Vadouvan French Masala, Herbs & Seasonings

Vadouvan is a French interpretation of Indian masala that combines the classic curry spices of mustard seeds, fenugreek, cumin, coriander, cardamom and spicy chiles with savory garlic, onion, and shallot. Vadouvan is one of the most delicately flavored curry blends, but it does have a spicy kick of heat. The longer it cooks, the more its rich, roasted qualities come through.

All about Vadouvan French Masala, Spice Blend

What it’s like, and how to make it

HeatMild

CuisineIndian & south & asian, mediterranean, french & european

Best forBraising, roasting, slow cooker, marinades rubs

Goes inCurry dal, dips sauces

WithLamb, chicken, vegetarian, venison, rabbit

What’s in itturmeric, onion, garlic, smoked salt, shallots, turbinado sugar, olive oil, mustard seeds, fenugreek, cumin, coriander, cardamom, chiles

How to use it

French-Indian fusion in a jar. Stir one tablespoon into scrambled eggs, roasted vegetables, or grain bowls. Mix with butter for compound butter on grilled lamb. Add to cream sauces or risotto for a savory depth that's impossible to identify but impossible to stop eating. The caramelized shallots make this unlike any other curry powder.

Vadouvan French Masala spice, shown over a chalk-and-watercolour illustration

Illustration: Vadouvan French Masala with a rooftop terrace in Pondicherry in the summer sun

What’s in it

Every herb in the blend, and where to read about it on its own.

Spice · Caffeine-free

Turmeric
Curcuma longa
A ginger-family rhizome, boiled, dried and ground to a powder so yellow it stains everything it touches. In sixteen products here it is doing two jobs: colour, which is most of why it is in a curry powder or a mustard, and a gently bitter,...
Earthy, warm, gently bitter and peppery, with a musky root smell; it colours everything gold
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Spice · Caffeine-free

Onion
Allium cepa
Dried onion, in three grinds: granulated blooms in oil, minced rehydrates into pieces you can see, and powder disappears into a dip or a rub. Twenty-seven products carry it. Drying takes 96 per cent of the water out and, with it, the sulfur compounds that...
Toasty, sweet and savoury; none of raw onion's sharpness
Learn more Sold on its own
Spice · Caffeine-free

Garlic
Allium sativum
A bulb, dried and broken down to three different coarsenesses, and the single most common ingredient in this catalogue — forty-three products carry it. Granulated is coarse and blooms slowly in hot oil; minced is visible pieces that plump up in a sauce; powder disappears...
Sweet, toasty and savoury; deeper and rounder than fresh garlic, without the raw bite
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Spice · Caffeine-free

Mustard
Sinapis alba, Brassica juncea
Seed and powder, from two related plants: yellow mustard (Sinapis alba), which is mild, and brown or oriental mustard (Brassica juncea), which is hot. Dry mustard is not hot at all until it is wet — water sets off a reaction between the enzyme myrosinase...
Sharp, nose-tingling heat once wet; before that, a dusty, faintly sweet, earthy powder
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Spice · Caffeine-free

Cumin
Cuminum cyminum
A small ridged seed with a deep, earthy, faintly smoky smell — cuminaldehyde is the compound doing most of it. Cumin is one of the oldest travelling spices there is, and in this catalogue it is one of the busiest: twenty-three products carry it, which...
Deep, earthy, warm, a little smoky and bitter, with a musky edge
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Spice · Caffeine-free

Coriander
Coriandrum sativum
The round, ridged seed of the same plant whose leaf is cilantro — and it tastes nothing like it. Where the leaf is green and divisive, the seed is warm, citrusy and floral, closer to orange peel than to anything herbal. That is why plenty...
Warm, citrusy and floral, a little sweet — orange peel and pepper together
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Spice · Caffeine-free

Cardamom
Elettaria cardamomum
Green pods holding small black seeds, from a ginger-family plant of the Western Ghats — floral, resinous and eucalyptus-cool, quite unlike anything else in the cupboard. It is the third most expensive spice in the world after saffron and vanilla, which is why it is...
Floral, resinous, eucalyptus-cool and sweet-warm; the main volatiles are terpinyl acetate and eucalyptol
Learn more Sold on its own
Spice · Caffeine-free

Chile
Capsicum annuum
Dried chile peppers, whole, crushed or ground — the generic heat in twenty-nine products here, from curry powders to jerk to Tex-Mex. Heat comes from capsaicin and is measured in Scoville heat units; the shop's blends name theirs where the supplier gives a figure. The...
Heat first, then a dry, fruity red-pepper taste; the darker dried chiles run raisiny and the lighter ones bright and tannic
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Spice · Caffeine-free

Fenugreek
Trigonella foenum-graecum
The curry spice nobody talks about, and the one that smells like maple syrup. That is not a metaphor: the compound is sotolon, and it is the same thing used to make imitation maple flavouring. Fenugreek is bitter raw and bitter if over-toasted, and turns...
Maple syrup and burnt sugar; bitter raw or over-toasted, sweetening as it cooks
Learn more Sold on its own
Salt · Caffeine-free

Smoked Sea Salt
Sodium chloride
Sea salt smoked over bark-free wood — and worth distinguishing from smoke-flavoured salt, which is ordinary salt carrying an added smoke agent. Real smoked salt takes on the character of whatever wood it was smoked over: alder, apple, cherry, hickory, mesquite and oak are the...
Clean brine under woodsmoke — the strength depends entirely on the wood and the length of the smoking
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Spice · Caffeine-free

Shallot
Allium cepa
A milder, sweeter onion — and, as of 2010, formally not a separate species at all. Taxonomists decided the difference from the common onion was too small to justify one, so the shallot is now a cultivar group of Allium cepa. Four products carry it,...
Onion-like but milder and sweeter, with less sulphurous bite
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Sweetener · Caffeine-free

Turbinado Sugar
Large golden crystals, made from crystallised, partially evaporated cane juice spun in a centrifuge to remove part of the molasses — which is where the name comes from, the turbine. Four products carry it. The reason to use it rather than brown sugar in a...
Clean sweetness with a light caramel note; drier and less molasses-heavy than brown sugar
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Other · Caffeine-free

Olive Oil
Olea europaea
In a dry spice blend, which is unusual enough to be worth explaining. A small amount of oil in a masala does two things: it carries fat-soluble aromatics that water cannot, and it binds the powder slightly so it clings to what it is rubbed...
Fruity and faintly peppery; in a blend it is carrying other flavours more than adding its own
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Every ingredient in the shop →

What it goes with

Vadouvan's caramelized depth is built for Darjeeling — they share a caramel compound that makes the pairing click. Brew our Darjeeling alongside a Vadouvan-spiced meal for the most surprising pairing in the shop. Our Earl Grey is the French connection — bergamot brightness against deep umami.

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