Spices in Vietnamese cooking

The backbone of Chinese red-braised pork and char siu, where cassia's assertive sweet-hot character stands up to long braising in soy and sugar. Ceylon cinnamon is too delicate for this job and will disappear.

How: Whole scroll in a red-braising liquid; In a five-spice rub for roast pork belly

Add alongside: Star anise, Sichuan pepper, Chinese five spice

• Easily overdone in a braise — one scroll is usually enough for a large pot.

The dominant note of Chinese red-braised pork. Anethole is powerful and sweet, and pork fat carries it through a long braise better than almost any other meat.

Add alongside: Cassia, Ginger, Sichuan pepper

• Two or three whole stars is plenty for a large braise; more and the dish tastes only of aniseed.

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.

The Chinese answer, and a good one: white pepper's sharpness cuts prawn sweetness without adding the woody aroma black pepper would. It is also invisible, which matters in a pale dish where black flecks read as grit.

Add alongside: Ginger, Garlic, Sesame seed

The standard East Asian treatment for a mild fish: ginger simmered with it in Japanese nitsuke, steamed over it in Cantonese cooking. It suppresses the fishy note without adding a flavour strong enough to bury a delicate fillet, which is a narrow target most spices miss.

Add alongside: White pepper, Garlic, Sesame seed

The core of Chinese five spice and of red-braising. Both are assertive and sweet-aromatic, and both survive long cooking, which is why they define braises rather than being lost in them.

Add alongside: Sichuan pepper, Fennel seed, Ginger

The defining aromatic of phở broth and of Chinese beef braises. Beef has enough flavour to argue with most spices, and star anise is one of the few that can hold a position against it over several hours of simmering without either fading or turning bitter.

How: Whole stars toasted then simmered in a long-cooked broth and strained out; Red-braising with soy and rock sugar

Add alongside: Cassia, Ginger, Cloves

• Because it does not fade, the quantity that tastes right at twenty minutes will be too much at three hours. Judge the dose against the intended cooking time, not against the first taste.

The most widely used aromatic pair in the world, and in South Asian cooking often literally one ingredient — ginger-garlic paste, pounded together and used as the base of an enormous range of dishes. Ginger is sharp and citric where garlic is sulphurous and sweet, and each covers what the other lacks.

How: Pounded together into ginger-garlic paste; Sliced or minced and fried at the start of a stir-fry

Add alongside: Onion, Chilli powder, Turmeric

• Both burn quickly and bitterly in hot fat. They go in after the pan has come off the fiercest heat, not before.
• This is a fresh-ginger pairing. Ground ginger and garlic powder are not the same combination and do not behave the same way.

A standard of Chinese and Japanese fish cookery. Ginger is used specifically to counter the smell of fish — an explicit purpose in the culinary literature rather than an incidental effect — and its citric sharpness cuts the oiliness of salmon at the same time.

How: Julienned with spring onion over steamed fish; In a soy and rice wine marinade

Add alongside: Onion, White pepper, Fennel seed

• Fresh ginger only. Ground ginger against salmon tastes of baking spice and is a well-known way to spoil a good fillet.

The defining pairing of Chinese roast duck, and it works for a structural reason rather than a poetic one: duck carries a great deal of fat, anethole is fat-soluble, and the anise aroma disperses through rendered duck fat in a way it cannot through a lean meat. It also stands up to the long slow cooking duck needs.

How: In a five-spice rub for roast duck; Whole in a braising liquid for duck legs

Add alongside: Cassia, Sichuan pepper, Chinese five spice

• Easily overdone — one or two stars is enough for a whole bird.

Tom yum and the Malay sour prawn curries both run on it. Prawns are sweet and faintly mineral, and galangal’s pine-and-citrus sharpness cuts that sweetness in a way ginger cannot — ginger would meet the sweetness and compound it.

How: Sliced into a tom yum broth; Pounded into a paste for a prawn curry

Add alongside: Lemongrass, Chilli flakes, Tamarind

Prawns cook in two or three minutes, which is exactly the window in which sliced garlic gives its best. The pairing is documented across the Mediterranean and Southeast Asia independently — gambas al ajillo, scampi, garlic prawns over rice — and it works because prawn sweetness needs something pungent against it rather than something aromatic alongside it.

How: Sliced into warm oil, then prawns added before it colours; With chilli and parsley, off the heat

Add alongside: Chilli flakes, Parsley, Lemon

• The timings fight each other: garlic wants low heat and prawns want high. Start the garlic in cool oil and bring both up together.

Documented across Thai, Vietnamese and Malay cooking, and it works because lemongrass gives citrus aroma without acidity. Lemon juice on chicken firms the surface and changes the texture; lemongrass gives the same bright register with none of that, which is why it can go into a marinade for hours or into a broth for minutes and do no harm either way.

How: Pounded to a paste with garlic and chilli as a marinade for grilled chicken; Bruised stalks in a poaching broth, removed before serving

Add alongside: Garlic, Galangal, Turmeric

• Only the pale lower stem is worth using; the dry upper leaf gives fibre and very little aroma.

Tom yum is the documented case and the mechanism generalises: prawns are sweet and faintly iodic, and the citral in lemongrass cuts both without adding the acid that would start cooking them. In a hot-and-sour broth it is the aromatic doing the lifting while lime juice does the souring — the two are usually assumed to be one thing and are not.

How: Bruised stalks simmered in the broth with galangal and lime leaf; Finely sliced raw through a warm prawn salad

Add alongside: Galangal, Chilli flakes, Coriander leaf

• Sliced raw it must be cut very thinly across the grain, or the fibres are unpleasant to eat.

A delicate fish is the case where lemongrass has the clearest advantage over lemon: it perfumes without acidifying, so the flesh stays soft. Steaming or grilling in a leaf parcel with bruised stalks underneath is the standard Southeast Asian treatment and puts the aroma into the fish without any liquid at all.

How: Bruised stalks laid under a whole fish for steaming or grilling; In a coconut broth for poached fish

Add alongside: Galangal, Turmeric, Coriander leaf

• Long boiling drives off the fresh top note and leaves the duller, more resinous part behind.

The defining aromatic pair of Thai cooking, and they are partners precisely because they share nothing: lemongrass is citric from citral, galangal piney and camphorous from cineole. Neither substitutes for the other and a paste built on one alone is recognisably missing an axis. Recording the pair is the useful correction to the widespread assumption that they are two versions of the same thing.

How: Both pounded into a curry paste; Both bruised into a tom kha or tom yum broth

Add alongside: Turmeric, Chilli flakes, Garlic

The standing use across East and Southeast Asian home cooking, where chicken powder — MSG with salt and chicken extract — is a pantry staple. Chicken is mild and takes savoury depth without a competing flavour, which is exactly the case MSG suits: it makes the stock taste longer-simmered without introducing anything identifiable.

How: Dissolved into a chicken stock or braise with the salt; In a marinade for fried chicken, alongside salt and pepper

Add alongside: White pepper, Garlic, Ginger

• Add it with the salt rather than instead of it. The two are different tastes and neither reaches the other’s ceiling.

Documented across Thai, Malay and Vietnamese cooking, and the reason is that prawn sweetness needs a sharp rather than a broad heat. Bird's eye arrives immediately and clears, so it cuts through without sitting on the palate for the next mouthful — the opposite of what a superhot would do to a delicate shellfish.

How: Pounded with garlic and lime into a dipping sauce for grilled prawns; Sliced raw into a warm prawn salad

Add alongside: Lemongrass, Garlic, Lemon

• Pounding spreads the placental heat through the whole sauce, so a pounded dressing eats considerably hotter than the same pods sliced.

Two separate traditions arrive at the same pairing: Thai grilled and stir-fried chicken with prik kee noo, and Portuguese-African peri-peri chicken made from the same pepper under another name. Chicken is mild enough that the chilli defines the dish, and both traditions use garlic and acid alongside it for the same reason — to carry the heat rather than to temper it.

How: Pounded with garlic and vinegar as a peri-peri marinade for grilled chicken; Sliced into a basil chicken stir-fry at the end

Add alongside: Garlic, Basil, Lemon

• In a marinade the heat penetrates and cannot be removed later, so err low and serve more chilli alongside.

Pad kaphrao is the documented case and the combination is specific: Thai holy basil is peppery and clove-like rather than sweet, and bird's eye supplies a sharp heat that sits beside that pepperiness rather than covering it. The pairing works far less well with the sweet Genovese basil most Western shops sell, which is worth knowing before attempting the dish.

How: Pounded with garlic and fried at the start, with basil thrown in at the end; Both stirred through a finished stir-fry off the heat

Add alongside: Garlic, Lemon

• Holy basil and sweet basil are different plants with different flavours. Substituting one for the other changes the dish more than changing the chilli would.

Documented across Thai, Malay and Indonesian cooking, and the mechanism is the one that makes this leaf worth having: it supplies lime aroma without acidity. Chicken takes citrus well and firms unpleasantly under acid, so a marinade or a broth flavoured with the leaf gets the fragrance of lime peel while the texture is untouched.

How: Torn into a coconut chicken curry and removed before serving; Pounded into a curry paste with lemongrass and galangal

Add alongside: Lemongrass, Galangal, Garlic

• Tear the leaves. An intact leaf dropped into a pot releases very little, because the oil is inside the tissue rather than on the surface.

The one pairing in this dataset where the mechanism is not an analogy. Pandan’s dominant aroma compound, 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, is the same compound that gives basmati and jasmine rice their scent, and it is present in the leaf at far higher concentration. A knotted leaf in the pot therefore does not merely sit alongside the rice — it supplies more of exactly what fragrant rice already smells of, which is why ordinary long-grain rice cooked with pandan reads as a better grade of rice.

How: A knotted leaf cooked in the rice pot and removed before serving; In coconut rice and nasi lemak

Add alongside: Lemongrass, Curry leaf

• Knot the leaf. An intact leaf laid in whole releases very little, because the aroma is held in cells that need rupturing.

Pandan is the default sweet aromatic of Southeast Asia, occupying the position vanilla holds in European baking, and its natural partner is palm sugar. The pairing carries the whole family of kuih, the coconut jam kaya, and most of the region’s syrups and cold drinks. The leaf’s grassiness keeps a heavily sweetened preparation from cloying, which is the work it is actually doing.

How: Steeped into palm sugar syrup; Blended and strained into kuih and cake batters; In kaya, the coconut and egg jam

Add alongside: Vanilla, Green cardamom

Southern Italian cooking pairs the two constantly, and Thai cooking pairs their equivalents even harder. Basil’s sweetness and cooling quality read as relief against capsaicin heat, which is the same job coriander does in Mexican food and mint does in South Asian.

How: Chilli bloomed in the oil, basil torn in at the end; In a Thai stir-fry, where holy basil goes in with the heat

Add alongside: Garlic, Tomato

• Thai basil and holy basil survive the heat of a wok; Italian sweet basil does not.

Prawns are sweet and faintly mineral, and coriander’s citric aldehydes read against them the way lime does — which is why the three appear together across Thailand, Vietnam, Mexico and coastal India. It goes on raw and at the end; cooked coriander adds nothing here.

How: Scattered raw over a prawn curry or ceviche; Root pounded into the paste, leaves added at the end

Add alongside: Chilli flakes, Lemongrass, Lemon

Coriander is the standard counterweight to capsaicin across Mexico and South and Southeast Asia. Capsaicin is a heat signal that builds and lingers; coriander’s cooling citric quality does not remove it but changes what the mouth does with it, in the same way mint does in South Asia and basil does in Thailand.

How: Both into a fresh salsa; Chilli in the cooking, coriander on top

Add alongside: Cumin, Garlic, Lemon

Tofu has nothing to defend, which means it can carry heat that would flatten a meat dish. Chinese, Korean and Southeast Asian tofu cooking all take this route, and the reason is structural rather than cultural: with no competing flavour, the chilli is not covering anything up.

How: Bloomed in oil at the start of a braise; In a gochujang-based Korean stew

Add alongside: Garlic, Ginger, Sichuan pepper

Ginger is sharp, immediate and slightly sweet, and it does two jobs here: it supplies a top note the tofu cannot, and it works against the faintly beany quality of the soy that some people notice and dislike.

How: Grated into a dressing for cold silken tofu; With spring onion and soy over fried tofu

Add alongside: Garlic, Chilli flakes, Sesame seed

The Chinese route, and a completely different one. Star anise in a red-braising liquid or a char siu marinade gives ribs a sweet aromatic depth that no barbecue rub attempts, and anethole is one of the few aromatics assertive enough to penetrate rather than sit on the surface.

How: In a red-braising liquid with soy and sugar; In a char siu marinade with five-spice

Add alongside: Cinnamon (Ceylon), Sichuan pepper, Ginger

Singapore chilli crab, and the Chinese and Southeast Asian tradition of cooking crab hard in a sauce rather than boiling it. The sauce mediates rather than the shell, and the sweetness of the crab is met by an equally sweet chilli sauce rather than counterweighted.

How: Bloomed in oil for a chilli crab sauce; With garlic and ginger in a stir-fried crab

Add alongside: Ginger, Garlic, Sichuan pepper

Both are fixtures of Chinese red-braising and of the master stock, and they divide the work: star anise supplies the sweet anise aroma and dried peel supplies a bitterness that stops the soy and rock sugar reading as cloying. A red-braise with the anise and no peel tastes flat in a way that is hard to place until the peel goes back in.

How: Together in a master stock; In red-braised pork and beef

Add alongside: Cassia, Cloves, Sichuan pepper

• Both are removed before serving; neither is pleasant to bite into

Both are fixed aromatics of pho broth and of Sichuan hotpot bases, and they sit at opposite ends of the same dish: star anise is sweet and forward, tsaoko is smoky and medicinal and works underneath it. A broth with anise and no tsaoko smells right and tastes thin.

How: Charred together with onion and ginger for pho; Fried whole in a hotpot base

Add alongside: Cassia, Cloves, Coriander seed

• Both are lifted out before serving

The other half of the pho and red-braise spice set. Cassia is nearly all cinnamaldehyde and reads as sweet and forceful; tsaoko is smoke and camphor. The pair covers the sweet and the savoury ends of a long-simmered broth, which is why almost every version of both dishes contains both.

How: Together in pho broth; In red-braising liquid and master stocks

Add alongside: Star anise, Dried orange peel, Cloves

Pho bo is a beef broth and tsaoko is one of the spices that makes it taste like one — its smoke and camphor sit with long-simmered bones in a way they do not with poultry or fish. The same logic runs through Chinese red-braised beef and beef hotpot.

How: In pho bo broth; In red-braised beef

Add alongside: Star anise, Cassia, Ginger

• One or two pods for a large pot; it is easy to overdo

The Thai treatment, and a good demonstration that mussels are seasoned through their liquid rather than on their flesh. Lemongrass gives citral to the broth in minutes, and the broth is what gets eaten with bread or rice.

How: Bruised into a coconut and chilli broth

Two rhizomes of the same family used together deliberately, which is the point worth making: Southeast Asian cooking treats them as different ingredients rather than as alternatives, and a paste containing both is not being redundant. Galangal is sharp, piney and almost medicinal; ginger is hot and sweet from gingerol. Substituting one for the other — the commonest assumption outside the region — removes a note rather than weakening one.

How: Ground together into a bumbu or a curry paste; Both bruised into a broth

Add alongside: Lemongrass, Turmeric

• Dried galangal is a much weaker ingredient and does not carry this pairing

The citrus pair that makes Thai cooking taste Thai, and the reason a Thai paste reads brighter than an Indonesian one. Both are dominated by citral and citronellal and neither is a citrus fruit — they supply lime and lemon aroma without acidity, which is a distinction that matters in a dish where the sourness is coming separately from tamarind or fresh lime juice.

How: Pounded together into a curry paste; Both bruised whole into a tom yum broth

Add alongside: Galangal, Bird's eye chilli

• Dried makrut leaf keeps a fraction of the aroma; frozen leaves are much closer to fresh