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Tosign

Also known as tossign, tosegn, Ethiopian thyme, Thymus schimperi, Thymus serrulatus, zimbanuwaa

Quick answer

The leaf of two wild thymes of the Ethiopian highlands, sold dried in markets and used as a condiment, in tea, in berbere and shiro, and in a fermented cottage cheese. It is a thyme, but not the garden thyme of European cooking, and its oil is usually led by carvacrol.

Tastes of
thyme-like, spicy
Heat
Scoville does not apply
Goes with
Lentils

Other names

What this spice is called elsewhere, and where the translation is not clean.

Names:

  • tosign

    Amharic

    One name for two wild thymes, Thymus schimperi and Thymus serrulatus. Two Ethiopian market surveys attach it to garden thyme, Thymus vulgaris, instead.

  • zimbanuwaa

    Wolaita — Wolaita, southern Ethiopia

Reasonable evidenceSources: Composition of the Essential Oil Thymus sch… (Introduction); Diversity of Spice Plants, Their Use and Fu… (Table 1, Thymus schimperi); Exploring Indigenous Knowledge and Practice… (Tables 2, 4 and 6, Thymus vulgaris)

Spellings as the sources print them in the Latin alphabet. A survey from Hadiya and Kambata-Tembaro also prints tosina. None of the sources read gives the name in Ethiopic script, so none is given here.

Flavour and aroma

Flavour: Not yet established — Not described in the sources read.
Aroma:

The one description read is of the distilled oil, not the leaf: dark yellowish, with a strong spicy scent. No tasting panel for the herb was found.

Reasonable evidenceSources: Composition of the Essential Oil Thymus sch… (Section 3.1)
Colour: Not yet established — Not described in the sources read.
Texture: Not yet established — Not described in the sources read.

Heat

Pungency scale: none — this spice is not pungent

Scoville: Not applicable — No capsaicinoids; Scoville does not apply.
In practice:

No heat.

Culinary conventionNo source read describes any pungency.
Key compounds:
  • Carvacrol — Almost half, 49.90 per cent, of the oil distilled from fresh leaves of Thymus schimperi gathered near Goba in March 2019. A second group, working on both species from Tigray and elsewhere, also found carvacrol first and thymol second in its oils.(what carvacrol is)
  • Thymol — The second constituent of the Goba oil, at 10.64 per cent. It can lead instead: the same second group reports one of its oils as mostly thymol, 65.63 per cent, with only 6.68 per cent carvacrol. Which of the two phenols leads differs from one lot of plants to another.(what thymol is)
  • Lesser constituents of the Goba oil — o-Cymene at 8.54 per cent, α-terpinene at 4.5 and linalool at 2.51. Instrumental figures for one sample.
Reasonable evidenceSources: Composition of the Essential Oil Thymus sch… (Section 3.1); Antibacterial activity of essential oils fr… (Introduction; Discussion)

Pairings

Ranked by how well established the combination is, with the reason and the caveats attached.

Foods

Lentils

Good

A survey of the spices of Hadiya and Kambata-Tembaro in central Ethiopia records tosign leaves crushed into the spice mixtures used for meat and for lentils. The survey names the plant as garden thyme, and gives the use in a few words.

How: Crushed into the spice mixture for a lentil dish

Documented in cuisineEthiopianSources: Exploring Indigenous Knowledge and Practice… (Table 6, Thymus vulgaris)

Preparation and use

Not yet established — No source read describes how the herb is prepared beyond drying and crushing.
Culinary uses:

A general-purpose dried herb of the Ethiopian kitchen: a condiment in its own right, an ingredient that some cooks add to berbere and to shiro, a flavouring for meat, lentils and soup, the herb of metata ayib, and a tea. In a survey of three markets in Bahir Dar, which names it as garden thyme, it came fourth in a paired comparison of spices by how much they are used. No source read gives a quantity or says at what point it is added.

Reasonable evidenceSources: Composition of the Essential Oil Thymus sch… (Introduction); Exploring Indigenous Knowledge and Practice… (Tables 2, 4 and 6, Thymus vulgaris); Assessing Ethnophsiological Use of Spices a… (Table 5)

Storage and freshness

Storage guidance by form
FormGood forConditionsFridge
LeafNot establishedCool, dark, dry and closed.—
How to test it: Not yet established — Not described in the sources read.

Quality is not the same as safety

Nothing read says how long the dried leaf keeps. Leaf that has taken up moisture and shows mould should be discarded.

Forms

These forms differ enough to need separate answers: treating them as interchangeable produces a dish that is wrong.

Dried leaf

The dried leaf sold in Ethiopian markets, used as a condiment, in tea and in spice mixtures.

Fresh leaf

The fresh leaf, which one source says is used in the same ways as the dried.

Commonly confused with tosign

Direct comparisons, each with the difference that actually changes what you cook.

Botany

Scientific name:
Thymus schimperi Ronniger, Thymus serrulatus
Established factSources: Composition of the Essential Oil Thymus sch… (Introduction); Antibacterial activity of essential oils fr… (Introduction)

Both species go by the one name. Most of what is written concerns Thymus schimperi. The sources read give no author for Thymus serrulatus, so none is printed here.

Family:

Lamiaceae

The mint family, with garden thyme, oregano and basil.

Part used:
leaf
Reasonable evidenceSources: Composition of the Essential Oil Thymus sch… (Introduction); Diversity of Spice Plants, Their Use and Fu… (Table 1, Thymus schimperi)
The plant:

Two thymes that the sources read call indigenous to Ethiopia; one calls Thymus schimperi a wild plant found nowhere else. None of them describes the plants themselves.

Reasonable evidenceSources: Antibacterial activity of essential oils fr… (Introduction); Effect of kesse, koseret, and tosign extrac… (Introduction)

Commonly confused with

  • Thyme

    The same genus, a different species. Two Ethiopian market surveys give tosign the botanical name of garden thyme, Thymus vulgaris; the botanical and chemical literature gives it to the two wild Ethiopian species. A reader buying "thyme" from an Ethiopian grocer is probably buying tosign.

  • Koseret

    The other dried highland herb of the Ethiopian kitchen, and no relation: koseret is a Lippia of the verbena family and goes into spiced butter. Food scientists in Ethiopia study the two side by side.

  • Oregano

    A different genus with the same two phenols. A carvacrol-led tosign will smell nearer to oregano than to a thymol-led 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.

How it is grown is not yet described. The sources read for the two Ethiopian thymes are studies of their oils and surveys of markets. They say the plants are wild and where samples were collected, and do not describe the plants, how they grow or how the leaf is gathered.

Where it comes from and how it is made

Origin:

Ethiopia. Both species are described as indigenous to the country, and Thymus schimperi as found only there.

Reasonable evidenceSources: Antibacterial activity of essential oils fr… (Introduction); Effect of kesse, koseret, and tosign extrac… (Introduction)
Documented in use:
  • Ethiopia (Oromia (around Goba), Tigray (Alamata and Ofla) and Wolaita) — use or gathering documented here. Places where the plants analysed or sold were gathered, as three of the sources record them. They are not a map of where it grows.
Reasonable evidenceSources: Composition of the Essential Oil Thymus sch… (Section 2.1); Antibacterial activity of essential oils fr… (Plant material collection and identification); Diversity of Spice Plants, Their Use and Fu… (Table 1, Thymus schimperi)
Processing:
  1. Drying — The leaves are used fresh or dried; the dried leaf is what the markets sell.
Reasonable evidenceSources: Composition of the Essential Oil Thymus sch… (Introduction)
Cultivation:

A wild plant. One source calls Thymus schimperi wild outright, and the plants analysed in the studies read were all collected, not grown.

Reasonable evidenceSources: Effect of kesse, koseret, and tosign extrac… (Introduction); Composition of the Essential Oil Thymus sch… (Section 2.1)

Buying and quality

Whole or ground:

Sold as dried leaf and crushed at home into whatever it is going into.

Editorial judgementFollows from the uses the sources describe.

History and trade

Not yet established — No source read documents the history of tosign as a seasoning.
Trade:

A domestic market herb. It appears in the lists of spices sold or used in markets of Wolaita, of Hadiya and Kambata-Tembaro, and of Bahir Dar.

Reasonable evidenceSources: Diversity of Spice Plants, Their Use and Fu… (Table 1, Thymus schimperi); Exploring Indigenous Knowledge and Practice… (Tables 2, 4 and 6, Thymus vulgaris); Assessing Ethnophsiological Use of Spices a… (Table 5)

Culture

Recorded by tradition rather than merged into one narrative — these are genuinely different practices.

Hadiya and Kambata-Tembaro

Hadiya and Kambata-Tembaro, Ethiopia.

A survey of the spices of these two zones of central Ethiopia records tosign leaves crushed into the spice mixtures used for meat and lentils and taken in tea, and lists the plant under meat and soup flavouring. It names the plant as garden thyme.

Reasonable evidenceSources: Exploring Indigenous Knowledge and Practice… (Tables 2, 4 and 6, Thymus vulgaris)
  • Crushed into spice mixtures for meat and lentils
  • In tea

Ethiopian highland cooking

A pharmacology group at Addis Ababa summarises its uses from the Ethiopian literature: the fresh or dried leaves serve as a condiment and a tea, go into berbere and into shiro, the spiced pulse flour, and are used in making metata ayib, a fermented cottage cheese. The group was not studying food, and it gives these uses in one sentence with references that were not read here.

Reasonable evidenceSources: Composition of the Essential Oil Thymus sch… (Introduction)
  • As a condiment and in tea
  • In berbere and in shiro
  • In metata ayib, a fermented cottage cheese

What it is called

  • Amharic: tosign

What we do not know

Published openly. A gap we have named is more useful than a gap we have filled with plausible prose.

52% of what we look for is answered21 marked unknown or not applicable8 sources citedEditorial confidence: low

Not yet established for tosign:

  • Propagation
  • Archaeological evidence
  • Historical timeline
  • Ceremonial use
  • Traditional medicinal context
  • Regulatory limits
  • Traditional uses

How we grade evidence · The source library