Guascas
Also known as guasca, gallant soldier, Galinsoga parviflora
Quick answer
A small Andean herb, a common weed nearly everywhere else, that gives Bogotá’s ajiaco its particular flavour — grassy, with something of artichoke about it. Ajiaco without guascas is chicken and potato soup; with it, it is the dish.
- Tastes of
- grassy, artichoke, green, earthy, mild
- Heat
- Scoville does not apply
- If you have none
- Parsley — see the limits
Other names
What this spice is called elsewhere, and where the translation is not clean.
guascas
Spanish — Colombia, especially Bogotá
gallant soldier
English
The English name of the same plant as a garden weed. Most English speakers who know it know it as something to pull up, not to cook.
Flavour and aroma
Mild, green and slightly bitter, adding an herbal depth to a long-simmered soup rather than a sharp top note.
Grassy and green, with a note often compared to artichoke or to a mild, earthy herb tea.
Soft mid-green leaves; the dried herb is dull olive.
Soft leaves that disappear into a soup.
Heat
Pungency scale: none — this spice is not pungent
No heat.
Pairings
Ranked by how well established the combination is, with the reason and the caveats attached.
Foods
Potato
ClassicAjiaco santafereño is three kinds of potato — the smallest, papa criolla, dissolving to thicken the broth — seasoned above all with guascas. The herb’s grassy, artichoke-like note is what turns a potato soup into the Bogotá dish.
How: Ajiaco santafereño
Chicken
ClassicThe chicken of ajiaco is simmered with the potatoes and guascas, and shredded back into the soup; the herb flavours the broth the chicken cooks in.
How: Ajiaco santafereño
Maize
StrongPieces of corn on the cob are simmered in ajiaco with the guascas; the sweetness of the corn balances the herb’s slight bitterness.
How: Ajiaco santafereño
If you have no guascas
What to use instead, and — more usefully — where each replacement stops working.
Parsley
PoorParsley adds a green herbal note to ajiaco and nothing of the grassy, artichoke-like flavour that defines it. The soup is good; it is not ajiaco.
| Flavour | Aroma | Colour | Heat |
|---|---|---|---|
| different | different | close | n/a |
Works for
- A green note in potato and chicken soup
Does not work for
- Ajiaco santafereño as the dish
Why there is no second option: Recorded as the only option because there is no real substitute. Dried guascas, sold in packets in Latin American grocers, keeps its character well and should always be preferred; parsley is listed so that a cook who has none knows what they will and will not get. Editorial judgement.
Preparation and use
Add a small bunch of fresh guascas, or a tablespoon or so of dried, for the last half-hour of simmering.
Ajiaco santafereño above all, and other Andean potato and chicken soups. It pairs with potato, chicken, maize, capers and cream.
- boiling — Added to ajiaco towards the end of simmering, where it infuses the broth; unlike most tender herbs it is meant to be cooked.
Storage and freshness
| Form | Good for | Conditions | Fridge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leaf | 6–12 months | Cool, dark, dry and sealed. | No |
| Fresh | 0–0 months | Refrigerated, loosely wrapped. | Yes |
Crumble a little of the dried herb; it should smell green rather than of hay.
- A hay-like smell
- Straw-coloured dried leaf
- Loss of aroma in the dried herb
- Wilting of the fresh herb
Quality is not the same as safety
Stale dried guascas is a quality matter; kept dry it does not become unsafe.
Forms
These forms differ enough to need separate answers: treating them as interchangeable produces a dish that is wrong.
Fresh guascas
Bunches of leafy stems, in Bogotá markets.
Dried guascas
Crumbled dried leaf in packets, the usual form outside Colombia.
Botany
Asteraceae
The daisy family.
A small, soft annual with opposite, toothed oval leaves and tiny daisy-like flower heads of five short white ray florets around a yellow centre. Native to South America and now a weed of gardens and fields across the world.
Commonly confused with
Shaggy soldier (Galinsoga quadriradiata)
A hairier relative that grows in the same places and is sometimes gathered alongside. The culinary herb is G. parviflora.
How it is grown
The plant, how it is propagated and farmed, what threatens the crop, and where it is produced now. Crop diseases here are plant health, not food safety.
The leaves and soft stems of a small annual, native to South America and now a weed of gardens and fields worldwide.
How it is propagated
- Seed.
Self-seeds prolifically.
Growing conditions
- Temperature · 10–35 °C
The seed needs temperatures of 10–35 °C, and light, to germinate. The figure is for germination, not for growth.
- Light and shade
Buried seed does not germinate at all, and shade prevents germination too. That is why the plant is found only on open land or as a weed among young and small crop plants.
- Altitude · 0–2400 m
In tropical Africa it is found from sea level to 2,400 m, where rainfall is medium to high. The handbook gives no range for the Andes, where the herb is used.
- Soil
It grows in a variety of soils but prefers one with ample nutrients and good drainage, and farmers take it as a sign of high soil fertility.
How it is farmed
- Wild harvest · Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe
In Africa it is only collected from the wild, by people weeding their crops, and trade is limited to local markets. The young stems and leaves are cooked as a vegetable, usually with the flower heads and buds removed. The same account records that in South America the dried leaves, guascas, are an essential flavouring for certain dishes, and says nothing of how the plant is grown or dried there.
Most spices are grown in more than one way; none of these is the only one.
Chiefly a weed. A single plant eight to nine weeks old can produce over 7,000 viable seeds, several generations are possible in one growing season, and plants left on the ground after weeding may root again. The handbook lists it as a common and locally serious weed of wheat and maize in Ethiopia, cotton in Uganda, coffee, maize, sorghum and beans in Tanzania and potatoes in Mozambique, and as an alternate host of insects and viruses that affect tobacco, potato and cabbage.
Where it comes from and how it is made
South America, probably the Andes.
- Colombia (Bogotá and Cundinamarca) — major producer. Sold fresh and dried in markets for ajiaco.
Leafy stems cut before or during flowering and sold fresh or dried.
- Drying — Leafy stems air-dried and crumbled for sale in packets.Why: The dried herb is the form most people outside Bogotá can buy.
Largely gathered from cultivated ground where it grows as a weed, and grown in small plots for market.
Cool highland and temperate conditions; it grows as a weed wherever the soil is disturbed.
Buying and quality
Dried is fine for ajiaco and is what most cooks outside Colombia will find.
- Green rather than straw-coloured dried leaf.
- A fresh, grassy smell.
Physical properties and standards
Moisture, water activity, ash, volatile oil and the like — what standards require kept apart from what has been measured.
| Property | Value | Sample and method |
|---|---|---|
| Moisture (fresh) | 88.4 g/100 g | Leaves of Galinsoga parviflora; the handbook does not say where they were collected · Water per 100 g edible portion of the leaves, from a food composition table of 1983 as the handbook account quotes it |
A limit is set by a rule of one kind, in one place; a measurement describes particular samples. Neither is a property of every jar.
Culture
Recorded by tradition rather than merged into one narrative — these are genuinely different practices.
Bogotá
Bogotá, Colombia.
Ajiaco santafereño — chicken simmered with three kinds of potato until the smallest, papa criolla, collapses and thickens the broth, with corn on the cob and guascas — is the dish of the Colombian capital, served with cream, capers and avocado at the table. Guascas is the ingredient Bogotanos name as indispensable.
- Ajiaco santafereño
What it is called
- Spanish: guascas
What we do not know
Published openly. A gap we have named is more useful than a gap we have filled with plausible prose.
Not yet established for guascas:
- Archaeological evidence
- Historical timeline
- Ceremonial use
- Traditional medicinal context
- Regulatory limits
- Traditional uses
Its history. The history of guascas as a culinary herb has not been researched to a citable standard. Its role in ajiaco santafereño is documented; when that association began is not.