Savory
Also known as summer savory, winter savory, summer savoury, winter savoury, bohnenkraut, chubritsa
Quick answer
A peppery, thyme-adjacent herb that half of Europe considers essential and English-speaking cooks have largely forgotten. Two species are sold under the name and they are not the same: summer savory is soft and sweet, winter savory hard and resinous.
- Tastes of
- peppery, warm, resinous, slightly bitter, herbal
- Heat
- Scoville does not apply
- If you have none
- Thyme — see the limits
Other names
What this spice is called elsewhere, and where the translation is not clean.
Bohnenkraut
German
Literally "bean herb". The German name records what the herb is for rather than what it is, which is the clearest single statement of its role in European cooking.
chubritsaчубрица
Bulgarian
sarriette
French
santoreggia
Italian
kondari
Georgian
cimbru
Romanian
Flavour and aroma
Peppery, warm and slightly bitter, with a sharpness that reads as heat without being one. Summer savory is sweeter and rounder; winter savory is harder, more bitter and more insistent. The peppery quality is the reason savory sits so well with beans and pulses, which have almost no aromatic character of their own to compete with it.
Thyme-like with a distinct peppery lift and a resinous background. Winter savory is markedly more medicinal and pine-like than the summer species.
Bronze-green to grey-green, darker in the winter species.
Taste, smell and sensation, channel by channel
Smell, taste and the chemical sense of heat and cold are different senses. Each is listed with the compounds evidenced as producing it.
Smell
- Herbal — Carvacrol
- Citrus — γ-Terpinene
Carvacrol, with γ-terpinene and p-cymene, leads summer savory oil, which smells fresh, medicinal and spicy, reminiscent of sage and thyme. Commercial savory oil must carry 20–57 per cent carvacrol with negligible thymol.
Narrow flakes, slightly coarser in the winter species. Not visually distinctive in a finished dish.
Heat
Pungency scale: none — this spice is not pungent
No true heat, but a peppery sharpness pronounced enough that savory can stand in for pepper in a dish where pepper is unwanted.
- Carvacrol — The dominant phenol in both species and the source of the warm peppery bite. It is the same compound that defines oregano, in a different setting.(what carvacrol is)
- Thymol — Higher in winter savory, and the source of its more medicinal character.(what thymol is)
- p-Cymene and γ-terpinene — Woody and citric background, and the precursors of the phenols above.(what p-cymene is, what γ-terpinene is)
- Linalool — Softer and more floral, and proportionally higher in summer savory — the reason it reads as the gentler of the two.(what linalool is)
Pairings
Ranked by how well established the combination is, with the reason and the caveats attached.
Foods
Beans
ClassicThe pairing is embedded in the German name for the herb: Bohnenkraut, bean herb. Beans have almost no aroma of their own and a soft starchy texture, and savory’s peppery phenols supply structure without competing — the same reason black pepper works, from a herb that also brings a resinous background.
How: In the pot from the start of a bean stew; With green beans and butter
Add alongside: Thyme, Garlic, Black pepper
Cabbage
GoodCabbage is sulfurous and sweet in equal measure and gets more so with cooking. Savory’s peppery sharpness cuts the sweetness and gives the sulfur something to sit behind, which is why it appears in Balkan and central European cabbage dishes and in pickling brines.
How: In a braised cabbage dish; In a pickling brine with the cucumbers or cabbage
Add alongside: Caraway, Black pepper, Juniper
Other spices and blends
Blue fenugreek
StrongBoth are khmeli suneli components and both are legumes-and-herbs rather than seeds or barks. Savory supplies a peppery sharpness that blue fenugreek entirely lacks, and the combination is why the Georgian blend reads as savoury rather than sweet despite being built on a fenugreek.
How: Together in khmeli suneli; In lobio and other bean dishes
Add alongside: Marigold, Coriander seed
Thyme
StrongChemically close — both are carvacrol and thymol herbs — and used together in herbes de Provence and across southern French cooking. Savory adds the peppery edge thyme lacks, and thyme adds a woodiness savory is short of, so the pair covers more ground than either alone.
How: Together in herbes de Provence; In a bean or lamb dish
Add alongside: Rosemary, Marjoram, Garlic
- They are similar enough that using both where one was called for adds little.
Dill
GoodSavory is peppery and slightly resinous — it carries carvacrol, the compound that makes oregano pungent — and dill is sweet and volatile, so savory provides a bite dill does not have. The combination is Georgian and Balkan rather than Western European, where savory has largely fallen out of use.
How: Both dried, in khmeli suneli; With beans, where savory is traditional
Add alongside: Blue fenugreek
Mint
GoodBoth are Lamiaceae and both carry monoterpenes, but the ones they carry differ enough — menthol against carvacrol and thymol — that the pair reads as cool-then-peppery rather than as a single herb. It is a combination of the eastern Mediterranean and the Caucasus; western European cooking pairs savory with thyme instead.
How: Both dried, in khmeli suneli; With pulses
Add alongside: Parsley
Parsley
GoodSavory is assertive enough to need diluting and parsley is the herb that dilutes without arguing, which is the entire relationship. This is a workmanlike pairing rather than an interesting one, and it is included because it is real rather than because it is exciting.
How: Both dried, in khmeli suneli
Add alongside: Mint
Rosemary
GoodTwo resinous herbs that overlap without duplicating: rosemary is pine-like and camphorous, savory peppery and slightly thymol-ish. Savory is the older of the two in southern French cooking and has largely been displaced by thyme, which makes this pairing more historical than current outside Provence itself.
How: In herbes de Provence; With beans and with lamb
Add alongside: Thyme
- Both are strong enough to dominate; together they need a light hand
Shares a blend
Spices that appear alongside savory in the core ingredients of a blend profiled here. That is a record of established use rather than a recommendation, and it carries no proportions.
Together in Herbes de Provence, Khmeli suneli.
Together in Khmeli suneli.
Together in Khmeli suneli.
Together in Khmeli suneli.
Together in Sharena sol.
Together in Herbes de Provence.
Together in Sharena sol.
Together in Herbes de Provence.
Together in Khmeli suneli.
Together in Herbes de Provence.
Together in Herbes de Provence.
Together in Sharena sol.
Salt and savouriness
Savory shares a blend with salt, which is a different kind of fact from the combinations above. It supplies a basic taste and essentially no aroma, so there is nothing for savory to harmonise with or clash against. The question worth asking is not whether they suit each other but how much and when — salt drawn in early behaves differently from salt added at the end, and a blend already carrying it needs none added separately.
If you have no savory
What to use instead, and — more usefully — where each replacement stops working.
Thyme
Good matchUse: 1× by volume — One for one, and add a little black pepper if the dish will take it.
Thyme is the nearest thing on a British or American shelf, and the gap is the peppery sharpness savory carries and thyme does not. Adding a pinch of black pepper alongside closes most of it, which is a reasonable trick and not quite the same thing.
| Flavour | Aroma | Colour | Heat |
|---|---|---|---|
| close | close | close | less |
Works for
- Bean and pulse dishes
- Sausage and charcuterie
- Braises
- Grilled meat
Does not work for
- Bulgarian sharena sol, where savory is most of the mixture
- Khmeli suneli and Georgian dishes built on the blend
- German bean dishes where the herb is the tradition rather than the seasoning
Recorded because savory is genuinely hard to buy across much of the English-speaking world, and a recipe that calls for it is otherwise stopped dead.
Oregano with Black pepper
AcceptableUse: ~0.75× by volume — Rather less oregano than the savory replaced, with a pinch of black pepper alongside. Oregano is the more assertive of the two and the pepper is standing in for a sharpness it does not have.
Both are carvacrol herbs, so the family resemblance is real, and oregano brings a minty medicinal pungency savory does not — which is why the quantity comes down. What is missing is the peppery sharpness, and a pinch of black pepper covers most of it. Thyme is the closer swap and this one is useful when the dish already carries thyme.
| Flavour | Aroma | Colour | Heat |
|---|---|---|---|
| partial | partial | close | less |
Works for
- Bean and pulse dishes
- Tomato-based dishes, where oregano belongs anyway
- Grilled meat
Does not work for
- Bulgarian sharena sol and Georgian khmeli suneli, where savory is a defining component
- Delicate dishes — oregano is considerably more assertive
- Anything already carrying oregano
Preparation and use
Put it in with the beans at the start. Savory is one of the few herbs whose classic use is a full hour of wet cooking, and the peppery phenols survive it. Rub the leaf between the palms first. If you are seasoning something quick rather than something simmered, use it as you would use pepper — a pinch at the end, where the sharpness reads clearly — which is exactly what half of pre-modern Europe did with it before pepper became cheap.
The bean herb of central and eastern Europe, and a daily seasoning across Bulgaria and the Balkans. It goes with beans and pulses of every kind, into sausages and cured meats, onto grilled meat, into lentil and vegetable soups, with goat cheese in Provence, into khmeli suneli in Georgia and into sharena sol in Bulgaria. It is also the traditional herb for cooking with cabbage and with cucumbers in pickling brine.
- boiling — The characteristic use. Savory goes into the bean pot at the start and cooks for as long as the beans do; the phenols are heat-stable and the peppery note survives.
- blooming — Disperses readily in fat, which is how it gets into a sausage mixture or a soffritto.
- grinding — Ground savory is used in Bulgarian sharena sol, where it is mixed with salt and paprika as a table condiment. It fades faster than the leaf.
- toasting — Scorches quickly and turns acrid, like every leaf herb of this family. Savory is bloomed, not dry-toasted.
Convert savory between spoons and grams (a level teaspoon of ground savory is about 1.4 ± 0.21 g)
Appears in: Herbes de Provence, Khmeli suneli, Bouquet garni, Svan salt, Sharena sol
Storage and freshness
| Form | Good for | Conditions | Fridge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leaf | 12–24 months (typically 18 months) | Cool, dark, dry and closed. | No |
Crush a pinch and look for the peppery bite specifically. Savory that smells generically herbal without the pepper has lost the thing that distinguishes it from thyme, and at that point thyme would do the job better because you probably have fresher thyme.
- No peppery sharpness on crushing
- Brown rather than bronze-green
- A generic hay smell
- Volatilisation of carvacrol and the terpene fraction
- Fading from bronze-green to brown
- Oxidation towards a flat hay character
Quality is not the same as safety
Stale savory is a quality matter. Kept dry it does not become unsafe.
Forms
The form the sources describe, and so the one this page is about.
Dried leaf
The standard form. Sold rubbed, rarely with the species declared.
Peppery and warm, holding up through long cooking.
Add at the start of a bean or pulse dish; rub between the palms first.
Commonly confused with savory
Direct comparisons, each with the difference that actually changes what you cook.
Botany
Two distinct species sold under one English word. Satureja hortensis is summer savory, an annual; S. montana is winter savory, a hardy perennial.
Lamiaceae
The mint family.
Summer savory is a soft-stemmed annual to about 40 cm with narrow bronze-green leaves. Winter savory is a low woody perennial with stiffer, darker, more needle-like leaves. Both carry small white or pale lilac flowers and both grow on poor dry ground.
Commonly confused with
The nearest relative in flavour terms and a common substitute. Savory is peppery in a way thyme is not, and thyme is woodier and less sharp. A dish seasoned with thyme instead of savory tastes right and tastes different.
Summer versus winter savory
The distinction the English name hides. Summer savory (Satureja hortensis) is softer, sweeter and more delicate and is what most European recipes mean. Winter savory (S. montana) is harder, more resinous and considerably more bitter, and is better in long-cooked dishes than fresh. Substituting one for the other is a real change, and shops rarely say which they are selling.
Some Levantine za'atar species belong to Satureja or the closely allied Thymbra, which is why savory sometimes reads as familiar to anyone who knows the blend.
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 flowering tips; the best commercial grade is dried leaf alone. This describes summer savory, Satureja hortensis, an annual. Winter savory, Satureja montana, sold under the same word, is a smaller perennial.
Germination is slow, usually two to three weeks. Flowering begins about 75–80 days after germination, and in Europe seed ripens some 140–160 days after it, the fruits ripening unevenly and shattering.
How it is propagated
- Seed.
Usually sown direct, shallowly, in rows or broadcast. The seed stays viable for only a year or two.
Native to the eastern Mediterranean and probably grown as a condiment in ancient Rome; it has been little improved by breeding, and cultivated plants cannot be told from wild ones.
Growing conditions
- Light and shade
Summer savory grows well in most temperate and subtropical climates in full sun.
- Soil
Light, rich, well-drained soils suit it; it is native on calcareous soils around the Mediterranean and prefers alkaline ground.
How it is farmed
- Intensive field crop · Europe and the United States
Sown as an annual row crop, and returned to the same field only about once in five years so that disease and pests of the mint family do not build up.
Most spices are grown in more than one way; none of these is the only one.
Harvest
Harvested by hand or by machine, depending on the farm.
Cut when in flower. In trials in Scotland the oil content of the herb rose from 0.4–0.8% before flowering to 1.4–2.0% at full flowering and fell sharply afterwards, so the largest harvest of oil coincided with full flower.
The cut herb is dried soon after harvest to hold its quality, then threshed, cleaned and kept in closed containers to protect its colour and oil.
Where it comes from and how it is made
Southern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, with both species native across the northern Mediterranean basin.
- Bulgaria — major producer. Where savory is a daily seasoning rather than an occasional one, and the basis of the table condiment sharena sol.
- France — notable producer. Sarriette in Provence, where it is gathered as well as grown.
- Germany — notable producer
- Türkiye — notable producer
- Albania — notable producer
Cut at the onset of flowering for peak oil.
- Cutting — Whole plants or leafy stems cut at flowering.
- Drying — Air-dried in shade or hung in bunches, which remains common in the domestic Balkan tradition.
- Rubbing and sieving — Leaf rubbed from stems and sieved.
Graded on leaf-to-stem ratio, colour and volatile oil, on the same basis as thyme. Species is rarely declared, which is the more consequential gap.
Not a common adulteration target — the market is too small and too regional. The routine failure is species ambiguity: winter savory sold as savory to a cook expecting the summer species.
Summer savory is sown annually and cut once or twice. Winter savory is a perennial subshrub cut over several years before it goes too woody.
Dry, sunny and poor. Summer savory is frost-tender and grown as an annual; winter savory is hardy and survives cold that would kill most Mediterranean herbs.
Buying and quality
Rubbed leaf for cooking, and it keeps well enough that a jar is a reasonable purchase. Ground savory has a specific home in sharena sol and a table condiment is exactly where a fast-fading ground herb makes sense, because it is used up quickly. The question worth more attention is which species you have: a shop selling savory without saying is most often selling summer savory, and if the herb tastes harsher and more medicinal than expected it is probably the winter one.
- A peppery bite on crushing, not just a general herbal smell.
- Bronze-green rather than brown.
- A declared species if you can find one — summer savory is what most recipes mean.
- Little stem.
Graded on leaf-to-stem ratio, colour and volatile oil, as for thyme. Species is the distinction that matters most to a cook and is the one least often stated.
History and trade
Satureja was among the herbs Roman writers recorded in cultivation, and it was one of the standard seasonings of European cooking before black pepper became affordable — its peppery character made it a domestic substitute for an imported luxury. It kept that role across central and eastern Europe and largely lost it in Britain and North America, where it is now among the least-known herbs on this site despite being ordinary across the Balkans.
A small regional trade. Bulgaria, France, Germany and Türkiye produce most of what is traded, and consumption is concentrated in the same countries that grow it.
In the wider history of spices
Roman period, c. 50–400 CE · Yorkshire, England, York (Eboracum)
Coriander and dill appear in Roman Yorkshire
A review of the crop records from Yorkshire across the first millennia BCE and CE finds coriander and dill, with lemon balm, recorded in the Roman period, about 50–400 CE, nearly always in waterlogged deposits. The Early Medieval records, of 400–1100 CE, are more varied: coriander and dill are common, and fennel, oregano and savory are newly recorded, as are leek, lettuce and charred garlic. An assessment of the archaeobotany of Roman Britain puts the wider change at some fifty or more new foods, mainly fruits, vegetables and herbs, becoming established in the Roman period, names coriander, fennel, dill and summer savory among the herbs grown, and says there is no evidence of horticulture in Iron Age Britain and that all the evidence then available for it lay in the south-east.
Archaeological evidence
Coriander seed, Dill seed, Fennel seed, Oregano, Garlic
Contested: The pattern follows preservation and excavation as well as use: herbs survive mainly where deposits are waterlogged, and much of the record is from York. Dill and coriander are known from Late Iron Age Silchester in southern Britain, so the author says their standing as Roman introductions in Yorkshire may be in question. The 2007 assessment likewise says the Roman date of the new foods cannot be fully tested without waterlogged Late Iron Age samples.
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, Lovage, 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, Lovage, Dill, Fennel seed, Mint, 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
Fenugreek, Rosemary, Sage, Rue, Cumin, Lovage, 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.
Culture
Recorded by tradition rather than merged into one narrative — these are genuinely different practices.
Provence
Provence, France.
Sarriette is used with goat cheese, with beans, and in some herbes de Provence formulations. It grows wild on the garrigue alongside thyme and is gathered as readily as bought.
- With goat cheese
- Some herbes de Provence formulations
Also documented in Provence: Lavender.
Bulgaria and the Balkans
Chubritsa is the everyday herb of Bulgarian cooking and the basis of sharena sol — "coloured salt" — the table condiment of savory, salt, paprika and often fenugreek or maize flour that sits on the table where a British household would keep pepper. Its use is daily and unremarkable in a way that has no equivalent in western European herb practice.
- Sharena sol as a table condiment
- Bean and vegetable stews
- Grilled meat
Germany and central Europe
The German name says it: Bohnenkraut, bean herb. Savory goes into green beans, broad beans and dried bean dishes as a matter of course, and the pairing is old enough and fixed enough that many German cooks would not consider cooking beans without it.
- Green and broad beans
- Dried bean dishes
- Sausage seasoning
Georgia and the Caucasus
Kondari is a component of khmeli suneli, the Georgian blend, alongside blue fenugreek, coriander, marigold and other herbs. Georgian cooking uses dried herbs in combination to a degree unusual in Europe, and savory is one of the standing members of that palette.
- Khmeli suneli
- Bean dishes such as lobio
A long European medicinal record as a digestive herb, and a persistent classical association with the satyrs from which the genus takes its name. Recorded as tradition; SpiceHQ makes no health claim on that basis.
What it is called
- German: Bohnenkraut
- Bulgarian: чубрица (chubritsa)
- French: sarriette
- Georgian: ქონდარი (kondari)
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 savory:
- Archaeological evidence
- Historical timeline
- Ceremonial use
- Regulatory limits