Bois d'Inde

• bois d'Inde

  French — Guadeloupe and Martinique

• bwadenn

  Antillean Creole — Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica, Saint Lucia

• malagueta

  Spanish — Puerto Rico

  In Puerto Rico this tree is called malagueta — unrelated to the Brazilian malagueta chilli and to melegueta pepper. Three different plants under one word.

• bay rum tree

  English

  Named for the aftershave distilled from its leaves, not for anything edible.

Warm, clove-like and slightly peppery in a simmered dish, where one or two leaves are enough.

Clove and allspice, warm and spicy, with a citrus or lemony note in some trees and a herbal one in others. The variation is real: the leaf oil comes in chemotypes dominated by eugenol, chavicol or myrcene, and trees in different places smell noticeably different.

Glossy dark green leaves; small dark berries.

Leathery leaves, removed before serving.

• Eugenol — The clove character, and in most chemotypes the leading component — the compound this leaf shares with allspice and cloves.(what eugenol is)
• Chavicol and myrcene — Variable second components that shift the aroma between spicy-phenolic and resinous-green from one tree to another.

Add one or two leaves to a simmering broth and remove before serving, as with bay.

Blaff and court-bouillon of fish, boudin créole, stews, soups and rice in the French Antilles and Puerto Rico. It pairs with white fish, lime, garlic, thyme, scotch bonnet and pork.

• infusing — Simmered whole in court-bouillon, blaff and stews and removed, like a bay leaf. Eugenol extracts readily into a hot liquid.
• grinding — Crushed or chopped leaf goes into boudin créole and marinades, where it is left in.

Crush a leaf; it should smell strongly of clove at once.

• A faint smell when crushed
• Brittle brown leaves

• Evaporation of the leaf oil
• Oxidation of eugenol towards a flat note

Myrtaceae

An evergreen tree with leathery, glossy, strongly aromatic leaves full of oil glands, small white flowers and small dark berries. The leaf oil — up to a few per cent of the fresh leaf — is the aroma.

The Caribbean — the Lesser Antilles and neighbouring islands — and northern South America.

• Dominica — major producer. The historic centre of bay oil distillation.
• Guadeloupe — notable producer
• Martinique — notable producer
• Puerto Rico — notable producer
• Venezuela — notable producer

Leaves are cut from coppiced trees for distillation; for the kitchen they are simply picked as needed.

1. Leaf distillation (industrial) — Leaves steam-distilled for bay oil, used in bay rum and perfumery.Why: The industrial product; the culinary leaf is not processed.

Grown in plantations for leaf-oil distillation and as garden and dooryard trees for cooking.

Tropical. Leaf oil content is reported highest in the drier parts of the range and lowest in the wettest.

Whole leaves. Ground allspice is the practical substitute when the leaf cannot be found — a pinch in place of a leaf.

• Leaves sold as bois d’Inde or West Indian bay, not simply "bay".
• A strong clove smell when a leaf is crushed.

The international trade is in the leaf oil, distilled on Dominica and other islands for bay rum — a cologne and aftershave — and for perfumery. The culinary leaf is a local product.