Ingredients · Herb

Cilantro

Coriandrum sativum · Apiaceae (carrot family)

Cilantro
The dried leaf of the same plant whose seed is coriander — and the herb that splits a dinner table in two. Some people taste fresh cilantro as citrus and green; others taste soap, and they are not being difficult: a 2012 study of more than 26,000 people found a variant in a cluster of smell-receptor genes on chromosome 11, one of which binds the aldehydes that give cilantro its smell. The dried leaf is gentler than fresh — earthier, less citrus — and needs to go in early and generously to bloom. Six products carry it.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partLeaf
KindHerb
CaffeineCaffeine-free
Where it is fromNear East and Mediterranean (native range)
TasteDried: earthy and herbal, gentler than fresh. Fresh: citrusy and green — or soapy, depending on your chromosome 11

How to use it

Add the dried leaf early — it needs time and liquid, unlike fresh cilantro, which is a finishing herb and loses everything when cooked. About a tablespoon per cup of rice. In black beans, chili, salsa, taco seasoning and curry pastes. Indian and Central Asian recipes use the leaf in large amounts and cook it down, which is closer to what dried wants.

With food

Lime. Black beans and rice. Corn and tortillas. Avocado. Tomato and onion. Chicken and pork. Coconut milk. Cucumber and yogurt.

With spices

Cumin and chile — the Mexican frame. Coriander seed, its own other half. Garlic and onion. Lime peel. Galangal and lemongrass for Thai.

With tea

Darjeeling, and a jasmine green alongside Thai food.

Its story

Where it comes from

Native to the Near East and the Mediterranean. India is the world's largest producer. It reached the Americas in the Columbian Exchange, and was one of the first herbs the English took to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. The Spanish name cilantro became the North American word for the leaf because of how heavily Mexican cooking uses it.

What happened

Coriander is one of the oldest flavourings people have kept — remains six to eight thousand years old were found in the Nahal Hemar cave, and about half a litre of seed went into Tutankhamun's tomb. Its Greek name may come from koris, the bedbug, for the smell of the green unripe plant. The dislike has a long pedigree: John Gerard, in his 1597 Herball, called it a very stinking herbe with leaves of venemous quality, which makes him the first famous cilantro hater on record, and a French seed house in 1885 still found it odd that anyone would season with leaves that smell of the wood-bug. Coriander was widespread across medieval Europe and then largely vanished from British cooking by the end of the sixteenth century; in Italy basil replaced it and it barely appears in Italian recipes today. It came back to the West on the popularity of Mexican and Thai food, and by the 1970s in the United States calling it cilantro had acquired a certain amount of snob appeal. The share of people who dislike it varies: about 21 per cent of East Asians, 17 of Caucasians, 14 of people of African descent, 7 of South Asians, 4 of Hispanics and 3 of Middle Eastern participants, in one Toronto study of 1,639 people.

On the shelf with it

Sold on its own, and in these blends.

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