Coriander leaf

• cilantro

  Spanish

  In American English cilantro means the leaf and coriander means the seed. In British English coriander means both, and the leaf is specified as "fresh coriander". A recipe crossing between the two is a common source of the wrong ingredient.

• dhaniaधनिया

  Hindi

  Dhania covers both leaf and seed; hara dhania specifies the leaf.

• pak chi

  Thai

• rau mùi

  Vietnamese

• kuzbara

  Arabic

• xiangcai香菜

  Mandarin

Bright, citric and cooling, with a soapy or metallic edge that some people barely register and others cannot get past. It cuts through fat, chilli and richness better than almost anything else, which is why it is used at the end of dishes from Mexico to Vietnam.

Powerful, citric and unmistakable, with a green sappy quality underneath. It is one of very few herbs strong enough to identify a cuisine from across a room, and one of very few that a large minority of people actively dislike.

A bright fresh green, darker than parsley. Dried coriander leaf is a dull khaki unless freeze-dried.

Soft leaves that wilt on contact with heat. The stems are tender and carry more flavour than the leaves, and the root, used in Thai cooking, is more intense again.

• (E)-2-Decenal and related unsaturated aldehydes — The dominant volatiles and the source of both the citric brightness and the soapy note. Aldehydes of this class also occur in some soaps, which is not a coincidence and is the chemical basis of the whole soap phenomenon.(what (e)-2-decenal is)
• Linalool — Floral and sweet — the compound that dominates coriander *seed*, present here in a much smaller proportion. Its dominance in the seed and near-absence in the leaf is why the two taste unrelated.(what linalool is)
• Decanal and dodecenal — Green, fatty and citric notes contributing to the overall brightness.

Add it after the heat is off. There is no version of this herb that survives cooking, and coriander stirred into a simmering pot is simply wasted. Chop the stems in with the leaves — they carry more flavour, not less. If you find a bunch with roots, keep them: pounded into a curry paste with garlic and white pepper they are a Thai ingredient in their own right, and they freeze well. And if you are cooking for people, ask first: the soap response is real, it has a documented genetic component, it affects a substantial minority, and it is not a preference that argument will change.

One of the most widely used fresh herbs in the world and a defining flavour of Mexican, South Asian, Thai, Vietnamese and Levantine cooking. It is scattered raw over finished dishes almost everywhere it is used, pounded into chutneys and curry pastes, and — in Egyptian taqlia — fried hard with garlic as a finishing sauce. Its cooling citric quality is the standard counterweight to chilli, fat and long-cooked richness.

• boiling — Destroys it completely. Coriander leaf added to a simmering dish disappears within a minute, leaving a faint vegetal note. It goes in after the heat is off, without exception.
• grinding — Pounding the leaf, stem and root into a paste — as in a Thai curry paste or a South Asian chutney — is the one context where coriander leaf goes into a dish early, because the paste is fried and the herb’s job there is different from its job as a finishing element.
• frying — Coriander root, in particular, is pounded and fried at the start of Thai dishes and behaves quite differently from the leaf: it is more intense, more earthy and considerably more heat-tolerant.
• infusing — Stems steeped briefly in a warm liquid give a cleaner, less soapy version of the aroma, which is occasionally useful for cooking for a mixed table.

For the fresh herb, smell the bunch: it should be obvious from arm’s length. Limp, yellowing or odourless coriander is finished. For the dried, there is no useful test, because dried coriander leaf smells of very little when new.

• Yellowing leaves
• Sliminess at the stem base
• No smell from a fresh bunch
• A dark or blackened bunch

• Volatilisation of the unsaturated aldehydes that carry the entire character — largely during drying itself
• Yellowing and wilting of the fresh leaf
• Mould on fresh bunches kept wet

This is the one profile on SpiceHQ where the buying advice is to skip a form entirely. Dried coriander leaf keeps almost nothing of what makes the herb worth having, and a dish built on its citric lift is better made with a different herb than with a dried version of the right one. Buy fresh, use the stems as well as the leaves, freeze the roots if you find a bunch that has them, and treat the jar of green flakes in the supermarket as a colouring rather than a seasoning.

• Buy it fresh or do not buy it. Dried coriander leaf is not a usable version of this herb.
• A bunch with roots attached where you can find one — the roots are a Thai ingredient in their own right and freeze well.
• A powerful smell from the bunch; if it does not announce itself, it is old.
• Firm stems and no yellowing.

There is no useful commercial grading of the dried leaf. Fresh coriander is graded on appearance and shelf life rather than on aroma, which is why a good-looking supermarket bunch can smell of nothing.

Apiaceae

A fast-growing annual to about 50 cm, bolting readily in heat. The lower leaves are broad and lobed like flat-leaf parsley; the upper leaves, produced as the plant runs to seed, are finely divided and thread-like. The plant changes appearance completely over a few weeks, which surprises people growing it for the first time.

The eastern Mediterranean and western Asia, where the species has been cultivated for several thousand years.

• India — major producer. The largest producer of the species overall, principally for seed but with enormous domestic leaf consumption.
• Mexico — major producer. Large-scale fresh leaf production.
• United States — notable producer
• China — notable producer
• Egypt — notable producer

Cut young, before the plant produces its thread-like upper leaves and runs to flower.

1. Cutting — Young leafy growth cut before bolting.
2. Freeze-drying — Where the leaf is dried at all, freeze-drying is essentially the only method that retains anything.Why: The aldehydes that carry the aroma are extremely volatile, and conventional hot-air drying removes almost all of them.

There is no meaningful quality grading of dried coriander leaf, because the product retains too little to differentiate. Fresh leaf is graded commercially on appearance and shelf life.

Not an adulteration target. The commercially significant substitution runs the other way — dried coriander leaf is cheap green flake and appears as a bulking agent in other herbs.

An annual, sown in succession for leaf. Bolt-resistant varieties are selected for the leaf trade.

Cool and moist for leaf, warm and dry for seed. The plant bolts in heat, so leaf growers sow in succession and in cooler seasons, which is the same agronomic tension dill has.

Coriander is among the oldest cultivated seasonings anywhere — the seed has been recovered from Bronze Age contexts and named in Egyptian and Mycenaean records, and it is one of the very few spices attested continuously from the ancient Near East to the present. The leaf’s modern global distribution, though, follows the Columbian Exchange and later migration: it is fundamental to Mexican, Indian, Thai and Vietnamese cooking and comparatively rare in the European traditions closest to where the plant originated.

The fresh leaf is grown close to its markets and barely traded internationally; the seed of the same plant is a substantial global commodity dominated by India.

A long medicinal record across the Near East and South Asia, largely attaching to the seed rather than the leaf. Recorded as tradition; SpiceHQ makes no health claim on that basis.