The same plant in cooking and in a cup

A third of this catalogue is in a spice rack somewhere. What changes when a cooking material becomes a drink, and why the answer is usually quantity.

foundational

Most of these are kitchen materials first

Bay, oregano, thyme, rosemary, curry leaf, makrut lime leaf, cumin, coriander, fenugreek, cassia, nutmeg, allspice. Nobody grows them to brew them, and their grading, packaging and availability all follow the cooking trade rather than the drinks trade.

What changes

Concentration and context. In a dish a bay leaf sits among a dozen other ingredients and contributes an edge; in a cup it is the only thing there. That is why two bay leaves is a pot and three is a medicine cabinet, and why the quantities that work in cooking are usually too high for a drink.

Where the drink came first

A smaller set, and worth naming: rooibos, honeybush, yerba mate, guayusa, sideritis, mugicha, chrysanthemum, honeysuckle. These are grown, graded and traded to be drunk, which is why their quality signals are more legible — a mate cut is described on the packet in a way an oregano is not.

The practical consequence

For a kitchen material, buy the cooking version — it is fresher, cheaper and better graded than the same thing repackaged as tea. For a drinking material, the reverse: the tea-trade version is graded for the job.

More foundational guides