Chives

• ciboulette

  French

• Schnittlauch

  German

  Literally "cut leek".

• jiucai韭菜

  Chinese

  Refers to garlic chives, Allium tuberosum, not to the European herb. The two are not used interchangeably in any cuisine.

• nira韮

  Japanese

  Also garlic chives.

• gräslök

  Swedish

• szczypiorek

  Polish

A suggestion of onion over a fresh green base, with no sulphurous weight and no lingering pungency. Garlic chives taste distinctly of garlic on the same mild scale. Neither has any of the sweetness a cooked allium develops, because chives are not cooked.

Mildly oniony and grassy, released only when the leaf is cut. An uncut chive smells of almost nothing, because the aroma compounds are formed by an enzyme reaction that begins when cells are ruptured — the same mechanism as garlic and onion, at a fraction of the intensity.

Bright to deep green, hollow and round in common chives, flatter and often paler in garlic chives. Freeze-dried chives hold their colour well and their flavour poorly.

Fine hollow tubes that stay distinct when cut with a sharp knife and turn to paste under a blunt one. Garlic chive leaves are flat and more substantial, closer to a green vegetable.

• Allyl and methyl sulphides — The allium character. Formed enzymatically when the leaf is cut, which is why chives must be cut to smell of anything and why they should be cut immediately before use.
• Dipropyl disulphide — One of the onion-type sulphides present, and part of what distinguishes common chives from garlic chives, where the sulphur profile leans towards the garlic-type compounds instead.
• Hexenal and related green-leaf volatiles — The fresh-cut-grass note that sits under the onion, and a larger part of the impression than in any bulb allium.

Cut them last and cut them cleanly. Chives have no aroma until the leaf is severed, which is why they are snipped over a finished plate rather than prepared in advance, and a blunt knife crushes the hollow tube into slime instead of cutting it — scissors are genuinely better than a poor knife here. They are never cooked: heat destroys the sulphur compounds within seconds and collapses the leaf, so a chive added to a simmering pot contributes a minute of colour and nothing else. The exception is garlic chives, which have a sturdier flat leaf and are stir-fried as a vegetable across East Asia.

A finishing herb, almost exclusively. Chives go over soups rather than into them, into soured cream and curd cheese, over eggs and potatoes and smoked fish, into butter sauces off the heat, and into fines herbes and rémoulade. The flowers are a garnish and a vinegar. Garlic chives are used entirely differently — stir-fried, folded into dumplings, treated as a green vegetable — and belong to a different set of dishes rather than a different part of the same one.

• boiling — Destroys them. The sulphur compounds are volatile and the leaf collapses; chives added to a simmering soup contribute colour for a minute and then nothing. This is the single most common misuse.
• frying — Worse than boiling. Chives scorch almost instantly. Garlic chives are the exception and are genuinely stir-fried in Chinese and Korean cooking, where their flat sturdier leaf behaves as a vegetable.
• grinding — Chopping is the whole preparation and the knife matters: a sharp blade cuts the tube cleanly, a blunt one crushes it and the leaf weeps and turns to slime.
• infusing — Chive flowers steeped in white vinegar produce a pale pink, mildly oniony vinegar, which is the one traditional preserved form of the plant.

Cut one and smell the cut end. An uncut chive smells of nothing whether it is fresh or not, so smelling the bunch tells you nothing — the aroma only exists once the cells are ruptured. Look also for firm tubes rather than limp ones and for green rather than yellowing tips.

• Yellowing tips
• Limp or slimy leaves
• No onion smell from a freshly cut end

• Enzymatic breakdown and yellowing of the cut leaf
• Volatilisation of the sulphur compounds, which are formed on cutting and lost soon after
• Microbial spoilage of a wet hollow leaf held in a sealed container

Buy the plant rather than the bunch if you use them at all regularly. Chives are a hardy perennial that regrows after cutting, tolerates a windowsill, and is available for months — which solves a problem no other herb in this catalogue solves as cheaply, because chives are both the most perishable common herb and the one that dries worst. Freeze-dried chives are the one product here worth actively warning about: they look convincing enough that people buy them expecting the fresh herb and get a green fleck.

• Firm upright tubes rather than limp ones, and no yellowing at the tips.
• A clear onion smell from a freshly cut end — the bunch itself will smell of nothing.
• Hollow round leaves for common chives; flat solid leaves mean garlic chives, which is a different ingredient.
• Dry rather than wet packaging, since damp is what rots them.

Graded as fresh produce on leaf length, uniformity and colour rather than on volatile oil. There is no commercial grade that captures the difference between the two species, which is the distinction a cook most needs.

Amaryllidaceae

A clumping perennial to about 30 cm. Common chives have fine hollow cylindrical leaves and dense mauve pompom flowers; garlic chives have flat solid leaves, are noticeably larger, and carry white star-shaped flowers. The bulb of either is small and not used.

Common chives are native across the northern hemisphere — Europe, Asia and North America — which makes them one of very few culinary plants genuinely indigenous to all three. Garlic chives originate in East and Southeast Asia.

• Netherlands — major producer. The largest commercial producer of the fresh herb for the European market.
• Germany — notable producer
• United States — notable producer
• China — major producer. Principally garlic chives, grown as a vegetable rather than as a herb.
• Poland — notable producer

Cut a few centimetres above the crown, several times a season. Aroma is highest before flowering; once the plant flowers the leaves coarsen, though the flowers themselves become usable.

1. Cutting — Leaves cut above the crown rather than pulled, so the clump regrows. Cut before flowering for the finest leaf.
2. Bunching and cold chain — Bundled and kept cold. Chives wilt faster than almost any herb in the trade and are moved refrigerated.
3. Freeze-drying — the commercial route — Most dried chives sold are freeze-dried rather than air-dried, which preserves the colour and the tubular structure.Why: Air-drying collapses the hollow leaf into a flat brown thread and destroys what little aroma survives. Freeze-drying keeps the appearance; it keeps considerably less of the flavour than the appearance suggests.
4. Freezing — Chopped and frozen, which is what domestic practice does with a glut and what commercial frozen herb products use.Why: Better than drying for flavour and useless for garnish, because the thawed leaf collapses.

Traded as fresh produce rather than as a graded spice, so the criteria are horticultural — leaf length, uniformity, colour, absence of yellowing — rather than volatile oil. Freeze-dried chives are graded on colour and piece size.

Not a meaningful adulteration target as a fresh herb. The substitution that occurs is at the point of sale rather than in the supply chain: garlic chives sold simply as chives, or spring onion tops passed off as either, both of which are visible to anyone who looks at the leaf.

A clumping perennial cut repeatedly through the season. Cutting hard rather than picking encourages regrowth, and clumps are divided every few years to keep them vigorous. Commercial production is largely under glass for the fresh market.

Cool temperate, and unusually hardy — chives survive hard frost, die back completely in winter and return. They are among the first herbs to appear in spring, which is part of their place in northern European cooking.

Chives are native across the whole northern hemisphere and were gathered long before they were cultivated, which makes their history unusually diffuse — there is no single centre of domestication to point at. European cultivation is documented from the medieval period, and the plant spread as a garden herb rather than as a trade good, because a leaf that wilts in a day has never been worth shipping. Garlic chives have a separate and much better documented history in Chinese agriculture, where they are recorded as a cultivated vegetable for well over two thousand years.

Traded as fresh produce and as a frozen and freeze-dried product rather than as a dried spice. The Netherlands dominates European commercial supply; China grows garlic chives at a scale that reflects their status there as a vegetable.

A minor European folk record as a digestive and a mild antiseptic, largely by association with the stronger alliums. Recorded as tradition; SpiceHQ makes no health claim on that basis.