Safflower vs saffron
The oldest adulteration in the spice trade, still running. Safflower gives colour convincingly and flavour not at all, which is exactly why the substitution works in a photograph and fails in the mouth.
botanical
What is being compared
Why these get confused
Its Latin name means the dyer’s, and two of its common names — false saffron, bastard saffron — are accusations.
Point by point
| Aspect | Safflower | Saffron |
|---|---|---|
| The part used | The orange-red florets of a thistle-like flower, pulled from a spiny head by hand. | The three red stigmas of an autumn crocus, plucked from each flower the day it opens. |
| What it looks like | Flat, tongue-shaped florets, uniform in colour along their length. | Trumpet-shaped threads, red at the tip with a paler style at one end. |
| Flavour | Slightly bitter and hay-like, with none of saffron’s honeyed depth. | Honeyed and hay-like with a firm bitterness, and metallic if too much is used. |
| Price | Cheap by weight, and grown at scale in India, Kazakhstan and Mexico. | The most expensive agricultural product in the world by weight, at roughly a thousand times more. |
| Its own tradition | Genuinely drunk in Xinjiang and Central Asia and used as a dye across South Asia and Japan. | Brewed in Iran and Kashmir, where kahwa is the region’s signature drink. |
The short answer
Safflower is a real ingredient with a real history that happens to have spent a thousand years being sold as something else. Judge it on its own terms and it is fine; buy it as saffron and you have been robbed.
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