Spice profiles
What these are
85 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.
Wasabi
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.
pungentsweetgreen82% 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.
pungentbitterearthy82% 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.
citricresinousnutty78% 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-filling54% 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.
fruitytarttannic82% 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.
greengrassybright78% 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.
saltycleanmineral62% 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.
saltysulphuroussavoury66% 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% 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% 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% 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% 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% 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% 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 hot80% 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% 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% 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% 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% 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% 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-adjacent84% 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% 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% 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% 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% 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% 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.
citrusgrassyfloral70% 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 raw70% 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 cooked72% completeAjwain
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.
herbalbitterpungent88% 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.
fruitysweetearthy84% 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-like84% 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.
sourfruityearthy86% 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.
raisinprunesweet84% 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.
sweetliquoricewarm94% 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.
earthypepperywoody88% 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.
pungentearthybitter88% 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.
resinouscamphorousherbal90% 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.
smokywoodyearthy88% 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.
smokyearthysweet88% 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.
pungentwoodycitrus92% 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.
sharpanisewoody90% 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.
eucalyptuscamphorousfloral86% 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-hotastringent90% 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.
hotsharpclean86% 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.
earthybitterherbal90% 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.
hotfruitydry88% 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.
hotfruitydry90% 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 fruit86% 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.
sweetfloralcitrus92% 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.
warmsweetmedicinal94% 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.
citruswarmsweet88% 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% 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.
sourearthybitter84% 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.
sweetanisegrassy92% 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% 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.
sharpwoodycitrus88% 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.
pungentcitricwarm88% 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.
fruitysweetsmoky86% 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.
pungentcitrusfloral90% 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.
fruitycitrusfloral88% 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.
greenvegetalgrassy84% 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.
woodybittercitrus90% 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.
fruityastringentmild88% 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.
pungentsweetwoody88% 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.
warmdelicatepeppery88% 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.
nuttybitterfruity86% 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.
pepperyherbalbitter90% 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.
sweetwoodywarm90% 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-pepper86% 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.
sweetwoodycitrus88% 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.
grassygreenmild84% 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.
nuttysweetearthy86% 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.
earthybitter92% 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-likefloral98% 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.
fruitysweettropical86% 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.
citrusfloralwoody86% 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.
liquoricesweetwarm90% 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.
soursweetfruity88% 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.
earthybittermusky92% 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.
sweetcreamyfloral86% 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.
sharppungentfermented84% 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.
herbalwoodybitter90% 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.