Lovage
Also known as Maggi herb, liebstöckel, levisticum, lubczyk, sea parsley
Quick answer
A tall carrot-family perennial that tastes like celery turned up several notches, with a savoury depth that reads as stock. It was a staple of European cooking for a thousand years and fell out of it almost entirely in the last hundred.
- Tastes of
- savoury, celery-like, yeasty, green, faintly bitter
- Heat
- Scoville does not apply
- If you have none
- Celery seed — see the limits
Other names
What this spice is called elsewhere, and where the translation is not clean.
Liebstöckel
German
lubczyk
Polish
libeček
Czech
leuștean
Romanian
levistico
Italian
Flavour and aroma
Powerfully savoury with a celery core, a faint bitterness and a lingering depth. It is one of very few herbs that adds what tastes like body rather than aroma, which is why it survives in soup traditions and disappeared from cuisines that stopped making soup.
Celery multiplied — intensely savoury, green and slightly musky, with a yeasty depth that is genuinely reminiscent of stock or of a bouillon cube. Rubbing a fresh leaf fills a room.
Fresh leaves are a glossy deep green; dried lovage is a dull olive.
Soft glossy leaves that wilt quickly. The stems are hollow, fibrous and firm, and are used as a straw or candied rather than eaten as a herb.
Heat
Pungency scale: none — this spice is not pungent
No heat.
- 3-n-Butylphthalide and sedanolide — The compound family that defines celery, celery seed and lovage alike, and the source of the savoury depth. Lovage carries them at a much higher concentration than celery does, which is the whole difference between the two.(what 3-n-butylphthalide is)
- α-Terpinyl acetate — A sweet, slightly floral note that lifts the savoury base and distinguishes lovage from celery on close smelling.(what α-terpinyl acetate is)
- Ligustilide — A phthalide contributing much of the characteristic warm, slightly medicinal depth.
Pairings
Ranked by how well established the combination is, with the reason and the caveats attached.
Foods
Soup
ClassicLovage is a soup herb before it is anything else, and unusually among leaf herbs it works by adding what tastes like body rather than aroma. A leaf or two at the start of a broth contributes a savoury depth that reads as stock, which is exactly why the German name for it is a joke about a bouillon cube.
How: One or two leaves at the start of a broth; In a potato or pea soup
Add alongside: Bay leaf, Black pepper, Parsley
- Two leaves, not a handful. Lovage is several times stronger than the celery leaf people compare it to.
Potato
StrongPotato soup with lovage is standard across Poland, Czechia and Germany, and the pairing works on the same principle as thyme with lentils: a starchy, aromatically silent food leaves room for a herb that would be intrusive against anything stronger.
How: In a potato soup; With sautéed potatoes and onion
Add alongside: Marjoram, Caraway, Black pepper
Chicken
StrongLovage in a chicken broth is the closest thing in a European kitchen to a stock cube, and the resemblance is not a coincidence — the herb tastes so strongly of celery and savoury depth that commercial bouillon is sometimes described as tasting of it. A few leaves do what a bunch of parsley cannot.
How: A few leaves in a chicken broth; Chopped into a chicken salad
- Very strong; a few leaves rather than a handful
If you have no lovage
What to use instead, and — more usefully — where each replacement stops working.
Celery seed
Good matchUse: ~0.25× by volume — A quarter of the volume of dried lovage leaf, and less again against fresh. Celery seed is dense and concentrated where lovage leaf is light.
The closest substitute available in an ordinary shop, and a genuinely good one: celery seed and lovage share the phthalides that give both their savoury depth, so the register transfers almost intact. What changes is the shape of the delivery — a seed extracts more slowly than a leaf and carries a slight bitterness the leaf does not — and celery seed is available everywhere while lovage is not.
| Flavour | Aroma | Colour | Heat |
|---|---|---|---|
| close | close | different | n/a |
Works for
- Soups, stocks and broths
- Anywhere lovage was supplying savoury depth rather than green freshness
Does not work for
- Dishes wanting the fresh green note of the living herb
- Anything already carrying celery or celery seed, which this will double
Parsley with Celery seed
AcceptableUse: ~2× by volume — Roughly twice the volume of parsley, with celery seed added at about a tenth of that. Conventional rather than measured, and the celery seed is the part to be careful with.
The second option, and a genuinely different one from celery seed alone: lovage is a leaf and behaves like one, so a leaf has to do part of the work. Parsley supplies the green bulk and the texture, celery seed the concentrated savoury note, and between them they cover more of lovage than either does by itself. What is still missing is the faint aniseed edge lovage has and neither of them does.
| Flavour | Aroma | Colour | Heat |
|---|---|---|---|
| partial | partial | close | n/a |
Works for
- Soups, stocks and broths, where lovage is most often used
- Potato and pulse dishes
- Anywhere the herb is chopped in fresh rather than infused
Does not work for
- Dishes where lovage is the identifying flavour, such as a Romanian or Georgian soup built on it
- Recipes calling for the whole stem, which is used like a vegetable
Celery seed alone is the better answer for a stock; this is the better answer for anything where the herb is visible.
Preparation and use
Use less than you think and put it in earlier than you would put in a herb. Lovage is several times stronger than celery leaf, which is the comparison most people reach for, and a whole handful in a soup will make it taste of nothing else. One or two leaves at the start of a stock is the right order of magnitude. Strip the leaf from the hollow stem — the stem is fibrous and contributes little — and treat what is left as an aromatic vegetable rather than as a garnish.
A soup and stock herb across central and eastern Europe: in broths, in potato and vegetable soups, in Romanian ciorbă, in stuffings and in stews. It behaves more like an aromatic vegetable than a finishing herb — added at the start and cooked for the duration — and it supplies a savoury body that few other plants do. The seed is used like celery seed, and the root is eaten as a vegetable.
- boiling — The characteristic use, and one where lovage behaves like a root vegetable rather than a herb: it goes in at the start of a soup or a stock and cooks for the duration, contributing body that a late-added herb could not.
- infusing — A single leaf in a stock gives a savoury depth out of all proportion to its size. It is one of the few herbs where a whole-leaf infusion is genuinely a technique.
- grinding — Lovage seed is used like celery seed — ground into a mixture or scattered whole on bread — and is more aromatic and less bitter than the leaf.
- frying — Chopped fine into fat at the start, where it functions like the celery in a soffritto and contributes more than the celery would.
Storage and freshness
| Form | Good for | Conditions | Fridge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fresh | 0–1 months (typically 0 months) | Refrigerated, stems in water or wrapped in a damp cloth. | Yes |
| Leaf | 9–18 months (typically 12 months) | Cool, dark, dry and closed. | No |
Crush a pinch and look for the savoury depth rather than the green. Lovage loses its brightness first and keeps its stock-like quality much longer, so an old jar is diminished rather than useless — which is unusual among dried leaves and worth knowing.
- No savoury depth on crushing
- Brown rather than olive
- A generic hay smell
- Volatilisation of the terpene top notes
- Slower loss of the phthalide savoury fraction
- Fading from green to olive-brown
Quality is not the same as safety
Stale dried lovage is a quality matter. Fresh lovage is a soft leaf and spoils like one.
Forms
These forms differ enough to need separate answers: treating them as interchangeable produces a dish that is wrong.
Fresh leaf
Glossy leaves stripped from the hollow stem. The principal form.
Intensely savoury and green, with the celery character in front.
A leaf or two into a stock or soup at the start; chopped fine where it is not simmered.
Lovage seed
The ripe seed, used like celery seed. A separate spice with its own uses.
More aromatic and less bitter than the leaf, with the same phthalide character in a warmer register.
Ground into mixtures, or scattered whole on bread and savoury pastry.
Not interchangeable with fresh
Seed and leaf do different jobs. The seed is a warm aromatic and the leaf is a savoury base ingredient; a soup that wanted the leaf is not served by the seed.
Commonly confused with lovage
Direct comparisons, each with the difference that actually changes what you cook.
Botany
Apiaceae
The carrot family, alongside celery, celery seed, dill, fennel, coriander and cumin — and lovage tastes unmistakably like the family it belongs to.
Almost the whole plant is usable: leaf as a herb, seed as a spice, root as a vegetable and the hollow stems as straws or candied. Very few entries in this catalogue offer four parts.
A vigorous perennial reaching two metres or more, with glossy divided leaves resembling flat-leaf parsley or celery tops, hollow stems and flat umbels of yellow-green flowers. It is long-lived, hardy and startlingly large for a herb, which is one reason it left the modern kitchen garden.
Commonly confused with
Celery leaf
The closest thing in flavour and the usual substitute. Celery leaf is milder and greener; lovage is more concentrated and carries a savoury depth celery does not. Around a third the quantity of lovage replaces a given amount of celery leaf, which is the wrong way round from what most cooks expect.
A genuinely close relative in flavour terms, and lovage seed is used the same way. The two share the phthalides that give both their character.
Maggi seasoning
The German name Maggikraut invites the assumption that lovage is what Maggi tastes of, or that Maggi contains it. Neither is true: the resemblance is real and coincidental, and the sauce is a hydrolysed-protein seasoning with no lovage in it.
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, seed, root and hollow stems of a long-lived perennial that reaches two metres or more.
How it is propagated
- Seed.
From seed, sown fresh because it loses viability quickly, or by division of established crowns.
Where it comes from and how it is made
Probably the eastern Mediterranean or western Asia, though the plant has been cultivated in Europe so long that its wild origin is not securely established.
- Poland — notable producer. One of the few countries where lovage remains an everyday kitchen herb.
- Germany — notable producer
- Romania — notable producer. Where leuștean is standard in ciorbă, the sour soups that are a national staple.
- Netherlands — notable producer
Leaf cut through the season and at its best before flowering; seed collected as the umbels ripen; root lifted in autumn from mature plants.
- Cutting — Leafy growth cut before flowering.
- Shade drying — Dried in shade or at low temperature.Why: The phthalides that carry the savoury character are relatively robust, so lovage survives drying better than most soft Apiaceae leaves.
- Sieving — Dried leaf separated from the coarse hollow stem, which is fibrous.
A long-lived perennial, cut repeatedly through the season. It is grown at small scale for the herb trade and much more widely in domestic gardens across central and eastern Europe.
Temperate and cool, with adequate moisture. Lovage is genuinely hardy and dies back to the root each winter, returning larger each year.
How these steps work: shade drying.
Buying and quality
The real decision here is fresh against dried, and lovage is one of the few soft green herbs where dried is genuinely worth having: the savoury phthalides survive drying and only the bright green note is lost. If you can grow it, do — one plant supplies a household and returns every year — and if you cannot, a small jar of the dried leaf will do more for a pot of soup than most things on the shelf. Lovage seed is a separate purchase and behaves like celery seed.
- Grow it. Lovage is a hardy perennial that returns for a decade and is genuinely difficult to buy fresh outside central Europe.
- For dried: a savoury depth on crushing, not just a green smell.
- Leaf rather than the hollow stem, which is fibrous and contributes little.
- A small jar, since a little goes a very long way.
History and trade
Lovage was one of the standard herbs of European cooking for well over a thousand years — it appears in Roman sources, in the Carolingian capitulary listing plants to be grown on imperial estates, and in monastery gardens throughout the Middle Ages. Its retreat is recent and specific: it is a two-metre perennial, it tastes of stock, and both properties became liabilities in a twentieth century of small gardens and commercial bouillon.
A very small commercial trade. Lovage is grown for use rather than for sale across the countries that still eat it, and it is rarely stocked in British or American shops.
Claims we do not accept at face value
“Maggi seasoning is flavoured with lovage.”
popular but unsupported
The German name for the herb is Maggikraut and the resemblance is genuine, which makes the inference natural. Maggi seasoning is a hydrolysed vegetable protein preparation and does not contain lovage; the two arrive at a similar savoury profile by unrelated routes. The belief is widespread enough to be worth recording as a belief.
In the wider history of spices
c. 77 CE · Roman world
Pliny on the seasoning plants of the Roman kitchen garden
In the book of his Natural History on garden plants, Pliny goes through the kitchen’s seasonings one by one. Mint scents the dishes at country entertainments. Cumin is “the best suited of all the seasoning herbs” to delicate stomachs, the most esteemed in his part of the world being that of Carpetania, though elsewhere that of Africa and Ethiopia is preferred. Caraway, an exotic named for Caria, is used chiefly in cooking; lovage, native to Liguria, is by his day grown everywhere; savory is reckoned among the seasoning plants and rivals wild marjoram. Gith is used by bakers, and dill and anise by cooks and physicians; country people sprinkle poppy seed on the upper crust of bread and season the under crust with parsley and gith. Coriander, anise and mustard are sown at the autumn equinox, and the best mustard seed comes from Egypt. He gives sowing times for rue and parsley, and in the following book says that fennel is found in all parts of the world.
Contemporary text · Pliny the Elder
Mint, Cumin, Caraway, Savory, Nigella, Dill, Aniseed, Poppy seed, Parsley, Coriander seed, Mustard seed, Rue, Fennel seed
Contested: Read in a nineteenth-century English translation whose plant names are the translators’ and were not checked against the Latin; “parsley” and “gith”, the black seed taken here as nigella, are their renderings. Pliny compiles from earlier writers as well as from what he knew. The chapters read do not date the work, and the date given is the one this catalogue already records for it.
Last decade of the eighth century · Frankish kingdom, Annappes, northern France
The Capitulare de villis lists the plants a royal estate should grow
The Capitulare de villis, an ordinance on the management of royal estates made in the reign of Charlemagne, ends with a list of the plants an estate garden should hold: seventy-four garden plants and sixteen fruit trees. The original is believed to date from the last decade of the eighth century and survives in a single copy made a few decades later. Among the plants are sage, rue, rosemary, parsley, lovage, dill, fennel, mint, savory, coriander, chervil, caraway, cumin, black cumin, fenugreek, garlic and onion, and bay among the trees. Bound with it are inventories of two royal estates, Asnapium, generally identified as Annappes in northern France, and Treola, recording what was found in their gardens; these include sage, mint, lovage, savory, coriander, garlic and onion, and correspond closely to the ordinance’s list.
Contemporary text · Charlemagne
Sage, Rue, Rosemary, Parsley, Dill, Fennel seed, Mint, Savory, Coriander seed, Chervil, Caraway, Cumin, Nigella, Fenugreek, Garlic, Onion, Bay leaf
Contested: The authors caution against reading the list as a record of what grew. Most of it can be found in an older Latin version of a Hippocratic text, and they think it more realistic to see such lists as the learned elite’s attempt to describe Carolingian agriculture through classical knowledge than as a true picture; the two estate inventories they regard as reliable. The Latin names do not always fix a single plant.
Dedicated to Gozbert, abbot of St Gall 816–837 · St Gall, Switzerland, Reichenau, Lake Constance
The Plan of St Gall gives each herb its own bed
The Plan of St Gall, five sheets of parchment sewn together and dedicated to Gozbert, abbot of St Gall between 816 and 837, sets out a Benedictine monastery with three plots for plants. The small herb or medicinal garden, about 11 by 8 metres, has sixteen beds, each for one plant. Twelve hold herbs: savory, costmary, fenugreek, rosemary, sage, rue, cumin, lovage, fennel and three kinds of mint, all of them, in the words of a modern study, usable for decoration, seasoning and medicine. The vegetable garden of eighteen beds has garlic, shallots, leeks and onions, and herbs apparently not counted as medicinal: parsley, chervil, dill, black cumin, savory, celery leaf and coriander. Bay is among the trees of the orchard, which is also the cemetery.
Contemporary text · Gozbert, abbot of St Gall
Savory, Fenugreek, Rosemary, Sage, Rue, Cumin, Fennel seed, Mint, Parsley, Chervil, Dill, Nigella, Coriander seed, Garlic, Onion, Bay leaf
Contested: The plan is of an ideal monastery, not a survey of a real one: the study says the buildings were in all likelihood never built to it and that it was meant as a model for new foundations. It shows what a ninth-century monastic garden was expected to hold. A caption in the same study dates the plan to about 825–850.
Around 842 · Reichenau, Lake Constance
Walahfrid Strabo’s poem on his garden at Reichenau
Around 842 Walahfrid Strabo, a monk and later abbot of Reichenau on Lake Constance, wrote De cultura hortorum, known as the Hortulus: 444 Latin hexameters in twenty-seven sections, twenty-four of them each given to one plant. A modern study calls it the first contribution to gardening literature in medieval Europe and notes that, unlike the Capitulare de villis and the Plan of St Gall, it appears to be about an actual garden, since Walahfrid says its position is not ideal and describes the work done in it. No legume is mentioned. It is all herbs, some for flavouring food, such as radish or horseradish, celery and chervil, and others important as medicine: sage, rue, southernwood, white horehound, fennel, lovage, clary sage, two kinds of mint, betony, agrimony, yarrow and catnip.
Contemporary text · Walahfrid Strabo
Sage, Rue, Fennel seed, Mint, Chervil
Contested: A poem before it is a gardener’s record. Its first aim, the study says, was a literary text in the manner of Virgil’s Georgics, and it names no plant that is not already in the Latin texts of Hippocrates, Dioscorides or Apuleius Platonicus. The copy the study illustrates was made at Lorsch about 1000, more than 150 years after the poem.
Culture
Recorded by tradition rather than merged into one narrative — these are genuinely different practices.
Poland
Lovage was a familiar seasoning in Poland by 1751.
- As a seasoning herb
Central and eastern Europe
Lovage remains an ordinary kitchen herb across Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Germany, Hungary and Romania in a way it is not anywhere west of them. It goes into broths, into potato and vegetable soups, into stuffings and — in Romania — into ciorbă, the sour soups that are a national staple and in which leuștean is close to obligatory.
- In broths and stocks
- In potato and vegetable soups
- In Romanian ciorbă
Britain and the Mediterranean, historically
Lovage was grown in British and Italian kitchen gardens for centuries and has all but disappeared from both. The candied stems, used like angelica, and the seeds scattered on bread are documented English uses that have no modern currency at all.
- Candied stems, historically
- Seeds on bread, historically
A long European medicinal record, chiefly as a diuretic and digestive, and the plant appears in medieval monastic garden lists in that capacity as much as a culinary one. Recorded as tradition; SpiceHQ makes no health claim.
What it is called
- German: Liebstöckel
- Polish: lubczyk
- Romanian: leuștean
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 lovage:
- Archaeological evidence
- Historical timeline
- Ceremonial use
- Regulatory limits