The flavours behind the food we eat
Welcome to the reference guide for herbs and spices: 312 pages on every leaf, seed, bark, root and chilli worth cooking with; from a handful of basil to a Carolina Reaper, and the blends, pastes and traditions built on them.
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Bird's eye chilli
The small, fierce chilli of Southeast Asian cooking
Bird's eye chillies are small, pointed, very hot chillies used across Southeast Asia and Africa. The name covers several varieties of Capsicum annuum and Capsicum frutescens.
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💡 Did you know…
- Angelica is a giant, musky-scented herb of the carrot family from northern Europe. Its stems are candied for cakes and trifles, and its roots and seeds flavour gin, vermouth, Chartreuse and Bénédictine. (Angelica)
- The pungent rhizome of a tropical plant, used fresh in Asian cooking and dried in Western baking. Gingerols give fresh ginger its bite; drying turns them into the fiercer shogaols. (Ginger)
- A fiery red Ethiopian and Eritrean blend of dried chillies with fenugreek, korarima, ginger, garlic and warm spices, the essential seasoning of wat stews and lentil dishes. (Berbere)
- Celery leaf comes from leaf celery or smallage, a thin-stalked, intensely flavoured celery grown for its leaves and used in soffritto, Greek and Portuguese soups and Chinese stir-fries. (Celery leaf)
🌶️ Spice Finder
Tell us what you're cooking and what's in the spice rack, and we'll tell you which blend, rub or paste to make — and what you're missing.
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🌡️ The Heat Ladder Scoville scale
The bars are on a log scale: every fifth of the way along is ten times hotter, from a bell pepper's zero to pure capsaicin at 16 million. Pick a chilli, or use the arrow keys. See capsaicin for why it burns.