Spices in Levantine cooking

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

Coriander's citrus character suits fish naturally and is light enough not to bury it. A standard component of Levantine and North African fish spicing.

Add alongside: Cumin, Garlic

Prawns and cumin recur from Goa to Veracruz to the eastern Mediterranean. Prawns are sweet and cook in two minutes, so the cumin has to be bloomed in the fat before they go in — added afterwards it tastes raw and dusty against them.

How: Bloomed in oil or butter before the prawns are added

Add alongside: Garlic, Coriander seed, Lemon

Cauliflower browns to something nutty and faintly sulphurous, and coriander seed's citric lift is the cleanest counter to the sulphur. It works where a heavier spice would simply pile on top.

Add alongside: Cumin, Turmeric, Lemon

Shakshuka, huevos rancheros, devilled eggs and Spanish tortilla all land here. Egg yolk fat carries the fat-soluble carotenoids well, so paprika colours and flavours in one step — but it must go into the oil or the sauce first, because sprinkled on at the end it is raw.

Add alongside: Onion, Tomato, Cumin

Aubergine is spongy and absorbs fat readily, which makes it an efficient carrier for anything bloomed in oil. Cumin is the base note from baba ganoush through baingan bharta to Sichuan yuxiang aubergine — three traditions that agree without contact.

Add alongside: Garlic, Coriander seed, Sesame seed

Roast aubergine is rich and slightly flat, and it wants acid rather than more depth. Sumac supplies sourness without liquid, which is the whole reason it exists as a seasoning and why a squeeze of lemon is not the same thing.

Add alongside: Sesame seed, Garlic, Yoghurt

Saag in its many forms. Spinach is mineral and slightly bitter, and cumin bloomed in fat gives it a base to sit on — without it, spiced spinach tastes green and thin.

Add alongside: Garlic, Turmeric, Chilli powder

Coriander seed is citric in its own right, so it amplifies orange rather than contrasting with it. Useful in marinades and cures where the orange would otherwise fade during cooking.

Add alongside: Fennel seed, Black pepper, Cumin

Sumac over labneh or thick yoghurt is standard Levantine practice. Yoghurt is already sour, so this is not acid on acid — sumac is fruity and tannic where yoghurt is lactic, and the two sournesses are distinguishable.

Add alongside: Mint, Sesame seed, Garlic

The Levantine answer, and a different idea from the European one. Spinach fatayer are seasoned with sumac and onion rather than with dairy: the sourness cuts the mineral edge directly instead of smoothing it over with fat.

Add alongside: Onion, Sesame seed, Black pepper

The Levantine treatment, and a corrective to thinking of allspice as a pudding spice. In mujaddara and stuffed vegetables it sits with cumin and cinnamon as a savoury warm note, which is how most of the world outside Britain uses it.

Add alongside: Cumin, Cinnamon (Ceylon), Onion

Roast broccoli browns to something nutty, and cumin is the earthy note that meets it there. On steamed broccoli the same quantity reads as heavy — this is a pairing that depends on the cooking method more than most.

Add alongside: Coriander seed, Garlic, Chilli flakes

Lentil, bean and squash soups across the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia all reach for it, and the reason is structural: a puréed soup is smooth and one-note, and cumin gives it a base to sit on. Bloom it in the fat before the liquid — added to the pot late it tastes raw for the whole meal.

Add alongside: Coriander seed, Garlic, Turmeric

Aloo gobi and roast spiced cauliflower are both built on it. Cauliflower browns well, and the browned flavours stand up to turmeric's bitterness in a way that boiled cauliflower does not.

Add alongside: Cumin, Cayenne pepper, Coriander seed

A North African standard — carrot salads and roast carrots with cumin appear across Morocco and the Levant. The carrot's sweetness and cumin's earthiness are a direct complement.

Add alongside: Coriander seed, Garlic, Mint

Hummus, falafel and chana masala all rest on it. Chickpeas are nutty and substantial enough to carry cumin at higher concentrations than most vegetables.

Add alongside: Coriander seed, Garlic, Paprika

Cardamom coffee is the standard preparation across the Arabian Peninsula, not a variation on it. Cardamom's cooling eucalyptus character cuts coffee's bitterness, and both are aromatically intense enough to hold their own.

How: Pods ground with the beans, or added to the pot

Add alongside: Saffron, Cloves

A standard of Turkish and Levantine grill cooking. Lamb fat is rich and distinctly flavoured, and sumac cuts it with clean acidity at the moment of eating — applied at the table rather than during cooking, which is the part that matters. A wet acid would not survive the grill or would steam the surface.

How: Dusted over grilled lamb after cooking; Shaken over the raw onion served alongside

Add alongside: Onion, Parsley, Black pepper

• Sumac loses colour and brightness under heat, so this is a finishing pairing rather than a marinade one.
• Salted commercial sumac will season the meat as well as sour it, and the salt in the rest of the dish should be reduced accordingly.

Sumac-dressed raw onion is a fixed accompaniment in Turkish and Palestinian cooking rather than a suggestion. The acidity tempers the harshness of raw onion — the same effect a vinegar soak has — while adding no water, so the onion stays crisp instead of going limp.

How: Thinly sliced onion tossed with sumac and left briefly before serving; Musakhan, where sumac-heavy onions are the body of the dish

Add alongside: Parsley

• Left too long the onion still softens; the dryness of sumac slows this but does not prevent it.

One of the clearest cases in the dataset of a pairing that exists for a textural reason as much as a flavour one.

Chickpeas are starchy, mild and slightly sweet, and readily taste flat. Sumac supplies acidity and colour on the surface, where it is tasted first, without thinning a purée the way lemon juice would.

How: Dusted over hummus with olive oil; Tossed through roasted chickpeas

Add alongside: Cumin, Sesame seed

• Stirring sumac into a purée rather than dusting it over the top loses both the colour contrast and most of the impact.

A Levantine and Turkish combination of an earthy base with a bright dry acid on top. They occupy entirely different parts of the palate — cumin is warm and low, sumac is sharp and high — so they layer rather than compete, which is why both appear in the same blends and on the same grilled plate.

Add alongside: Thyme, Sesame seed, Black pepper

• Cumin belongs in the cooking and sumac belongs at the end. Adding sumac early alongside the cumin wastes it.

A traditional pairing across Turkey and the Levant, in white cheeses rolled in the seed and in cheese-filled pastries. The peppery herbal note reads against a salty fresh cheese much as cracked pepper does, and the crunch is a real part of the effect.

How: Pressed onto the outside of a fresh white cheese; In the seed mix on a cheese börek

Add alongside: Za'atar herb, Sumac

• Uncooked here, which is the exception to the usual rule — on a cheese the raw seed is doing textural work and a toasted one goes soft.

Sourness is what oily fish wants, and sumac supplies it dry — so it can be scattered on at the end without softening a crust or thinning a dressing. It is a Levantine habit that transfers well to a seared steak.

How: Scattered over seared tuna with olive oil; In a dry rub with thyme and sesame

Add alongside: Za'atar herb, Sesame seed, Onion

Sourness is the other thing courgette wants, and sumac supplies it dry — which matters here more than usual, because courgette is already releasing water and a wet acid makes the problem worse.

How: Scattered over griddled courgette with yoghurt; In a courgette and herb salad

Add alongside: Yoghurt, Mint, Garlic

Fresh white cheese and labneh with za’atar and olive oil is a Levantine breakfast, and the pairing works because the herb is dry and astringent where the cheese is soft and lactic. The oil is not optional — it carries the aromatics that the dry leaf will not release on its own.

How: Scattered over labneh with olive oil; Pressed onto a fresh white cheese

Add alongside: Sumac, Sesame seed, Garlic

Recorded for the wider category of plain starches rather than for pasta specifically. Za’atar herb is at its best on something bland with fat and salt, and a plain wheat base — bread above all, but noodles and grains too — is exactly that.

How: Stirred into olive oil and tossed through; With lemon and olive oil on a grain salad

Add alongside: Lemon, Sesame seed, Garlic

Rubbed onto chicken with olive oil before roasting, which is standard across the Levant. The herb is robust enough for oven heat and the chicken fat carries it, so it behaves quite differently here from a delicate herb that would scorch.

How: In an olive oil rub before roasting; Scattered over grilled chicken with lemon

Add alongside: Sumac, Lemon, Garlic

Tomato and za’atar is a standard Levantine salad combination, and it is a relative of the Italian tomato-and-oregano pairing rather than a coincidence — these are close species doing the same job. The Levantine herb is drier and less sweet, which suits a raw tomato better than a cooked one.

How: On a raw tomato and cucumber salad; With olive oil over grilled tomatoes

Add alongside: Onion, Lemon, Sumac

The pairing the za’atar blend is built on, and the two do opposite jobs rather than reinforcing one another. The herb is savoury, dry and faintly bitter; sumac is sour and fruity. Neither carries the blend alone — the herb without sumac tastes flat and slightly dusty, sumac without the herb tastes merely sour — and the sesame that joins them supplies the fat and the body.

How: Together in a za’atar blend with toasted sesame; Both scattered over labneh, flatbread or roast vegetables

Add alongside: Sesame seed, Salt, Lemon

• The proportion matters more than the presence: sumac dominates quickly, and a blend that tastes sharp rather than herbal usually has too much of it.

The pairing the Levantine grill runs on. Lamb is fatty and strongly flavoured and can carry a spice used generously, which is exactly what Aleppo pepper is for — its moderate fruity heat seasons the meat rather than sharpening it, and the fat carries the fat-soluble capsaicin and carotenoids through.

How: In a rub for kofte and kebabs; Stirred into melted butter and poured over grilled lamb

Add alongside: Cumin, Sumac, Onion

Both are sweet, acidic and red, and the spice deepens the tomato rather than contrasting with it. Muhammara and the Turkish red pepper pastes are built on this, and it is why Aleppo pepper suits a tomato sauce where a hotter flake would simply sit on top of it.

How: In muhammara with walnut and pomegranate; Warmed in oil at the start of a tomato sauce

Add alongside: Garlic, Cumin, Mint

Eggs are rich and mild and take a visible finishing spice well. Scattered over fried or poached eggs with butter or oil, Aleppo pepper gives colour, a slow warmth and a fruitiness that ordinary chilli flakes cannot.

How: In the butter poured over Turkish poached eggs; Scattered over fried eggs with yoghurt

Add alongside: Yoghurt, Mint, Sumac

Aubergine absorbs fat and needs something with body to season it rather than something merely hot. The fruitiness reads through the richness where a sharper chilli would be lost in it.

How: In the oil before roasting; Scattered over a smoked aubergine dip

Add alongside: Garlic, Cumin, Yoghurt

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

About as close to universal as a pairing gets, and the reason is that chicken is mild enough to take the whole range garlic offers. The same bird accepts raw garlic pounded into a Levantine toum, whole cloves roasted to sweetness under it, and sliced garlic browned in the fat — three different flavours from one ingredient, and chicken is unassertive enough not to argue with any of them.

How: Whole unpeeled cloves roasted in the tin, squeezed out at the end; Pounded raw with salt and oil as a toum; Sliced and browned in the fat before the chicken goes in

Add alongside: Thyme, Paprika, Lemon

• Sliced garlic in hot fat goes from golden to bitter in well under a minute, and burnt garlic cannot be recovered from a dish.

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

Lentils are earthy and almost sweet and have very little aromatic character of their own, so they take a savoury base readily. Fried onion is the standard one from France to Bengal — in a dal it is often the finishing tarka as well as the base, and browned onion over rice and lentils is a dish in itself in Egypt and the Levant.

How: Browned and stirred through cooked lentils as a finish; Crisp-fried as a garnish over rice and lentils

Add alongside: Cumin, Asafoetida, Turmeric

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