Spice profiles
What these are
131 profiles, each covering what the seasoning is, how it tastes, what it goes with, how to store it and how to buy it — with the evidence grade attached to every claim and an explicit list of what we have not established. Not everything here is a spice: garlic, onion, MSG and salt are seasonings by any useful definition and spices by none, and each profile says so plainly rather than quietly filing them under a word that does not fit.
Ajwain
Tastes overwhelmingly of thyme, and for a straightforward reason — it is dominated by the same compound. A tiny Apiaceae seed used in South Asian breads and pulses, and far stronger than its size suggests.
herbalbitterpungent90% completeAleppo pepper
Coarse oily crimson flakes, moderately hot and unusually fruity, with a slow warmth rather than a sharp one. Very little of what is sold under the name now comes from Aleppo, and the honest version of the story says so.
fruitysweetearthy86% completeAllspice
The dried unripe berry of Pimenta dioica, which tastes of clove, cinnamon and pepper at once. The name describes that impression, not a blend — allspice is a single spice, and the confusion is the most common thing readers arrive with.
warmsweetclove-like86% completeAmchoor
Dried unripe mango, ground to a pale fawn powder. It sours a dish without wetting it, which is the whole point — and the reason it cannot simply be replaced with lemon juice.
sourfruityearthy88% completeAnardana
The dried seeds and clinging pulp of sour pomegranate, used as a souring agent across northern India and Pakistan. Tart, faintly sweet and slightly astringent, it supplies acidity to dry dishes where a liquid acid would make them wet, and the good material comes from wild sour fruit rather than the sweet cultivars sold for eating.
sourfruityfaintly sweet84% completeAncho
A ripened poblano, dried. Barely hot, deeply raisin-sweet, and the most-used dried chilli in Mexico — which makes "mild chilli" an accurate description and a useless one.
raisinprunesweet86% completeAniseed
The original anise, and the smallest of the three. Sweeter and more delicate than fennel or star anise, unrelated to either, and responsible for more drinks than dishes.
sweetliquoricewarm96% completeAnnatto
A colouring first and a flavouring second, and one of very few spices that is also a mainstream industrial food dye. It gives orange-red where turmeric gives yellow, and it carries almost none of turmeric’s bitterness.
earthypepperywoody90% completeChile de árbol
A small, slender, bright red Mexican chilli that stays red when dried, used for clean heat rather than for flavour or body. The hot member of the standard dried-chilli set, and the one added to a guajillo or ancho sauce when it needs pungency.
hotgrassyclean86% completeAsafoetida
A dried resin that smells genuinely unpleasant raw and turns savoury and allium-like once cooked in fat. What most kitchens buy is not the resin at all but a compounded powder that is mostly flour, and the two behave completely differently.
pungentearthybitter90% completeBarberry
A tiny, intensely sour dried red berry used across Iran and the Caucasus as a souring agent — a role played elsewhere by lemon, tamarind, amchur or sumac. It is a fruit doing a spice’s job, and it is sharper than any of them.
sourfruitywiney90% completeBasil
The herb that loses most from drying of anything in this catalogue, and one whose name covers several genuinely different plants. Dried basil is not weak fresh basil; it is a different and much duller ingredient.
sweetclove-likepeppery94% completeBay leaf
The leaf that everyone uses and nobody tastes on its own. Bay works by subtraction — you notice it when it is missing from a stock or a stew, and rarely when it is there.
resinouscamphorousherbal92% completeBird's eye chilli
A very small, very hot chilli used fresh across Southeast Asia, hot enough that a couple of pods season a dish for several people. The English name is applied to at least three different peppers, so a recipe calling for it is usually asking for a heat level and a size rather than a specific variety.
sharpgrassyvery hot82% completeBlack cardamom
A smoked spice, and that is the whole of it. Black cardamom is a different genus from green, dried over fire rather than in the sun, and it tastes of woodsmoke and camphor — not of a stronger green cardamom.
smokywoodyearthy90% completeBlack cumin
The name is the problem. Three unrelated seeds are sold as black cumin, and this is the genuine one — a wild Himalayan and Persian relative of cumin, smokier and more delicate, and several times the price.
smokyearthysweet90% completeBlack pepper
The dried unripe fruit of the vine Piper nigrum, picked green and dried until the skin blackens and wrinkles. Its pungency comes from piperine, not capsaicin, which is why the Scoville scale does not apply to it.
pungentwoodycitrus94% completeBlack salt
A salt fired with charcoal and reducing agents until it carries sulphur compounds, giving a pronounced savoury, egg-like aroma no other salt has. Pinkish-grey when ground rather than black, and used across South Asia in chaat, raita and fruit seasoning — and increasingly outside it as the standard way to make plant-based food taste of egg.
saltysulphuroussavoury68% completeBlue fenugreek
A different species from the fenugreek of South Asian cooking, ground from the whole dried plant rather than from the seed alone, and considerably milder. It is one of the two spices that make Georgian food taste Georgian, and it is unavailable almost everywhere else.
sweetnuttyhay-like80% completeCalabrian chilli
The small red chilli of southern Italy, fruity and moderately hot, and the defining heat of Calabrian cooking. Sold as dried flakes, whole in oil, or as a fermented paste — three products with one name that are not interchangeable in a recipe.
fruityhotsweet86% completeCaraway
The spice of rye bread and sauerkraut. Sharp, anise-edged and unmistakable — and the one most often bought by accident by someone who wanted cumin.
sharpanisewoody92% completeGreen cardamom
The dried seed pods of Elettaria cardamomum, a ginger-family perennial. Intensely aromatic — eucalyptus-fresh, floral and camphorous — and among the most expensive spices by weight after saffron and vanilla.
eucalyptuscamphorousfloral88% completeCarolina Reaper
A deliberately bred superhot chilli, recognised as the hottest in the world by measurement for most of the decade after 2013. It is a crossing programme rather than a crop with a tradition, and its published Scoville figure is a laboratory average for a sample rather than a property of any individual pod.
fruityfloralextremely hot82% completeCascabel
A small round dark-red Mexican chilli that rattles when shaken, dried from the chile bola. Nutty and woody rather than sweet or fruity, mild to moderate in heat, and used mainly in table salsas and sauces where the other dried chillies would bring sweetness it does not.
nuttywoodysmoky86% completeCassia
The dried bark of several Cinnamomum species other than C. verum, sold in most of the world simply as "cinnamon". It is stronger, hotter and less delicate than Ceylon cinnamon, and contains substantially more coumarin.
strongsweet-hotastringent92% completeCayenne pepper
Ground dried Capsicum annuum chillies of the cayenne type, selected for pungency rather than colour. Typically 30,000–50,000 Scoville Heat Units, though retail "cayenne pepper" is a trade description rather than a guarantee of variety.
hotsharpclean88% completeCelery seed
Concentrated celery in a form that keeps. It is not the seed of the salad vegetable but of a related wild-type plant grown for seed, and it is strong enough that a teaspoon does the work of a head of celery.
earthybitterherbal92% completeChilli flakes
Dried chillies crushed rather than milled to a powder. The name describes the cut and not the chilli, so two jars of "chilli flakes" can differ in heat, smokiness and colour by more than they resemble each other.
hotfruitydry90% completeChilli powder
Dried chillies ground to a powder. In Britain, India and most of the world that is all it is; in the United States "chili powder" means a seasoning blend containing chilli alongside cumin and oregano, and the two are not interchangeable in either direction.
hotfruitydry92% completeChipotle
A ripe red jalapeño, smoke-dried. The smoking is not preservation incidental to the flavour — it is the flavour, and chipotle tastes almost nothing like the green chilli it came from.
smokysweetdried fruit88% completeCinnamon (Ceylon)
The dried inner bark of Cinnamomum verum, native to Sri Lanka, rolled into fragile multi-layered quills. It is markedly more delicate, sweeter and more citrus-floral than the cassia sold as cinnamon in much of the world.
sweetfloralcitrus94% completeCloves
The dried unopened flower buds of Syzygium aromaticum, and among the most concentrated spices in ordinary use — a single bud carries enough eugenol to dominate a dish, which is why cloves are counted, not spooned.
warmsweetmedicinal96% completeCoriander leaf
The leaf of the plant whose seed is a different spice entirely, and the only ingredient in this catalogue that a substantial minority of people genetically perceive as tasting of soap. It does not dry, and the dried product should be treated as a separate and inferior thing.
citricgreencooling94% completeCoriander seed
The dried fruit of Coriandrum sativum. Warm, citric and faintly sweet — and tasting almost nothing like the fresh leaves of the same plant, which is the source of persistent confusion.
citruswarmsweet90% completeCulantro
A long serrated leaf that tastes like coriander leaf turned up several notches, and survives cooking where coriander does not. It is the base of Caribbean sofrito and a staple of Vietnamese and Thai cooking, and it is a different plant from coriander entirely.
citricgreenresinous84% completeCumin
The dried seed of Cuminum cyminum, an annual in the carrot family, giving a warm, earthy, faintly bitter aroma that anchors seasoning in South Asian, Middle Eastern, North African and Mexican cooking.
earthywarmmusky94% completeCurry leaf
The aromatic leaf of Murraya koenigii, a small South Asian citrus-family tree, used fresh and fried in hot fat at the start of a dish. It is not an ingredient of curry powder and shares nothing with it but a word; the dried leaf is a much weaker and largely different ingredient.
citricresinousnutty80% completeDagad phool
Not a flower and not a plant. Dagad phool is a lichen — a fungus and an alga living as one organism — gathered from rocks and tree bark, and it is the only entry in this catalogue that is neither a plant part nor a mineral nor a manufactured product.
earthysmokymineral78% completeDill
The feathery leaf of the same plant that gives dill seed, and a genuinely different ingredient from it. The leaf is grassy and delicate; the seed is sharp and caraway-like, and neither substitutes for the other.
grassycoolingfaintly aniseed90% completeDill seed
The dried seed of Anethum graveolens, tasting far more of caraway than of the dill herb it comes from — sharp, faintly bitter and warm, dominated by carvone. A pickling and bread spice across Northern and Eastern Europe, and used in tempering across western India.
sharpwarmfaintly bitter84% completeDried lime
A whole lime boiled in brine and dried until hollow and black. It is sour like a fresh lime and nothing like it otherwise — fermented, musty and slightly bitter, and the bitterness is part of the point.
sourearthybitter86% completeEpazote
A pungent Mexican herb whose Nahuatl name translates roughly as skunk-dirt, and which nonetheless makes a pot of black beans taste finished. Its reputation for preventing wind is folk practice rather than evidence, and it is the reason it is in the pot.
resinouscamphorousmedicinal86% completePiment d'Espelette
A mild, fruity red chilli from the French Basque country, sold as a coarse bright powder and protected as an AOP: the name belongs to Gorria chillies grown, dried and milled within ten named communes. Used in Basque cooking roughly where the rest of France uses black pepper.
fruitywarmfaintly smoky86% completeFennel seed
The dried fruit of Foeniculum vulgare — sweet, anise-like and grassy. It shares its dominant compound with star anise and aniseed, which is why all three taste related despite belonging to three different plant families.
sweetanisegrassy94% completeFenugreek
One plant giving two ingredients that behave nothing alike. The hard angular seed is bitter and smells of maple; the dried leaf is savoury and mild. Confusing them is the commonest way a curry goes wrong.
bittermaplesavoury92% completeFenugreek leaf
The dried leaf of the same plant that gives fenugreek seed, and — as with coriander — a different ingredient from it. Crushed over a finished curry it is the note most people cannot name in restaurant North Indian food.
maplecelery-likesavoury92% completeFilé powder
Ground dried sassafras leaf, used in Louisiana to thicken and flavour gumbo. It is one of very few seasonings in this catalogue whose principal job is texture, and its relationship to the safrole prohibition is the question everyone asks and almost every source gets slightly wrong.
woodsygreenfaintly medicinal86% completeGalangal
Not a kind of ginger. It is a separate genus in the same family, and the difference is not one of strength — galangal is piney, sharp and almost medicinal where ginger is warm and citric, and swapping them changes what a dish tastes of.
sharpwoodycitrus90% completeChervil
The most delicate herb in classical French cooking: lacy, faintly aniseed, and destroyed by heat, drying and time alike. Its fragility is the reason it is central to one cuisine and almost unavailable in most countries.
delicate anisegreensweet96% completeChives
The mildest allium and the only one used as a leaf herb: raw, chopped, and added after the cooking is finished. Heat destroys them in seconds, which is the whole of the technique.
mild oniongreenfresh92% completeTarragon
The anise-scented herb of French cooking, and the one where the plant matters more than the packet: French tarragon is a sterile cultivar propagated only by division, and anything grown from seed is the near-flavourless Russian form.
anisegreensweet94% completeGarlic
The bulb of Allium sativum, used fresh, dried, granulated and powdered, and the most widely used seasoning in the world after salt. Its pungency is not present in the intact clove: it is created within seconds of cutting, which is why every form of garlic tastes different from every other.
pungentsulphuroussweet when cooked76% completeGhost pepper
A very hot chilli from north-east India, briefly the hottest measured in the world and long since overtaken. Its heat is slow to arrive and very slow to leave, which is the practical fact about it, and in Assam and Nagaland it is an ordinary cooking and preserving ingredient rather than a novelty.
fruityfloralextremely hot84% completeGinger
The rhizome of Zingiber officinale, used fresh and dried as two genuinely different ingredients. Drying converts its pungent compounds into hotter, less aromatic ones, so ground ginger is not dried fresh ginger in any useful sense.
pungentcitricwarm92% completeGochugaru
Korean sun-dried chilli, deseeded and milled to a soft brick-red powder or coarse flake. Fruity, faintly sweet and only moderately hot — it is used by the half-cup in kimchi, which no ordinary chilli flake survives.
fruitysweetsmoky88% completeGrains of paradise
A West African seed of the ginger family that Europe used heavily and then forgot. Peppery like black pepper and warm like cardamom at the same time, which is a combination nothing else here offers.
pungentcitrusfloral92% completeGrains of Selim
A twisted, bean-like dried fruit pod from a West African savanna tree, used whole in soups and pounded into the coffee of Senegal. It has carried at least five European trade names over five centuries and is barely known outside Africa under any of them.
muskyresinousbitter84% completeGreen peppercorn
Unripe Piper nigrum fruit preserved before it can ferment, giving a fresh, herbal, moderately pungent pepper quite unlike black. Sold brined, freeze-dried or — in Thailand — fresh on the stem, and the three behave differently enough that a recipe naming one rarely works with another.
freshherbalmoderately pungent86% completeGuajillo
The dried mirasol pepper: a long, smooth, deep-red pod with tough skin, mild heat and a distinctly fruity, faintly tannic flavour. One of the three chillies that make up the backbone of Mexican cooking alongside ancho and pasilla, and the one that supplies colour and brightness rather than sweetness or smoke.
fruitytarttannic84% completeHabanero
A lantern-shaped chilli that is genuinely very hot and, more usefully, genuinely fruity — apricot and citrus underneath the heat. The fruit is the reason to use it, and the reason a hotter chilli is not a substitute.
fruitycitrusfloral90% completeHoja santa
An enormous heart-shaped leaf, sometimes the size of a dinner plate, that tastes of anise, sassafras and root beer at once. It is used as a wrapper and a flavouring rather than as a seasoning, which puts it in a category almost nothing else in this catalogue occupies.
anisesassafrasgreen88% completeHorseradish
The grated root of Armoracia rusticana, a hardy brassica whose pungency does not exist until the root is cut. It is a fresh condiment rather than a dried spice: heat destroys it, air spends it within hours, and vinegar is what stops the reaction and makes the jar possible.
pungentbitterearthy84% completeJalapeño
A moderately hot green chilli from Veracruz, eaten fresh far more often than dried. Left to ripen red and then smoked, the same fruit becomes chipotle — which is a different ingredient rather than a dried version of this one.
greenvegetalgrassy86% completeJuniper
Not a berry and not one plant. Culinary juniper is the fleshy cone of one particular species, Juniperus communis, and several of its relatives are not edible — which is why the distinction is worth making before the flavour is.
woodybittercitrus92% completeMakrut lime leaf
The double-lobed leaf of Citrus hystrix, used whole or shredded across Southeast Asia for an intense lime-peel aroma quite unlike lime juice. It contributes fragrance rather than sourness, freezes almost perfectly, and dries very badly — which is why the dried leaf on most spice shelves is a poor buy.
citricfloralaromatic84% completeKashmiri chilli
Bought for colour rather than heat, which makes it the opposite of what most people expect a chilli to be for. The name now describes a style of product more reliably than it describes an origin.
fruityastringentmild90% completeKokum
The sun-dried rind of Garcinia indica, a fruit of the Western Ghats, used as a souring agent along the Konkan coast of western India. Tart and faintly sweet with a mild astringency, it colours a dish pink-purple and — unlike tamarind or citrus — sours coconut-milk curries without splitting them.
sourfaintly sweetastringent84% completeKorarima
The cardamom of the Horn of Africa, and a genuinely different species from the green cardamom of the Indian trade. It is milder, more citric and faintly eucalyptus-like, and it is one of the ingredients that makes berbere taste Ethiopian rather than merely hot.
citricwarmfaintly eucalyptus86% completeLavender
A flower bud used in tiny quantities and ruined by slightly larger ones. The species matters more here than for almost any other entry: the lavender grown for the perfume trade is a different and more camphorous plant from the one worth eating.
floralhoneyedcamphorous92% completeLemongrass
The stem base of a tropical grass, used fresh, dried or as a paste for a clean citrus aroma that has none of the acidity of lemon. It is fibrous enough to be inedible in most preparations, so it is usually bruised, infused and removed rather than eaten.
citrusgrassyfloral72% completeLiquorice root
The dried root of Glycyrrhiza glabra, sweet enough to sweeten without sugar because its principal compound is many times sweeter than sucrose. Used in Chinese master stocks, Middle Eastern drinks and European confectionery, and routinely confused with the anise-tasting spices it only partly resembles.
sweetearthyanise-adjacent86% completeLong pepper
A genuine pepper, and the one Europe used before black pepper displaced it. Hotter, sweeter and more complex than black pepper, and shaped like a small dark catkin rather than a corn.
pungentsweetwoody90% completeLovage
A tall carrot-family perennial that tastes like celery turned up several notches, with a savoury depth that reads as stock. It was a staple of European cooking for a thousand years and fell out of it almost entirely in the last hundred.
savourycelery-likeyeasty84% completeMace
The dried aril — the lacy scarlet net enclosing the nutmeg seed — from the same fruit as nutmeg. Lighter, more delicate and slightly more peppery than nutmeg, and considerably more expensive.
warmdelicatepeppery90% completeMahleb
The kernel from inside the stone of a small wild cherry, ground to a pale powder. It tastes of almond and cherry with a bitter edge, and it is what makes Middle Eastern and Greek Easter breads smell the way they do.
nuttybitterfruity88% completeMarigold
Dried, ground marigold petals, used in Georgia for colour and a mild resinous aroma and sold as Imeretian saffron. It is not saffron, it is not a substitute for saffron, and the name is doing exactly the work the name "Indian saffron" does for turmeric.
floralresinousfaintly bitter88% completeMarjoram
Oregano’s gentler sibling — the same genus, a different dominant compound, and a sweeter, more floral result. It is the defining herb of German and Polish sausage cooking and the one most often lost to a shop that has substituted oregano for it.
sweetfloralwarm92% completeMastic
The hardened resin of the mastic tree, grown for this purpose almost exclusively on southern Chios. Pine-like, faintly bitter and slightly medicinal, it is used in small quantities in Greek, Turkish and Levantine sweets and breads — and uniquely in this dataset it is used for texture as well as flavour, giving Turkish delight and Greek ice cream their characteristic stretch.
pineyresinouscooling86% completeMexican oregano
Not an oregano. Lippia graveolens is in the verbena family, alongside lemon verbena, and it shares a name with Mediterranean oregano because both smell of carvacrol and the Spanish colonists needed a word. It is the single most consequential naming collision in this catalogue.
pungentcitricresinous92% completeMint
Two different plants sold under one word. Spearmint is the cooking mint of the Middle East, Türkiye and South Asia and is what dried mint almost always is; peppermint is a sterile hybrid full of menthol, and it belongs in confectionery and tea rather than in a dish.
coolingsweetgreen94% completeMSG
The sodium salt of glutamic acid, an amino acid present in almost everything savoury, produced by bacterial fermentation and sold as a white crystal. It contributes savouriness and nothing else — no aroma, no colour, no heat — and it carries about a third the sodium of table salt by weight.
savouryumamimouth-filling56% completeMulato
A dried poblano picked at chocolate-brown ripeness rather than red, giving a darker, sweeter, smokier chilli than ancho with notes of liquorice and dried cherry. One of the three chillies of classical mole poblano, used with ancho and pasilla rather than instead of them.
sweetsmokyliquorice86% completeMustard seed
The seed of several Brassica and Sinapis species. Uniquely among common spices it has almost no aroma until it is crushed and wetted — the pungency is manufactured on contact with water, and how you treat it decides whether you get heat or nuttiness.
pungentsharpnutty when toasted94% completeNigella
The small matt-black seed on naan and Turkish bread. It carries more wrong names than any other spice here — black cumin, black caraway, black onion seed — and is related to none of them.
pepperyherbalbitter92% completeNutmeg
The dried seed kernel of Myristica fragrans, native to the Banda Islands. Sweet, woody and warm, and — with mace, its aril — the subject of one of the most violent monopolies in the history of the spice trade.
sweetwoodywarm92% completeOnion
The bulb of Allium cepa, and — dried, granulated or powdered — one of the two seasonings that appear in almost every commercial spice blend. Drying converts its sharpness into sweetness, which is why onion powder tastes almost nothing like a raw onion and browns far faster than one.
sweetsavourysulphurous when raw74% completeOregano
The dried leaf of Origanum vulgare, and one of the few herbs that is genuinely better dried than fresh. The word also names an unrelated Mexican plant, which is the single most consequential confusion on the herb shelf.
pungentresinousmedicinal92% completePandan
The long strap-like leaf of Pandanus amaryllifolius, the defining aromatic of Southeast Asian cooking and baking. Its principal aroma compound is the same one that gives basmati and jasmine rice their scent, which is why it smells of new-cooked rice with a grassy, faintly coconut sweetness. Used fresh or frozen, knotted into a pot or pounded for its green juice.
grassyrice-likefaintly sweet84% completePaprika
Ground dried Capsicum annuum peppers selected for colour rather than heat. "Paprika" covers a wide family of products from sweet and mild to hot, and from air-dried to oak-smoked, which differ far more than the shared name suggests.
sweetfruityred-pepper88% completeParsley
The most-used and least-respected herb in European cooking, and the one that loses most to drying after basil. Flat-leaf and curly are genuinely different products, and in tabbouleh parsley stops being a herb and becomes the salad.
grassycleanfaintly peppery94% completePasilla
The dried chilaca pepper: long, narrow, wrinkled and almost black, with a raisin-and-cocoa depth and mild heat. The third of the trio with ancho and guajillo that most Mexican sauces assume, and the one most often mislabelled — a great deal of the "pasilla" sold outside Mexico is ancho.
raisincocoaherbal86% completePink peppercorn
Not a peppercorn. It is the dried berry of a South American tree in the cashew family, sold under a name it has no botanical claim to, and it is sweet and resinous where pepper is pungent.
sweetwoodycitrus90% completePoblano
A fresh chilli treated as a vegetable. Mild, thick-walled and large enough to stuff — and the only pepper in this dataset whose dried form has a different name and a different job.
grassygreenmild86% completePoppy seed
Two spices sold under one name. The blue-grey seed of European baking and the white seed of Indian cooking are the same species used for opposite purposes, and swapping them changes the colour of the dish as much as the flavour.
nuttysweetearthy90% completeRosemary
A resinous, pine-scented needle strong enough to take over a dish at a few per cent — and, since a 2017 revision of the genus, formally a sage. It is the herb most often used badly, because the needle stays sharp however long you cook it.
resinouspineycamphorous94% completeDried rose
Dried petals or buds of the damask rose, used across Iran, the Levant, North Africa and South Asia. It contributes perfume rather than flavour, and — as with lavender — the difference between fragrant and soapy is a quarter of a teaspoon.
floralhoneyedperfumed94% completeSafflower
The dried florets of a thistle, sold as a colouring and frequently as fake saffron. It is a legitimate ingredient in its own right and a poor substitute for the spice it is most often passed off as.
earthybitter94% completeSaffron
The dried stigmas of the autumn-flowering crocus Crocus sativus, hand-picked three to a flower. The most expensive spice by weight, and the only one in common use with an international grading standard aimed squarely at consumers.
honeyedhay-likefloral100% completeSage
A soft grey-green leaf with a dusty, camphorous, faintly musty flavour that is unusually good at cutting through fat. It is the herb that defines British stuffing and Italian saltimbocca, and one of very few that improves when fried in butter.
dustycamphoroussavoury94% completeSalt
Sodium chloride, the only rock people eat and the only seasoning that supplies a basic taste rather than an aroma. Everything sold as a distinct salt — sea, rock, kosher, flaked, pink — is the same compound at a different crystal size and purity, and crystal size is what almost all of the perceived difference actually is.
saltycleanmineral66% completeAjí amarillo
The defining chilli of Peruvian cooking: a long orange pod with a fruity, almost apricot character and a moderate, forward heat. It is a Capsicum baccatum, a species that barely left South America, and it is used in quantity as a base rather than as a seasoning.
fruityapricotfloral82% completeRocoto
A thick-walled Andean chilli that looks like a small apple and carries distinctive black seeds. It is Capsicum pubescens, a species that crosses with nothing else, tolerates cold that kills other chillies, and is too fleshy to dry — so it has stayed where it grows.
juicyfruitygreen76% completeHuacatay
An Andean marigold leaf used fresh in Peruvian cooking, powerfully aromatic in a way that reads as somewhere between mint, basil, tarragon and citrus without being any of them. It is the green in ocopa sauce, and it is not a mint despite the name.
pungentgreenanise80% completeDaun salam
The leaf of a Southeast Asian myrtle relative, used whole in Indonesian and Malaysian cooking and removed before serving. Mild, tea-like and faintly astringent, it is called Indonesian bay leaf in English and is neither a bay nor anything like one.
tea-likemildastringent82% completeAvocado leaf
The anise-scented leaf of the Mexican race of avocado, toasted and used whole or ground in Oaxacan and central Mexican cooking. Only the criollo variety smells of anise; leaves from a Hass tree do not, and are not the ingredient.
anisetoastednutty86% completeUziza
A West African climbing pepper whose dried fruit is used as a pungent spice and whose leaf is a separate soup ingredient. It is a true Piper, related to black pepper and cubeb, and it is sharper and more bitter than either.
pungentbitterherbal86% completeCalabash nutmeg
The seed of a West African forest tree in the custard-apple family, warm and aromatic in a way that recalls nutmeg without being related to it. Used in Nigerian soups and pepper-soup mixtures, and usually toasted before grinding.
warmresinousfaintly bitter84% completeKencur
A small pale rhizome of the ginger family, sharply camphorous and medicinal in a way neither ginger nor galangal is. It is the defining flavour of Javanese beras kencur and of Cantonese salt-baked chicken, and it is routinely mislabelled as a kind of ginger.
camphorousmedicinalbalsamic86% completeSmoked paprika
Spanish paprika dried over oak smoke rather than in sun or air, giving a deep, resinous smokiness that ordinary paprika has none of. The La Vera product carries a protected designation, and it comes in sweet, bittersweet and hot grades that all share the smoke.
smokysweetresinous86% completeDried orange peel
The dried peel of mandarin or bitter orange, used as an aromatic rather than as a fruit. In Chinese cooking the mandarin peel is aged deliberately for years and graded by vintage; in Europe the bitter-orange peel flavours baking, mulled drinks and beer.
bittercitrusmarmalade90% completeCubeb
A Javanese relative of black pepper, dried with its stalk still attached — the "tail" that names it. Mildly pungent, distinctly bitter and unexpectedly menthol-like, it was a European staple until the seventeenth century and now survives chiefly in Moroccan blends, Indonesian cooking and gin.
bitterpepperycooling88% completeTsaoko
A large fire-dried pod from Yunnan and northern Vietnam, smoky, camphorous and faintly bitter. It is the black cardamom that Vietnamese pho and Sichuan hotpot mean, and a genuinely different species from the Himalayan black cardamom of Indian cooking.
smokycamphorousbitter86% completeFingerroot
A Southeast Asian rhizome whose slender finger-like tubers give it its name. Peppery, bitter and faintly medicinal, between ginger and galangal but genuinely neither, it is a required aromatic in Thai jungle curry and in the Thai fish curries.
pepperybitterearthy84% completeWattleseed
The roasted, ground seed of a small number of Australian Acacia species, tasting of coffee, chocolate and hazelnut. An ancient food across much of the continent and a very recent commercial spice, sold ground and used almost entirely in sweet cooking.
roastedcoffeechocolate78% completeSansho
The Japanese member of the Zanthoxylum family, and a distinct species from Sichuan pepper rather than a regional name for it. It is brighter, more citric and considerably less numbing, and the young leaf is a separate spring seasoning in its own right.
citricgreentingling90% completeSavory
A peppery, thyme-adjacent herb that half of Europe considers essential and English-speaking cooks have largely forgotten. Two species are sold under the name and they are not the same: summer savory is soft and sweet, winter savory hard and resinous.
pepperywarmresinous90% completeScotch bonnet
The Caribbean chilli, and the one jerk is built on. Same species as habanero and not the same thing — squatter, sweeter, and carrying a cultural weight in Jamaica and West Africa that no substitution accounts for.
fruitysweettropical88% completeSerrano
A small, thin-walled Mexican green chilli, used fresh far more than dried and noticeably hotter than a jalapeño while tasting much like one. Its thin walls are the practical difference: it cannot be stuffed and it does not need seeding or peeling, so it goes raw into salsas where a jalapeño would be roasted first.
greengrassybright80% completeShiso
A serrated mint-family leaf that tastes of basil, mint, cumin and citrus at once and belongs to none of them. Green shiso is a flavouring; red shiso is essentially a dye that turns pink in acid, and treating them as one ingredient is the usual mistake.
mintybasil-likecitric84% completeSichuan pepper
Not a pepper, not a chilli, and not hot. Sichuan pepper produces a physical tingling numbness that no other spice in the cabinet does — a sensation rather than a flavour, and the reason it cannot be substituted.
citrusfloralwoody88% completeStar anise
The dried star-shaped fruit of Illicium verum, dominated by anethole and tasting strongly of liquorice and anise despite being botanically unrelated to either.
liquoricesweetwarm92% completeSumac
The dried, ground fruit of Rhus coriaria — tart, fruity and deep red. It is a souring agent rather than an aromatic, doing the job that lemon does elsewhere while adding colour and no liquid at all.
sourfruitytannic84% completeTamarind
A souring agent rather than an aromatic. It is sold in at least four forms of wildly different strength under names that do not distinguish them, which is why a recipe calling for a tablespoon of tamarind is genuinely ambiguous.
soursweetfruity90% completeThyme
The dried leaf of Thymus vulgaris — small, grey-green, and the most heat-tolerant of the soft Mediterranean herbs. It is the one that can go in at the start of a four-hour braise and still be there at the end.
warmwoodysavoury92% completeTonka bean
The cured seed of a South American rainforest tree, grated in tiny quantities for an intense sweet aroma of vanilla, almond, hay and cinnamon that belongs to none of them. It is prohibited as a food additive in the United States and limited by coumarin content in the European Union, which makes it the most regulated thing in this catalogue and a normal shelf item in parts of Europe.
sweethay-likealmond88% completeTurmeric
The boiled, dried and ground rhizome of Curcuma longa, valued primarily for the intense yellow of its curcuminoids and secondarily for an earthy, bitter, faintly musky flavour.
earthybittermusky94% completeUrfa biber
A dark purple-black Turkish chilli flake made by an unusual sun-and-sweat curing that leaves the flakes oily and raisin-sweet. It tastes of dried fruit, tobacco and chocolate, and its heat arrives late and stays low.
raisinsmokychocolate86% completeVanilla
The cured seed pod of a climbing orchid, and after saffron the most expensive spice by weight. Most vanilla flavour eaten worldwide is synthetic vanillin rather than the pod, and the difference is worth understanding before buying either.
sweetcreamyfloral88% completeWasabi
The grated rhizome of Eutrema japonicum, a Japanese brassica grown in cold running water. Its pungency does not exist in the intact plant and does not survive an hour after grating, which is why almost every wasabi anyone has eaten was something else — usually horseradish, which is a relative doing a passable impression rather than a fraud.
pungentsweetgreen84% completeWhite pepper
The same berry as black pepper with its skin rotted off. Sharper, cleaner and — to a lot of people — faintly barnyard, which is not a fault but the smell of how it is made.
sharppungentfermented86% completeZa'atar herb
One word, two ingredients. Za'atar is a wild Levantine herb and also the blend made with it, and a recipe calling for za'atar means one or the other depending on who wrote it — the herb is a single dried leaf, the blend contains sesame and sumac.
herbalwoodybitter92% complete
The completeness figure is the share of tracked fields carrying a value. It measures coverage, not quality, and it is shown because a profile that is 60% complete should say so rather than reading as though it were finished.