamom

A Mediterranean pairing that runs from Provençal fish stews to Turkish and Greek cooking, and it is the same logic as fennel with fish: anethole is clean and sweet enough to lift a delicate fillet without burying it. Aniseed is the more delicate of the two and needs a lighter hand.

Add alongside: Fennel seed, Lemon, Saffron

The spice soup was made for. Bay wants long wet extraction and gives length rather than a flavour of its own, which is exactly what a broth needs and exactly why nobody can taste it when it is there.

How: Added whole at the start, removed before serving

Add alongside: Black pepper, Onion, Thyme

Recorded for enriched dough generally, which is where mahleb lives. Tsoureki, choereg and kahk are all egg-and-butter doughs, and the pairing is structural rather than decorative: an enriched sweet dough is rich and one-dimensional, and mahleb’s bitterness gives it something to push against. A bread made without it tastes flat rather than merely less almondy.

How: Ground into an enriched Easter bread dough; In choereg and other sweet breads

Add alongside: Green cardamom, Aniseed, Orange

• Grind it fresh — the gap between freshly ground and shop-ground mahleb is unusually wide, because the oil carrying the aroma is also what goes rancid.

Levantine cheese pastries use mahleb in the dough, where its almond-and-cherry note works against a salty fresh cheese much as a nut would. It is one of the few contexts in which the spice appears in savoury baking rather than sweet.

How: In the dough for cheese-filled pastries; In savoury breads with sesame

Add alongside: Sesame seed, Nigella, Black pepper

Recorded because the relationship is the whole logic of the spice. Mahleb is bitter and is used almost exclusively in sweet doughs and fillings — maamoul and kahk are very sweet, and the bitterness is what stops them cloying. Sugar and mahleb are not a flavour affinity so much as a balance the tradition depends on.

How: In maamoul and kahk fillings; In sweet enriched breads with a sugar glaze

Add alongside: Orange, Green cardamom, Sesame seed

Citrus zest is a standing partner in the same doughs, and the two work because they occupy different registers — mahleb is nutty and bitter, orange zest bright and floral, and together they give an enriched bread more dimension than either alone.

How: Zest and ground mahleb together in a tsoureki dough; In festival biscuit fillings

Add alongside: Aniseed, Green cardamom, Sugar

The base of an enormous amount of Mediterranean cooking, and the mechanism is acid against pungency. Tomato is sharp and sweet; garlic supplies the savoury floor underneath it. Long cooking suits the pair particularly well, because tomato needs time to lose its rawness and garlic mellows into sweetness over the same period.

How: Sliced into oil before the tomatoes, cooked gently; Whole crushed cloves in a long sauce, removed before serving

Add alongside: Basil, Oregano, Chilli flakes

Salt does two separate things to a tomato and both are worth knowing. It draws water out osmotically, which concentrates what is left and is why salted tomatoes sit in their own juice; and it sharpens the perception of the acidity and sweetness already there, which is why an unsalted tomato tastes flat even when it is ripe. Salting in advance and salting at the table produce noticeably different results from the same fruit.

How: Salted twenty minutes ahead for a salad, and the juice used rather than drained; Added early to a cooked sauce, where it draws water and speeds reduction

Add alongside: Basil, Garlic, Black pepper

• Salting a sauce before it reduces is the commonest way to oversalt one. Salt does not evaporate, so the seasoning concentrates in exact proportion to the water lost.

Dairy is where mastic belongs, and the reason is textural as much as aromatic. Ground into a hot milk mixture the resin dissolves and contributes body and a distinctive elasticity — the chew in Greek kaymak ice cream and Turkish dondurma — while the pine and cedar notes sit against the fat without being absorbed by it the way a delicate aromatic would be.

How: Ground and whisked into a hot milk base for ice cream; In milk puddings such as muhallebi

Add alongside: Mahleb, Green cardamom, Honey

• Add the powder gradually while whisking. Dropped into hot milk at once it clumps into strands that will not disperse.

Not a flavour pairing but a working one, and it appears twice. Mastic is sticky at room temperature and will gum up a mill, so it is pounded with a pinch of sugar which keeps the powder separate — the standard technique across Greek and Levantine kitchens. And in loukoumi and lokum the sugar syrup is the medium the resin sets into, where its elasticity is the defining texture of the sweet.

How: Pounded with a pinch of sugar to grind it; Dissolved into the syrup for loukoumi and lokum

Add alongside: Lemon, Green cardamom

• Take the sugar used for grinding from the recipe rather than adding it, or a delicate dessert ends up sweeter than intended.

Citrus is the standing partner for mastic across the Aegean and the Levant, and orange blossom in particular appears with it in the same breads and puddings. The pairing works because both are aromatic without being sweet: the resin supplies pine and a cooling edge, the citrus supplies brightness, and neither is competing for the sweetness the sugar is already providing.

How: With orange blossom water in milk puddings and spoon sweets; Zest and ground mastic together in an enriched bread

Add alongside: Mahleb, Sugar, Green cardamom