On Food and Cooking

Mediterranean and southwest Asia; like dill, it has fibrous leaf stalks but feathery, tender leaves. ...

large western Asian plant that has aromat-ics in common with celery and oregano, along with a sweet ...

canadensis), whose mild, large leaves are used by the Japanese in soups and salads. They’re flavo ...

and woody and develop the parsley character when more mature. The curly leaves are smaller and more incis ...

The ancient laurel family, mostly large tropical trees, is most notable for giving us cinnamon; but it does giv ...

accumulates oils in spherical glands in the leaf interior, and has a well-rounded mixture of woody, floral, ...

notes, and contain little or no safrole, a compound that’s prominent in the tree’s roots and bark, and ...

which have been gathered from the wild and pickled for thousands of years, though cultivated only ...

subtle, with woody, fresh notes. Curry leaves are added to stews or other simmered dishes, or briefly ...

as fatty, herbaceous, and penetrating, and is due to a terpene called ascaridole. Ascaridole is also ...

a citrus aroma, and the other with an unusual scent said to resemble a mixture of meat, fish, and corian ...

from one to three years to mature, during which they turn from green to purplish black. When immatu ...

the cooking of Southeast Asia. Lemongrass forms clumps of thick shoots; all parts are aromatic, bu ...

Orange Flowers Orange flowers come from the bitter or Seville orange, Citrus aurantium, and they have been ...

with citronellal, which gives them an intense, fresh, lingering lemon-green character distinct from that ...

Rau Ram Rau ram is the Vietnamese name for a sprawling herb in the buckwheat family known in Englis ...

an extract (rose water). Their aroma comes mainly from the terpene geraniol. Roses are most ...

buckwheat that are rich in oxalic acid: Rumex acetosa, scutatus, and acetosella. Cooks use them mainl ...

estragon) in oil cavities alongside the leaf veins. Estragole is a close chemical relative of the ...

and these are sometimes augmented with the addition of various essential oils (vanilla, cinnamon, clove, ro ...