Rosemary

• romarin

  French

• romero

  Spanish

• rosmarino

  Italian

• Rosmarin

  German

• dendrolivanoδεντρολίβανο

  Greek

Resinous, faintly bitter and persistent, with a cooling camphorous finish. Rosemary has almost no subtlety and a very high ceiling for damage: a little makes a lamb shoulder, and twice as much makes a lamb shoulder that tastes of a hedge.

Immediately piney and resinous, with camphor behind it and a eucalyptus lift. It is the most instantly recognisable of the Mediterranean herbs and the hardest to hide.

Dark grey-green needles with a paler, almost white underside. The two-tone appearance survives drying and is a reliable identifier.

The critical property. A rosemary needle stays stiff and spiky through any amount of cooking — it does not soften the way a basil or parsley leaf does — so whole needles left in a dish are unpleasant to eat. Either chop it very fine or use whole sprigs and take them out.

• 1,8-Cineole (eucalyptol) — The eucalyptus-camphor lift, shared with bay and cardamom.(what 1,8-cineole is)
• Camphor — The cooling, medicinal note. Its proportion varies widely by origin and is the main reason two jars of rosemary can differ so much.(what camphor is)
• α-Pinene and camphene — The pine-resin character that gives rosemary its immediate association with conifer.(what α-pinene is)
• Carnosic acid and rosmarinic acid — Non-volatile antioxidants rather than aroma compounds. They are why rosemary extract is used industrially to delay rancidity in fats, and they contribute the bitterness.

Decide first whether the rosemary is coming out. If it is, use a whole sprig and take it out — this is the most controllable way to use the herb and the one that makes overdosing difficult. If it is staying in, chop it very fine or use it ground, because a whole dried needle never softens. Bloom it in fat where a dish has one. And use less than the volume suggests: rosemary has one of the highest ratios of impact to quantity of anything on the shelf, and there is no rescuing a dish that has too much of it.

The roasting herb of the western Mediterranean and of British cooking: lamb above all, then pork, chicken, potatoes, root vegetables, mushrooms, focaccia and other olive-oil breads, and white beans. It infuses oils, syrups, brines and creams cleanly. It is a component of herbes de Provence and of Italian seasoning, and it is used more sparingly in the cuisines it comes from than in the ones that adopted it.

• infusing — The most controllable use. A whole sprig in warm oil, cream, syrup or a braising liquid extracts the resin evenly and is then removed, which solves the needle problem and the overdose problem at once.
• blooming — The aroma compounds are fat-soluble and disperse readily from a sprig laid in hot oil or butter, which is why rosemary and roast potatoes work as well as they do.
• baking — Rosemary tolerates a hot oven better than any other soft herb, which is why it goes on focaccia and under roasting meat. Fine needles on an exposed surface will still scorch and turn acrid.
• grinding — Milling is the only way to make dried rosemary pleasant in a dish it stays in. Ground rosemary is genuinely useful for rubs and doughs, and it fades faster than the needle.

Crush a needle between finger and thumb. Live rosemary gives pine immediately; old rosemary gives camphor with nothing in front of it, which reads as harsher rather than weaker. This is the herb whose decline makes it more aggressive rather than less, because the pleasant top notes leave first.

• Camphor or medicinal smell with no pine behind it
• Needles crumbling to dust
• Grey rather than dark green

• Volatilisation of pinene and cineole, leaving camphor dominant
• Oxidation towards a flat medicinal character
• Slow fading of the grey-green needle

It depends entirely on whether the herb comes out again. For anything the rosemary is removed from — a braise, an infused oil, a roast with a sprig underneath — buy needles. For anything it stays in, such as a rub, a sausage mix or a bread dough, ground is the better product because a whole needle in a finished dish is a texture problem rather than a flavour one. Fresh rosemary keeps so well and grows so readily that it is worth having a plant rather than a jar.

• Dark green needles with the pale underside visible, not a jar of grey dust.
• Little or no woody stem.
• Pine on crushing, not camphor alone.
• A stated origin — Spanish and Moroccan rosemary dominate the trade.

Graded on needle-to-stem ratio, cut size, colour and volatile oil content. Camphor proportion varies substantially with origin and season and is the main reason two jars of correctly graded rosemary can taste noticeably different.

Lamiaceae

An evergreen woody shrub of Mediterranean coast and scrub, growing to a metre or more, with stiff needle-shaped leaves — dark green above, white and felted beneath — and small pale blue flowers. It is the toughest of the culinary herbs and survives drought, salt spray and neglect.

The Mediterranean basin, particularly the coastal scrub of Spain, southern France, Italy and North Africa.

• Spain — major producer. The largest source of commercial dried rosemary and of rosemary extract.
• Morocco — major producer. Much of it wild-harvested from extensive natural stands.
• Tunisia — notable producer
• France — notable producer
• Türkiye — notable producer

Cut through the growing season, with oil content highest before flowering.

1. Cutting — Leafy stems cut from established shrubs.
2. Drying — Air-dried in shade or low-temperature forced air.Why: The needle is thick and slow to dry; high heat drives off the cineole and camphor that define it.
3. Stripping — Dried needles stripped from the woody stems.Why: Rosemary stem is genuinely woody and inedible, so stem content is a hard grading limit rather than a quality nicety.
4. Cutting or milling — Needles are frequently cut or milled before packing.Why: A whole dried needle is unpleasant to eat, so most retail rosemary is reduced to something smaller.

Graded on needle-to-stem ratio, colour, cut size and volatile oil. A separate and much larger industrial trade exists in rosemary extract, used as an antioxidant in food manufacturing rather than as a flavouring.

Rosemary is not a common adulteration target — the needle shape is distinctive and hard to imitate with a cheaper leaf. The usual quality failure is excess stem.

A long-lived perennial shrub, cut repeatedly over many years. A significant proportion of the world crop, particularly Moroccan, is gathered from wild stands rather than planted.

Hot, dry, coastal and stony. Rosemary tolerates salt and poor soil and resents wet feet more than cold; the plants that die in northern gardens usually drown rather than freeze.

Rosemary is entangled with memory and remembrance in European culture to a degree no other kitchen herb approaches — carried at funerals and weddings alike, worn at commemorations, and named as such by Ophelia. It is documented in Greek and Roman use and was grown across medieval and early modern Europe as a strewing herb, a preservative and a medicine well before it settled into its modern role as a roasting herb.

Never a traded luxury. The commercially significant modern trade is in rosemary extract as a food antioxidant rather than in the culinary herb, which grows too easily across too much of the world to command a margin.

A long European medicinal record, and a documented history as a preservative and strewing herb. Recorded as tradition; SpiceHQ makes no health claim on that basis.