How to reach the herbsandspices.food editors with a correction, a missing herb or regional tradition, a photograph to offer, or a disagreement: by email or the site's submission form.
How to reach us¶
herbsandspices.food is not publicly editable, so the editors rely on readers to say when something is wrong, missing or unclear.
The submission form: /wiki/submit. It asks for a name, an email address (so that we can reply) and your message; a phone number is optional. The form is text only and takes no attachments, so for photographs or documents, describe them there or email instead.
Everything sent is read by an editor. Not everything gets a reply, but anything that needs one will get one at the address you give.
What is most useful to send¶
Corrections, especially of botanical names, origins, Scoville ranges and history, where confidently repeated errors are everywhere. A source helps enormously: a botanical flora, a peer-reviewed paper, a reputable food-history text. "My grandmother always said" is lovely, but it is a different kind of evidence, and the page may end up saying so.
Regional practice we have missed. How a blend is made in your region or household, what a herb is called locally, which chilli a dish really uses. The Around the world pages — India, Ethiopia, Mexico and the rest — in particular improve with this kind of detail.
Missing herbs, spices and blends. If something you cook with has no page, tell us what it is, what it is called, and where it is used.
Technique disagreements. If you toast before grinding and we say otherwise for a particular spice, and your way works, we would like to know why.
Photographs, if you took them yourself and are happy for us to publish them with a credit.
What we cannot help with¶
We cannot give medical advice, and nothing on the site is a substitute for it. If you think someone has eaten something poisonous — a wild plant, a large quantity of nutmeg, a child and a superhot chilli — contact a doctor, a poison information service or the emergency services immediately. Relevant background is on poisonous lookalikes, nutmeg toxicity, extreme chilli risks and spice allergies.
We also cannot rescue a dish in real time, but these pages are designed for exactly that moment:
- Cooling a dish that is too hot
- Handling chillies safely — including what to do about chilli in the eye
- Fresh vs dried herbs — conversion ratios when you have only one
- When to add herbs and spices
Writing a useful correction¶
The corrections that get acted on fastest share a few features:
- Name the page and the sentence. "The Kashmiri chilli page says X in the second paragraph of Origins" can be checked in a minute; "your chilli pages are wrong" cannot.
- Say what you think is right, and why. A source, a label, first-hand experience of growing or trading the thing — each is useful, and it helps to say which it is.
- Separate fact from preference. Whether a garam masala should contain fennel is a matter of region and household, and the page will usually say so already. Whether a plant belongs to the Apiaceae is not.
- Flag safety issues clearly. If you think a page understates a risk — a toxic lookalike, an allergen, a storage method that is unsafe — put that in the first line. Those are checked first.
Where an editor disagrees after checking, the page may stay as it is, but a well-sourced disagreement often ends up acknowledged on the page itself: many articles already set out both sides of a question where the evidence is genuinely divided.
How changes are recorded¶
Every edit to the site is logged with a date, the editor's name and a note, and the full history of each article is public — the link is at the foot of every page. Corrections from readers are checked before they are published, and are never made silently.