Ingredients · Herb

Bay Leaf

Laurus nobilis · Lauraceae (laurel family)

Bay Leaf
The leaf of the laurel — the crown of the ancient world, sitting in your soup pot. Bay does not announce itself; you notice it when it is missing rather than when it is there, which is why people argue about whether it does anything at all. It does: the oil is nearly half 1,8-cineole, the cool camphor-like note that gives a long-simmered stock its backbone. Six products carry it. The leaves come out before serving because they stay stiff, not because they are poisonous — that belief comes from lookalike plants that are not sold for cooking.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partLeaf
KindHerb
CaffeineCaffeine-free
Where it is fromMediterranean (native range)
TasteHerbal and faintly floral, a little like oregano and thyme, with a cool eucalyptus note; sharp and bitter if eaten whole

How to use it

Two leaves into a stock, stew, braise, bean pot or tomato sauce at the start, and out at the end. In a bouquet garni with thyme and parsley. In biryani, Filipino adobo, Bolognese, pickling brine and a court bouillon. It needs time and liquid — a bay leaf in a quick dish is a bay leaf wasted.

With food

Dried beans and lentils. Beef, pork and chicken stock. Tomato. Potato. Milk, for a béchamel or a rice pudding. Onion. Vinegar brines.

With spices

Thyme and parsley. Black peppercorns. Allspice, cloves and mustard seed in a pickling brine. Celery seed and paprika in Old Bay. Garlic and onion.

With tea

Not a tea ingredient.

Its story

Where it comes from

Native to the Mediterranean, a relict of the laurel forests that once covered much of the basin; remnant wild populations survive in Turkey, Syria, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, the Canary Islands and Madeira. It has been cultivated in Britain since the sixteenth century, probably earlier. Shop notes name no lot origin. Several unrelated plants are sold as bay — Indian tejpat, Indonesian salam, West Indian, Californian and Mexican bay are all different leaves.

What happened

Ovid's Daphne, fleeing Apollo, is turned into the laurel, and the god takes the tree for his own: since you can never be my bride, at least, sweet laurel, you shall be my tree. At Delphi the Pythia is reported to have chewed laurel from a sacred tree before prophesying. Laurel crowned the winners of the Pythian Games and Rome's triumphant generals, and it survives in the words poet laureate, baccalaureate and bachelor — through Latin baccalaureus, laurel-berry. Graduates of Padua still receive a laurel wreath at their laurea. The emperor Tiberius, who was terrified of lightning, wore a laurel crown through thunderstorms, because it was supposed that the leaf of that tree is never touched by the lightning; sixteen centuries later Culpeper was still quoting Mizaldus to the same effect — neither witch nor devil, thunder nor lightning, will hurt a man in the place where a bay tree is.

On the shelf with it

Sold on its own, and in these blends.

Every ingredient in the shop

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