Ingredients · Herb

Fennel

Foeniculum vulgare · Apiaceae (carrot family)

Fennel
A sweet, anise-scented seed — the anethole in it is the same compound that makes anise and star anise taste the way they do, though the three plants are unrelated. Fennel is the sausage seed and the after-dinner seed at once: nineteen products here carry it, split between the kitchen shelf, where it does Italian and Chinese work, and the herbal blends, where it is one of the standard digestive herbs.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partSeed
KindHerb
CaffeineCaffeine-free
Where it is fromMediterranean (native range)
TasteSweet, anise-like, green and warm; toasted seeds pop and deepen

How to use it

Whole seeds in Italian sausage, tomato sauce and roast pork. Toasted and cracked over roast vegetables. One of the five in Chinese five-spice. One of the five in panch phoron, always used whole, crackling in oil. Chewed plain after a meal, or as part of the sugared mukhwas at an Indian restaurant door. Steeped as a tea.

With food

Pork and sausage. Tomato. Fish, particularly oily fish. Orange. Apple. Cabbage and celery. Lentils. Bread and olive oil.

With spices

Anise and star anise, which share its compound. Chile flakes and garlic for Italian. Cinnamon, cloves and Szechuan pepper for five-spice. Cumin, fenugreek, nigella and mustard for panch phoron.

With tea

Peppermint and chamomile, the classic after-dinner trio. Licorice root. Ginger.

Its story

Where it comes from

Indigenous to the shores of the Mediterranean and widely naturalised, spreading east to India. India is the largest grower, though the FAO reports fennel only in a combined category with anise, star anise and coriander. Shop notes name no lot origin.

What happened

Marathon is named for fennel — the Greek marathon means a place overgrown with it — and the Athenians won their battle there in 490 BCE, which is why fennel became a plant of victory. In Hesiod, Prometheus carries stolen fire down from Olympus hidden in a hollow fennel stalk. Pliny devotes twenty-two remedies to it and reports that snakes eat fennel when they shed their skins and sharpen their sight with its juice; Longfellow put the same story into verse in 1842. A tenth-century English charm names fennel among nine herbs. Charlemagne required it on all the imperial farms. Tuscans, the story goes, used wild fennel in their salami where pepper was too dear, which is how finocchiona got its name. And in New England the seeds were meetin' seeds, chewed through long sermons to stay awake.

Good for

What the research looked at

Traditionally used in Herbal Medicine to help relieve digestive upset, including bloating and flatulence (Health Canada NHP monograph, November 2024).
Also traditionally used as an expectorant to help relieve coughs associated with colds.
Naturally caffeine-free.
The seed chewed plain at the end of a meal, which is what mukhwas is for.

These teas are foods, sold as such. Nothing on this page is intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

On the shelf with it

Sold on its own, and in these blends.

Every ingredient in the shop

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