Thyme
Also known as dried thyme, common thyme, garden thyme, lemon thyme, thym
Quick answer
The dried leaf of Thymus vulgaris — small, grey-green, and the most heat-tolerant of the soft Mediterranean herbs. It is the one that can go in at the start of a four-hour braise and still be there at the end.
- Tastes of
- warm, woody, savoury, faintly medicinal, earthy
- Heat
- Scoville does not apply
- If you have none
- Savory — see the limits
Other names
What this spice is called elsewhere, and where the translation is not clean.
thym
French
tomillo
Spanish
timo
Italian
Thymian
German
kekik
Turkish
Kekik covers thyme and oregano together in Turkish, and a market will sell several species under it.
za'atar
Arabic — the Levant
Za'atar names several wild Origanum and Thymbra species and also the blend made from them. It is not a translation of garden thyme.
Flavour and aroma
Savoury, slightly bitter, persistent, and unusually good at surviving long cooking. It carries the taste of a stock or a braise without being separable from it, which is why thyme is in the classical bouquet garni alongside bay and parsley.
Warm, dry and faintly medicinal, with a clean woody edge — recognisably a relative of oregano but narrower and less pungent. Where oregano announces itself, thyme is a background that other things sit on.
Grey-green, with the underside of the leaf paler and slightly downy. Brown dried thyme is old thyme.
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
Thymol and carvacrol are the characteristic constituents of thyme oil, which smells rich, sweet, aromatic and herbaceous. Their share varies greatly: oil of Thymus vulgaris can be led by 1,8-cineole, camphor and monoterpene alcohols with under 5 per cent of the phenols, while oil of T. zygis can carry more than 50 per cent.
Tiny leaves that stay small and slightly leathery. They disappear into a stew and stay visible in a dressing.
Heat
Pungency scale: none — this spice is not pungent
No heat.
- Thymol — The dominant phenol and the source of the warm medicinal character. The same compound that gave the plant its name to the compound rather than the other way round.(what thymol is)
- Carvacrol — Thymol’s isomer and the dominant compound in oregano, present here in smaller proportion — the reason the two herbs read as relatives.(what carvacrol is)
- Linalool — Floral and soft; some commercial thyme chemotypes are linalool-dominant and are noticeably gentler.(what linalool is)
- p-Cymene and γ-terpinene — Woody, slightly citric background and the biosynthetic route to thymol.(what p-cymene is, what γ-terpinene is)
Pairings
Ranked by how well established the combination is, with the reason and the caveats attached.
Foods
Chicken
ClassicChicken contributes little flavour of its own and takes on whatever seasons it, and thyme is unusually good at seasoning without asserting — it lifts the savoury background rather than sitting on top of it. It also survives the length of a roast, which most soft herbs do not.
How: Sprigs under the skin before roasting; In the braising liquid for a fricassée
Mushrooms
ClassicMushrooms are glutamate-rich and earthy with very little aroma of their own once cooked, and thyme’s woody savouriness reads as an extension of that rather than an addition to it. The pairing is fixed across French cooking and is one of the few herb-and-vegetable combinations that improves with long cooking.
How: With butter and garlic in the pan; In a duxelles or a mushroom sauce
Add alongside: Garlic, Black pepper, Bay leaf
Lentils
StrongLentils are earthy and almost aromatically silent, which leaves room for a herb that would be intrusive elsewhere. Thyme goes in at the start with the aromatics and cooks for the full hour, and the phenols that survive that are exactly what a lentil dish needs to stop tasting flat.
How: With bay and a carrot in the pot from the start; In a lentil soup with smoked pork
Add alongside: Bay leaf, Garlic, Black pepper
Leek
StrongThe reliable partner for a vegetable that is already an aromatic. Leek is doing the job a spice would do in another dish, so it needs supporting rather than seasoning, and thyme is resinous and slow enough to sit underneath it through a long soft cook without competing.
How: With leeks braised slowly in butter; In a leek and potato soup
Goat
GoodThe other half of the Caribbean pairing. Thyme is resinous and savoury and survives an hour in a pot, which most herbs do not, and together with allspice and scotch bonnet it is most of what makes a Jamaican goat dish taste Jamaican.
How: With allspice and scotch bonnet in curry goat
Other spices and blends
Bay leaf
ClassicTwo of the three components of the classical bouquet garni, and the pair that defines the aromatic background of French stock, braise and soup technique. Both are heat-stable, both work by lengthening a savoury base rather than contributing a recognisable flavour of their own, and both are noticed mainly by their absence.
How: Tied with parsley stalks as a bouquet garni; Together in a stock or a braising liquid
Add alongside: Parsley, Black pepper, Garlic
- Both need time. Added in the last ten minutes neither contributes much.
Allspice
ClassicThe Jamaican pairing, and the aromatic spine of jerk. Allspice supplies clove, cinnamon and pepper notes at once; thyme supplies a woody herbal base that keeps the mixture from reading as sweet. Neither is optional in a jerk seasoning, and the combination is unlike anything either produces in European cooking.
How: In a jerk marinade with scotch bonnet and spring onion; In a Jamaican brown stew
Add alongside: Scotch bonnet, Black pepper, Nutmeg
Parsley
ClassicTwo of the three components of the bouquet garni, alongside bay, and the pair that defines the aromatic base of French stock and braise technique. They occupy different positions in time: thyme goes in at the start and cooks for hours, parsley stalks go in with it and the chopped leaf goes on at the end. The same herb pair brackets the dish.
How: Tied with bay as a bouquet garni; Thyme in the braise, parsley chopped over at the end
Add alongside: Bay leaf, Garlic, Black pepper
- Parsley stalks belong in the pot and parsley leaves do not. Boiled parsley leaf is a waste of a herb.
Sage
ClassicThe two herbs at the centre of poultry seasoning across Britain and North America, and the pairing that defines the smell of a roast dinner. Sage is dusty and assertive, thyme is woody and quiet, and thyme’s job here is to give the sage a background rather than to be noticed itself.
How: Together in a poultry seasoning or a stuffing; In a sausage mixture with pepper and onion
Add alongside: Marjoram, Onion, Black pepper
- Sage is several times more assertive than thyme by volume. Equal quantities give a sage dish.
Scotch bonnet
ClassicThe two ingredients that define Jamaican cooking, and their relationship is more specific than heat plus herb. Scotch bonnet is unusual among very hot chillies in being genuinely fruity — it shares esters with tropical fruit — and thyme is resinous and savoury, so the pair produces a fruit-and-pine combination that pimento and allium then sit inside. Jerk without both is not jerk.
How: In a jerk marinade with allspice and spring onion; Whole in a pot of rice and peas, removed before serving
Add alongside: Allspice, Garlic
- A whole unbroken scotch bonnet flavours without heat; broken, it changes the dish entirely
Oregano
StrongChemical relatives — thymol and carvacrol are isomers, and each herb carries some of both — used together so routinely that most commercial Italian, Cajun and Creole blends contain the pair. Thyme supplies a woody base that lasts through long cooking and oregano supplies the top note, and neither has to give ground.
How: Together in a dry rub; In a long-simmered stew
Add alongside: Garlic, Bay leaf, Black pepper
- Adding both where a recipe named one produces a generic herbal register rather than a specific dish.
Savory
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.
Celery seed
StrongA savoury pairing that turns up wherever a long-cooked base is being built: the thyme is resinous and slow-releasing and the celery seed adds a vegetal depth that would otherwise require actual celery. It is much of the reason a stock made with a bouquet garni tastes of more than its bones.
How: In a bouquet garni; In a Creole or Cajun seasoning
Add alongside: Bay leaf, White pepper
White pepper
GoodA Louisiana pairing more than a general one. White pepper is fermented as well as dried, which gives it a faintly barnyard note black pepper does not have, and Creole and Cajun cooking use that against thyme in the roux-based dishes where a visible black speck would be unwelcome. The choice of white over black here is aesthetic in origin and audible in flavour.
How: In a Creole seasoning; In gumbo and étouffée
Add alongside: Paprika, Celery seed
- White pepper is not simply black pepper without the skin; the fermentation changes it
Lavender
SituationalWorth stating carefully, because the reason people ask is a blend whose composition is contested. Lavender is not traditional in herbes de Provence — it entered the mixture through the North American market in the later twentieth century, and many French producers still leave it out. Where it is used the pairing works, because thyme is resinous and savoury and lavender floral and sweet, and the two occupy different registers. Used heavily it turns a savoury dish soapy, which is the usual failure.
How: In the lavender-bearing versions of herbes de Provence; On grilled lamb
Add alongside: Rosemary, Savory
- Lavender in herbes de Provence is a modern and largely non-French addition
- Culinary lavender only; ornamental varieties are bred for scent and are unpleasantly camphorous
- Past a very small proportion the result reads as perfume rather than food
Shares a blend
Spices that appear alongside thyme 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 Cajun seasoning, Creole seasoning, Dukkah, Poultry seasoning.
Together in Cajun seasoning, Jerk seasoning, Caribbean green seasoning.
Together in Herbes de Provence, Italian seasoning, Poultry seasoning.
Together in Cajun seasoning, Creole seasoning, Sharena sol.
Together in Cajun seasoning, Creole seasoning.
Together in Jerk seasoning, Poultry seasoning.
Together in Cajun seasoning, Poultry seasoning.
Together in Herbes de Provence, Poultry seasoning.
Together in Herbes de Provence.
Together in Jerk seasoning.
Together in Caribbean green seasoning.
Together in Dukkah.
Together in Caribbean green seasoning.
Together in Dukkah.
Together in Herbes de Provence.
Together in Sharena sol.
Together in Jerk seasoning.
Together in Dukkah.
Salt and savouriness
Thyme 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 thyme 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 thyme
What to use instead, and — more usefully — where each replacement stops working.
Savory
Good matchUse: 1× by volume — One for one. The two are used interchangeably across much of central Europe.
Savory is thyme with a peppery edge. It shares the phenols and adds a sharpness that reads almost as heat, which suits beans, sausage and anything fatty and does not suit a delicate stock. It also survives long cooking as well as thyme does, so the swap holds up in a braise.
| Flavour | Aroma | Colour | Heat |
|---|---|---|---|
| close | close | close | n/a |
Works for
- Bean and pulse dishes, where savory is arguably the better herb
- Sausage and charcuterie mixtures
- Braises and stews
- Grilled meat
Does not work for
- Classical French stocks, where the peppery note is intrusive
- Cream sauces and delicate fish
- Anywhere the dish is already peppery
Availability runs the other way from usefulness here: savory is the harder of the two to buy in most English-speaking markets and the more natural choice for half the dishes thyme is used in.
Oregano
AcceptableUse: ~0.75× by volume — Rather less oregano than the thyme replaced, because it is the more assertive of the two.
The dish keeps a warm herbal base and gains a medicinal pungency thyme does not have. In a long-cooked Mediterranean dish this is barely a change; in a French stock or a delicate cream sauce it takes over.
| Flavour | Aroma | Colour | Heat |
|---|---|---|---|
| partial | partial | close | n/a |
Works for
- Mediterranean braises and tomato dishes
- Meat rubs
- Bean dishes
Does not work for
- Classical French stocks and bouquet garni, where thyme is chosen for its restraint
- Cream sauces and anything delicate
- Jerk seasoning, where the thyme note is identifying
Preparation and use
Rub dried leaf between the palms as it goes in. Add it at the start of anything simmered or braised — thyme is the herb that rewards long cooking rather than suffering it. For fresh thyme, strip the leaves by running finger and thumb down the stem against the direction of growth, or add whole sprigs and remove them later; chopping the woody stem in is the commonest mistake and produces a stringy, bitter result.
One of the most widely used dried herbs in European and Caribbean cooking. It is a component of bouquet garni, of every classical brown stock, of herbes de Provence, of jerk seasoning, of Cajun and Creole blends and of poultry seasoning. It suits slow-cooked meat, beans and pulses, roasted root vegetables, mushrooms, tomatoes, poultry and oily fish, and it is one of very few herbs that can be added at the beginning of a long cook and still be present at the end.
- boiling — The characteristic use. Thymol is heat-stable and extracts slowly into liquid and fat, so thyme added at the start of a long braise is still present at the end — the property that distinguishes it from basil or parsley.
- blooming — Fat-soluble compounds disperse well from a few seconds in warm oil or butter, which is how thyme gets into a roux or a soffritto.
- infusing — A sprig in warm cream or milk gives a clean savoury note with none of the bitterness that comes from chopping and leaving the leaf in.
- grinding — Ground thyme fades fast and brings the bitterness forward. It exists for blends where a visible leaf is unwanted, and for little else.
Convert thyme between spoons and grams (a level teaspoon of leaf thyme is about 1 ± 0.15 g; ground thyme is about 1.4 ± 0.21 g)
Appears in: Cajun seasoning, Creole seasoning, Dukkah, Herbes de Provence, Italian seasoning, Jerk seasoning, Poultry seasoning, Ras el hanout, Bouquet garni, Caribbean green seasoning, Sharena sol
Storage and freshness
| Form | Good for | Conditions | Fridge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leaf | 12–24 months (typically 18 months) | Cool, dark, dry and closed. | No |
| Ground | 6–12 months (typically 9 months) | Cool, dark, dry and closed. | No |
Crush a pinch hard and smell. Live thyme is warm and faintly medicinal; dead thyme smells of nothing much, or of tea. Because thyme leaves are small and hold their shape, an old jar looks identical to a new one and gets used for years.
- Brown rather than grey-green
- A hay or tea smell rather than a warm medicinal one
- No aroma on hard crushing
- Volatilisation of thymol and the terpene fraction
- Fading from grey-green to brown
- Oxidation towards a flat hay character
Quality is not the same as safety
Stale thyme is a quality matter only. 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.
Dried leaf
Threshed leaf, sold loose. The standard form and a genuinely good one.
Warm, woody and savoury, releasing over the length of a cook.
Add early to anything simmered. Rub between the palms first.
Ground thyme
Milled leaf. Present in commercial poultry and seafood seasonings.
Dustier and more bitter than the leaf, with the woody top notes gone quickly.
Use sparingly, and late enough that the bitterness does not build.
Commonly confused with thyme
Direct comparisons, each with the difference that actually changes what you cook.
Botany
Several hundred Thymus species exist and a handful reach kitchens; T. vulgaris is the common garden and commercial thyme.
Lamiaceae
The mint family, alongside oregano, marjoram, sage, rosemary, basil and mint.
A low woody subshrub of dry Mediterranean ground, rarely more than 30 cm high, with tiny grey-green leaves on wiry stems and small pink or lilac flowers. The woodiness matters in the kitchen: thyme is stripped from its stem rather than chopped with it.
Commonly confused with
Lemon thyme (Thymus citriodorus)
A hybrid with citral in place of much of the thymol, giving a clean lemon note over the thyme base. It is a genuinely different flavour rather than a scented version of the same one, and it does not stand in for common thyme in a stock or a cassoulet.
Wild or creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum)
Milder and more variable, gathered rather than grown in much of Europe. Fine in its own right; not what a recipe means by thyme.
Levantine wild species, some of them Thymbra rather than Thymus, sold as za'atar. More resinous and more oregano-like than garden thyme.
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 stem tips of a low woody sub-shrub.
Commercial plantings are renewed after two or three years, at most five, because the plants become woody, straggling and low-yielding.
An evergreen sub-shrub that can be grown as an annual or as a perennial. Flowering starts two to three months after sowing, and seed usually sets abundantly.
How it is propagated
- Seed.
Most easily raised from seed, sown in the field or in a nursery for transplanting when the young plants are 5–8 cm tall. The seed is tiny, germinates in two to three weeks at 21 °C, and keeps for more than six years in an airtight container with only slight loss of viability.
- Stem cuttings.
Grown from seed, cuttings or division. Cuttings, layering and division of the root give plants identical to the parent, and the ease of doing so is one reason the handbook thought thyme promising to breed.
Pollinated mainly by honeybees, with some self-pollination. In natural populations more than half the plants often bear functionally male-sterile flowers, beside plants whose flowers are bisexual.
Growing conditions
- Temperature · 4–28 °C (typically 16 °C)
Its natural habitat is the Mediterranean, with hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters. It grows at temperatures between 4 and 28 °C and best at 16 °C, and in cultivation prefers warm, sunny conditions.
- Frost
Hardy to at least −15 °C.
- Drought
Tolerates drought, though some extra water in dry periods helps. Where a crop is irrigated the soil is left to dry between waterings.
- Soil
Prefers moderately fertile, well-drained soils such as sands or sandy loams, preferably slightly alkaline. In heavy, wet soils the plant is short-lived and less aromatic. It has been called the poor man’s herb because it grows in various soils without fertiliser.
- Altitude
In South-East Asia it has to be grown at higher elevations; in the Philippines it is cultivated in the cool part of Cavite, about 600 m above sea level.
How it is farmed
- Wild harvest · The Mediterranean
Gathered wild in the Mediterranean as well as cultivated as a perennial field crop.
- Intensive field crop
Cultivated in most European countries, around the Mediterranean, and in Russia, Canada, the United States, China and Japan. A planting is mulched against weeds and to help it through the winter, its stem tips are pruned to keep it bushy, and it is renewed after two or three years, at most five, because the plants turn woody and straggling and yield less.
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 just before or during flowering, once in the first year of growth and two to four times in the years that follow. Plants are cut 8–12 cm above the ground, by hand or by machine; cutting lower may kill them.
Shoots for the fresh market are cooled and bunched. For the dried herb they are spread thinly in a shaded, well-ventilated place, which keeps the grey-green colour, or dried artificially at 29–43 °C, after which the leaves and flowering tops are stripped from the stems. Material for distilling is used straight after cutting.
The handbook gives the yield as about 5 t of fresh herb or 1 t of dried herb per hectare in the first year, and 12–14 t fresh or 2–3 t dried in the years after. How often the crop is cut matters: cut every four months it gave 4.6 t a hectare in a year, against 2.6 t when cut every two months. World production was estimated at 1,500 t a year, mainly from around the Mediterranean, with the caution that statistics are rare; in 1988 the United States imported more than 900 t of unprocessed thyme worth 2 million US dollars, mostly from Spain.
Pests and diseases of the crop
Dodder on thyme
OtherCuscuta sp., a parasitic plant · Whole plant
Thyme seldom suffers seriously from diseases or pests. The exception the handbook names is dodder, which can be a major problem and sometimes overgrows the thyme completely.
Where it comes from and how it is made
The western Mediterranean, particularly the dry limestone country of southern France and Spain.
- Spain — major producer. A principal source of commercial dried thyme.
- France — major producer. Provence in particular, where thyme is both cultivated and gathered from garrigue.
- Poland — notable producer
- Morocco — notable producer
- Turkey — notable producer
Cut just before or at flowering, when volatile oil peaks.
- Cutting — Whole stems cut at the onset of flowering.
- Drying — Air-dried in shade or in low-temperature forced air.Why: Preserves colour and limits loss of thymol and the terpene fraction.
- Threshing and sieving — Dried leaf is threshed from the wiry stems and sieved.Why: Thyme stem is genuinely woody and contributes nothing; stem content is a principal grading criterion.
Graded on leaf-to-stem ratio, colour, volatile oil content and freedom from foreign matter. Thymol content underlies the quality difference and is rarely declared at retail.
Reported adulterants for dried thyme are the usual green bulking agents — olive and other cheap leaf — and excess stem, which is a quality failure rather than a fraud but has the same effect on what reaches the pan.
A perennial subshrub, cut two or three times a season and replanted every few years as the base goes woody and unproductive.
Hot, dry, alkaline and stony. Thyme is a garrigue plant and behaves like one: the harder its life, the more oil it makes. Grown in rich damp soil it grows fast, tastes of little and rots at the base.
What processing and storage do to it, as measured
Decontamination · Depends on conditions monoterpenes, oxygenated compounds, microbial load, volatile oil, colour
Ground thyme, rosemary, black pepper and cumin were irradiated in packs filled either with air or with nitrogen. After 12 kGy no microbial load was detectable in any sample. Irradiation changed the colour of rosemary and black pepper significantly, and the discolouration of black pepper was smaller under nitrogen. The essential oil yield of irradiated black pepper and cumin was lower in air than under nitrogen. In general irradiation decreased monoterpenes and increased oxygenated compounds, and the effect was smaller under nitrogen. The authors conclude that spices should be irradiated in an oxygen-free atmosphere.
Conditions: Gamma irradiation at 7, 12 and 17 kGy; packed in air or in 100 per cent nitrogen
The damage irradiation does to a spice’s oil appears to be largely oxidative, since removing the oxygen from the pack reduced it.
What this does not show: Read in the abstract only, which gives no oil yields.
Measured on the spice
Packaging · Depends on conditions total phenolics, volatile oil, microbial load, antioxidant capacity, colour
Thyme and black pepper were packed in air or in nitrogen, irradiated and stored for six months. Irradiation under nitrogen raised the essential oil yield of the samples at the start of storage. A dose of 14 kGy brought total bacteria and yeasts and moulds below 1 log cfu/g, from initial levels of 7.7 and 5.2 log. Over the six months the essential oil yield of thyme declined, as did its radical-scavenging and antimicrobial activity, and one measure of antioxidant activity fell in black pepper packed in air. The authors conclude that irradiating under nitrogen maintained or improved the properties they measured without compromising sensory or microbial quality.
Conditions: 6 months · Packed in air or 100 per cent nitrogen, gamma-irradiated at 0, 6 or 14 kGy, then stored
What this does not show: Read in the abstract only, which gives no oil yields and does not say how much of the decline in thyme was slowed by the nitrogen pack. Storage temperature is not stated there.
Measured on the spice
Buying and quality
Dried leaf, and it is one of the few herbs where the dried product needs no apology. Ground thyme brings the bitterness forward and loses the woody top notes within months. Fresh thyme is worth buying when you want the greener, more lemony version or when you want to fish a sprig out afterwards — but for a stock, a braise or a rub, dried leaf is doing the same job and keeping better.
- Leaf rather than a jar of stem — thyme stem is genuinely woody and adds nothing.
- Grey-green rather than brown.
- A warm medicinal smell on crushing a pinch.
- A stated origin; Spanish and French thyme are the benchmarks.
Graded on leaf-to-stem ratio, colour and volatile oil. Chemotype matters more than most retail buyers know: thymol-dominant thyme is the assertive commercial standard, while linalool-dominant material is markedly softer and is sometimes what a bland jar actually is.
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 | Rule and source |
|---|---|---|
| Moisture (leaf) | 12 % max | Maximum moisture, percent by mass — FSSAI Food Products Standards and Food Additives Regulations 2011, reg. 2.9.40, dried thyme (India, statutory; chapter text, Version 4 of 1 August 2025) |
| Total ash (leaf) | 12 % max, dry basis | Maximum total ash, percent by mass on dry basis — FSSAI Food Products Standards and Food Additives Regulations 2011, reg. 2.9.40, dried thyme (India, statutory; chapter text, Version 4 of 1 August 2025) |
| Acid-insoluble ash (leaf) | 3.5 % max, dry basis | Maximum acid-insoluble ash, percent by mass on dry basis — FSSAI Food Products Standards and Food Additives Regulations 2011, reg. 2.9.40, dried thyme (India, statutory; chapter text, Version 4 of 1 August 2025) |
| Volatile oil (leaf) | 1 ml/100 g min, dry basis | Minimum volatile oil, millilitres per 100 g on dry basis — FSSAI Food Products Standards and Food Additives Regulations 2011, reg. 2.9.40, dried thyme (India, statutory; chapter text, Version 4 of 1 August 2025) |
What the law of one country requires before the product may be sold there under this name. It is a floor for compliance and says nothing about how good a lot above it is.
| Property | Value | Rule and source |
|---|---|---|
| Moisture (leaf) | 12 % max | Maximum moisture, percent — Codex Alimentarius CXS 328-2017, Standard for Dried Thyme, dried thyme, whole, rubbed or ground (international reference standard; text as adopted in 2017, later amendments not read) |
| Total ash (leaf) | 12 % max, dry basis | Maximum total ash, percent mass fraction on dry basis — Codex Alimentarius CXS 328-2017, Standard for Dried Thyme, dried thyme, whole, rubbed or ground (international reference standard; text as adopted in 2017, later amendments not read) |
| Acid-insoluble ash (leaf) | 3.5 % max, dry basis | Maximum acid-insoluble ash, percent mass fraction on dry basis — Codex Alimentarius CXS 328-2017, Standard for Dried Thyme, dried thyme, whole, rubbed or ground (international reference standard; text as adopted in 2017, later amendments not read) |
| Volatile oil (leaf) | 1 ml/100 g min, dry basis | Minimum volatile oils, millilitres per 100 g on dry basis — Codex Alimentarius CXS 328-2017, Standard for Dried Thyme, dried thyme, whole, rubbed or ground (international reference standard; text as adopted in 2017, later amendments not read) |
A published specification that no law requires. It applies where a buyer, a seller or a government chooses to adopt 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.
Food safety and regulation
Documented hazards in this spice and how regulators measure them. Food safety rather than health effects, and not legal advice: each limit belongs to one authority and one instrument.
Limits that name thyme
| Jurisdiction | Applies to | Requirement | Instrument |
|---|---|---|---|
| European Union | Dried herbs | Maximum level 10 µg/kgOchratoxin A | Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/915, Annex I, entry 1.2.5from 2023-05-25 |
Each row states what one authority requires under one instrument; none of them is a rule everywhere, and SpiceHQ does not give legal advice. Figures were read from the instrument on the date recorded in the source library.
Safety
Safety statements on SpiceHQ must cite evidence — they cannot be published on editorial judgement.
Concentrated thyme oil and cats
Applies to: Distilled thyme essential oil — in diffusers, cleaning products, topical preparations and "natural" pest treatments — rather than the dried spice used in cooking.
Thyme oil is thymol-dominant, and thymol is among the phenolic compounds cats clear poorly for want of glucuronide conjugation capacity. The MSD Veterinary Manual records essential-oil toxicosis in companion animals with cats disproportionately affected. The concern attaches to the distilled oil — including in cleaning products, where thymol is used as an antimicrobial — rather than to dried thyme in a bouquet garni.
Thyme essential oil is not the herb
Applies to: Thyme essential oil and concentrated extracts, not the dried leaf
Thyme essential oil is a concentrated thymol preparation and behaves like one: it is a mucous-membrane irritant undiluted and is not a stronger version of the seasoning. Nothing on this profile concerns it.
Not among the substances that must be declared as allergens under EU Regulation 1169/2011 Annex II or under the United States major food allergen rules. That is a statement about labelling law and not about whether allergy occurs: allergic reactions to spices are documented in the clinical literature and are simply not a labelling category. Where a ground spice presents an allergen risk it is usually through adulteration or shared processing equipment rather than through the plant itself.
History and trade
Thyme is documented in Egyptian, Greek and Roman use, as a strewing herb, an embalming material and a seasoning, and it kept a strong association with courage in medieval Europe — sprigs given to knights, thyme embroidered on favours. It has never been a traded luxury: it grows on poor ground across southern Europe and was available to anyone who could walk up a hill.
A commodity rather than a prize. Spain, France, Poland and Morocco supply most of the world dried thyme trade, and it has never carried the margins that made tropical spices worth fighting over.
In the wider history of spices
Compiled c. 4th to 5th century CE · Roman world
Celery seed and thyme in the sauces of Apicius
In one English translation of the Roman recipe collection known as Apicius, celery seed is named in about fifty of some five hundred numbered entries, and thyme in about thirty. Both belong to the run of seasonings that opens a sauce: pepper, lovage and celery seed, with caraway, cumin, mint or rue, moistened with broth, wine, vinegar or honey. A white sauce for boiled goose has pepper, caraway, cumin, celery seed, thyme and onion. A roast sucking pig is served sprinkled with powdered celery seed, and a recipe for spiced salts takes an ounce each of thyme seed and celery seed and allows parsley seed in place of the celery. Basil appears once in this translation, as green basil crushed with pepper, lovage, cumin and dill for a dish of peas.
Contemporary text
Contested: The counts were made by machine on a translation known to be free, not on the Latin, and take in a few entries that are headings or variants. “Celery seed”, “thyme” and “basilica” are the translator’s renderings: the Latin words behind them were not checked, and his glossary gives basil for ocimum. The date of compilation is the one usually given and was not checked against anything read, so the year is a sort key.
1699 · England
John Evelyn on tarragon and basil in the English salad
John Evelyn’s Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets, published in 1699, goes through the plants fit for a salad one at a time. Tarragon is “of Spanish Extraction; hot and spicy”, and its tops and young shoots are “never to be secluded our Composition, especially where there is much Lettuce”; his table of salad plants lists it for its tender shoots and tops. Basil “imparts a grateful Flavour, if not too strong”, and the tender tops are to be used very sparingly. Marjoram he sets with hyssop and a Cretan thyme among the hot, spicy aromatics of the kitchen garden, which go under the name of pot-herbs and are “much more proper for Broths and Decoctions, than the tender Sallet”, though some keep the powdered tops and flowers to strew over the colder ingredients. Thyme is named again among the ordinary pot-herbs he leaves out of his account.
Contemporary text · John Evelyn
Contested: One author’s recommendations, in a book addressed to those with gardens; it shows what an educated gardener thought belonged in a salad in 1699, not how common these herbs were at English tables. Read in a reprint of 1937 that says it follows the first edition. He gives the plants Latin names of his own day, calling tarragon Draco herba, and what he means by tarragon’s Spanish extraction he does not explain.
Culture
Recorded by tradition rather than merged into one narrative — these are genuinely different practices.
France
Thyme is structural in French cooking rather than decorative. It is one of the three components of the classical bouquet garni with bay and parsley, it goes into every brown stock and most braises, and in Provence it is gathered from the garrigue as readily as bought. Herbes de Provence is built around it.
- Bouquet garni
- Stocks and braises
- Herbes de Provence
The Caribbean and Creole Louisiana
Thyme travelled with European colonisation and took root in Caribbean cooking to a degree that surprises people who think of it as French. It is fundamental to Jamaican cooking — jerk, stews, rice and peas — and to Creole and Cajun seasoning in Louisiana, where it sits alongside paprika, cayenne and oregano rather than alongside bay and parsley.
- Jerk seasoning
- Jamaican stews and rice and peas
- Creole and Cajun blends
The Levant
Thyme's relatives rather than thyme itself dominate here. Za'atar as a herb names wild Origanum and Thymbra species, and the blend built on them is a daily staple across the Levant. Garden thyme is a reasonable stand-in for the herb and not the same plant.
- Za'atar blends
A long European medicinal record, chiefly for coughs and as an antiseptic, and thymol was an important antiseptic in nineteenth-century medicine before synthetic alternatives displaced it. Recorded as history; SpiceHQ makes no health claim on that basis.
What it is called
- French: thym
- Spanish: tomillo
- Greek: θυμάρι (thymári)
- Turkish: kekik
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 thyme:
- Archaeological evidence
- Historical timeline
- Ceremonial use
- Regulatory limits