Peppermint
A sterile hybrid of water mint and spearmint, propagated entirely from cuttings because it sets no viable seed. Its high menthol content makes it sharper and colder than any other culinary mint.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Mentha × piperita
- Family
- Lamiaceae
- Part used
- Leaf
- Origin
- A sterile hybrid of watermint and spearmint, grown worldwide
- Drunk in
- England, United States, Egypt, India
Character
Sharply cooling and slightly peppery, with a bitterness that arrives if it is steeped long. Far colder in the mouth than spearmint.
Notes: menthol, cool green, pepper
History
First described in England in the seventeenth century as a chance hybrid in a Hertfordshire field. Because it does not breed true, every peppermint plant in the world descends by cutting from a small number of original clones — one of the clearest cases in botany of an entire crop being one plant.
How it is drunk
Drunk as an infusion across Europe and North America, and in North Africa the mint of choice is spearmint rather than this. Confectionery and oil account for far more of the crop than drinking does.
Production
Cut two or three times a season and dried in warm air, or distilled for oil. Drying temperature is the whole of the quality question: too warm and the menthol goes, leaving a grassy leaf that smells of nothing.
Preparation
Infusion
Herbal infusion (tisane)
1–2 g/100 ml · 95–100 °C · 5 min
Category-typical practice rather than a measurement for this specific botanical. Most infusions are far more tolerant of a long steep than tea is.
What gets confused
Peppermint and spearmint are sold interchangeably as 'mint tea' and are different plants with different chemistry. If it is cooling it is peppermint; if it is sweet it is spearmint.
Related botanicals
Comparisons
- Peppermint vs spearmint — The two mints sold interchangeably as 'mint tea', with different chemistry and opposite characters. Which one you have decides whether a Moroccan preparation works or tastes harsh.
Guides
Evidence for this page
The botanical name, family and distribution above are checked against an external authority. Mentha ×piperita L. — GRIN-Global Taxonomy record— retrieved and read, not countersigned by a named human. That source covers naming and distribution only. Everything else on this page — history, culture, production, flavour, preparation and buying advice — is TeaHQ’s own synthesis with no external source behind it.
Brewing parameters here are typical practice for the category rather than measurements of this plant, and each set says so.
This page makes no safety claim. It describes what Peppermint is, where it comes from and how it is prepared — not what it does to a person. The absence of a safety note here is not a statement that the plant is safe. How TeaHQ handles this.