Laurus nobilis (bay laurel, the true or sweet bay of the Mediterranean); together with the unrelated 'bay leaves' of other cuisines: Cinnamomum tamala (Indian bay, tejpat), Syzygium polyanthum (Indonesian bay, daun salam), and Litsea glaucescens (Mexican bay)
Origin: Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean, the homeland of the true bay laurel (<em>Laurus nobilis</em>); with wholly separate origins for the Indian bay of the Himalaya, the Indonesian bay of the Malay archipelago, and the Mexican bay of Mesoamerica
More than almost any other seasoning, 'bay leaf' is a name worn by several quite unrelated plants, bound together by nothing more than a broadly similar habit of use: a tough, aromatic, evergreen leaf, dropped whole into the simmering pot to lend its fragrance and lifted out before serving. The original and the true bay is the bay laurel, Laurus nobilis, an evergreen tree of the Mediterranean and Asia Minor and a member of the Lauraceae, the laurel family that also gives the world cinnamon, the avocado, and sassafras. Its dark, glossy, leathery leaf carries a warm, faintly bitter, eucalyptus-and-clove fragrance from the compound eugenol and others, and it is the bay of European, Mediterranean, and Latin American cooking, the silent backbone of the stock, the stew, and the marinade.
Three other 'bays' matter greatly at the table, and not one is a close relative. The Indian bay leaf, tejpat (Cinnamomum tamala), is a cousin of cinnamon rather than of the laurel: a long, three-veined leaf from the Himalaya whose scent is frankly that of cinnamon and clove, nothing like the Mediterranean leaf for which it is so often, and so wrongly, substituted. The Indonesian bay, daun salam (Syzygium polyanthum), belongs to a third family altogether, the Myrtaceae of the clove and the allspice, and lends a gentle, sour, herbal note to the cooking of the Malay archipelago. The Mexican bay (Litsea glaucescens) is, like the true laurel, a member of the Lauraceae, and is the 'laurel' of the Mexican kitchen. Two further plants borrow the name without earning a regular place in the pot: the pungent California bay (Umbellularia californica), the so-called headache tree, used sparingly as a stronger stand-in, and the West Indian bay (Pimenta racemosa), a clove relative grown chiefly for bay rum. It is worth a word of caution that the cherry laurel and other ornamental 'laurels' are not culinary at all and are poisonous; only the true bay laurel and its named culinary namesakes belong in food.
The true bay laurel was sacred long before it was culinary. To the Greeks it was the tree of Apollo, sprung from the nymph Daphne who was changed into a laurel to escape the god, and its leaves crowned the victors of the Pythian Games, wreathed the brows of poets, and were chewed, so it was said, by the Pythia, the priestess of the Delphic oracle, to bring on her prophetic trance. Rome took the laurel as the emblem of triumph and victory, crowning its generals and emperors with it, and as the legions marched the tree went with them, planted across Gaul, Iberia, and Britannia, so that the Mediterranean laurel struck root throughout the European provinces. From this Roman diffusion the leaf passed quietly into the kitchen of medieval and Renaissance Europe and became indispensable: the heart of the French bouquet garni and court-bouillon, the perfume of the stock pot, the stew, and the milk pudding from Italy to England.
With the age of sail the laurel crossed the oceans. The Spanish and Portuguese carried it to the Americas, where 'laurel' became a fixture of the Hispanic kitchen, scenting the sofrito, the black beans, and the adobo of the Caribbean and Latin America; and across the Pacific the Manila galleon carried it to the Philippines, where the bay leaf lodged at the very centre of adobo, the national dish. Meanwhile, on the far side of the world and quite independently, the other bays kept to their own homelands: tejpat had long flavoured the Mughlai and North Indian kitchen; daun salam was woven through the cooking of Java, Sumatra, and the Malay world; and the Mexican laurel seasoned the caldos and adobos of Mesoamerica. Four leaves, four families, four corners of the earth, gathered under a single borrowed name.
The Mediterranean bay is the great anonymous workhorse of the Western kitchen, so quietly pervasive that its absence is felt more than its presence. It goes into almost every stock, court-bouillon, and bouquet garni; into the long braises and daubes of France, the ragùs and braised meats of Italy, the bean pots and lentil stews of Spain and Portugal, and the escabeche and adobo of the whole Hispanic world. The British and French infuse it into milk for béchamel, bread sauce, rice pudding, and custard; the cooks of Latin America drop it into the sofrito and the frijoles; and it perfumes pickles, marinades, and the American pickling spice and crab boil. It is rarely tasted on its own and almost never the dominant note, yet it rounds, deepens, and binds the flavours around it.
The other bays hold their own regional thrones. In northern India tejpat, the Indian bay leaf, is one of the whole spices dropped into hot fat at the start of a biryani, a pulao, a dal, or a Mughlai curry, and a classic component of garam masala, lending its cinnamon-clove warmth. In Indonesia and the Malay world, daun salam is as fundamental as the Mediterranean bay is in Europe, scenting the coconut rice, the gulai, the sayur, and the sambal goreng of the everyday table. In Mexico, the native laurel seasons the caldo, the adobo, the pot of frijoles, and the long-simmered mole. Each is, in its own cuisine, the indispensable aromatic leaf; and though a European cook and an Indian and an Indonesian would scarcely recognise one another's 'bay', each would be lost without their own.
Historical Journey of Bay Leaf
The Himalayan Foothills and North India — Antiquity
The Indian bay leaf, tejpat, is no laurel at all but a leaf of the cinnamon tree's close cousin, Cinnamomum tamala, gathered from the forests of the Himalayan foothills, from Uttarakhand and Nepal eastward through Sikkim and the hills of the north-east. Long and leathery, marked with the three lengthwise veins that distinguish it from the single-ribbed Mediterranean leaf, it smells not of the eucalyptus-camphor of the true bay but frankly of cinnamon and clove, and it has been a prized spice of the subcontinent since deep antiquity, named in the ancient Sanskrit medical texts. It found its fullest culinary home in the Mughlai and North Indian kitchen, where it is one of the whole spices, the khada masala, dropped into hot fat or ghee at the very start of cooking so that its warm fragrance can bloom and perfume the dish: the foundation of a biryani or a fragrant pulao, the first note of a dal or a rich Mughlai curry, and a classic component of garam masala itself. Often mistranslated and mis-sold abroad as ordinary 'bay leaf', tejpat is in truth a quite distinct spice, and the warm, sweet, cinnamon-scented backbone of northern Indian cooking.
The true bay, the laurel Laurus nobilis, is native to Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean, and it was in the Greek world that it first became a thing of meaning. It was the tree of Apollo, grown, the myth tells, from the body of the nymph Daphne, whom the gods turned into a laurel to save her from the god's pursuit; thereafter its leaves crowned the victors of the Pythian Games at Delphi and wreathed the heads of poets, and the Pythia, the Delphic priestess, was said to chew them to bring on her prophecies. Beyond the temple and the games, the Greeks knew the laurel in the kitchen, dropping its fragrant evergreen leaf into the pot to scent the long-simmered dishes of meat and beans. That use endures in the Greek kitchen to this day, nowhere better than in stifado, the dark, sweet stew of beef or rabbit and a great quantity of small whole onions, braised slowly with red wine, vinegar, cinnamon, and bay until rich and fragrant; the laurel leaf is one of its defining aromas. From this Aegean homeland the laurel would travel, with Rome, across the whole of Europe.
In the islands of the Malay archipelago, the bay of the kitchen is daun salam, the leaf of Syzygium polyanthum, a tree not of the laurel family at all but of the Myrtaceae, the clan of the clove and the allspice. It is sometimes called 'Indonesian bay leaf' for its broadly similar role, but its fragrance is its own: gentler than the Mediterranean leaf, faintly sour and astringent, with a soft, herbal, almost tea-like note. Across Java, Sumatra, and the wider archipelago it is one of the foundation aromatics of the savoury kitchen, used fresh by preference and dropped whole into the pot, where it underpins the coconut rice of nasi uduk, the rich coconut vegetable stews of sayur lodeh and sayur asem, the gulai and the sambal goreng, and the long-braised meats. As the Mediterranean cook reaches without thinking for a bay leaf, the Indonesian cook reaches for a daun salam, and the leaf is so woven into the everyday cooking of the islands that a kitchen without it is scarcely imaginable. It is a true bay of the equator, native to its archipelago and quite unrelated to the laurel of the West.
Central and Western Mexico (Mesoamerica) — Pre-Columbian
Mexico has its own bay, the laurel of the Mexican kitchen, Litsea glaucescens, a small tree of the Lauraceae native to the highlands of central and western Mexico and Central America and so a genuine cousin of the Mediterranean laurel, though a separate species with a homeland of its own. Gathered wild and sold in bunches in the markets as 'laurel', its aromatic leaf was known to the peoples of Mesoamerica long before the Spanish came, valued in cooking and in healing alike. When the Spanish arrived they found a familiar-seeming laurel already in use, and the native leaf slipped easily into the new mestizo cuisine alongside the European bay the colonists also planted. To this day the Mexican laurel scents the slow-simmered caldos, the chicken and beef broths that are the comfort food of every Mexican home; it is one of the standard aromatics, with cumin and Mexican oregano, of the adobos and the marinades for barbacoa and birria; and it is dropped into the pot of frijoles de la olla, the soupy pot beans that accompany so many meals, and into the long-cooked moles. A native bay for a native cuisine, used much as the laurel is used a world away.
Rome took the Greek laurel and made it the supreme emblem of victory and honour. The triumphing general rode crowned with laurel; the emperors wore the laurel wreath; the very word 'laureate' descends from this Roman crown, and the laurel of the Caesars stands for victory still. As the legions and the colonists spread across the Mediterranean and beyond, the evergreen tree went with them, planted through Gaul, Iberia, and as far as Britannia, so that the laurel of Asia Minor took root across the whole European world. The Romans valued it in the kitchen as well as on the brow: Apicius, in the great Roman recipe collection, calls for both the leaf and the dark berry of the laurel to flavour and preserve, and the leaf became a fixture of the slow cookery of the empire. Italy has never let it go. The Italian kitchen drops alloro into its braises and ragùs, simmers it in the bean pot and the chestnut, and threads whole bay leaves between cubes of pork or chunks of fish on the skewer, the spiedini all'alloro of the grill, so that the leaf perfumes the meat as it cooks. From Rome the laurel passed into the heart of all European cookery.
France made the laurel a cornerstone of its codified cookery, the very grammar of the kitchen. It is one of the three herbs, with parsley and thyme, of the bouquet garni, the little tied bundle dropped into every stock, soup, daube, and braise to lend its background depth and lifted out at the end; it scents the court-bouillon in which fish is poached, and it is infused, with onion and clove, into the milk for a béchamel and the other mother sauces that descend from it. French cooking treats bay not as a flavour to be noticed but as a foundation to be built upon, present in the stockpot and the stew almost as a matter of course, and it was the precision of French culinary method, spreading across Europe and the world from the seventeenth century onward, that fixed the bay leaf's role as the indispensable aromatic of Western cooking. From the humblest pot-au-feu to the grandest sauce, the quiet laurel leaf is always somewhere in the French kitchen.
In Spain the laurel, planted across Iberia in Roman times and growing wild on the hills, became one of the defining aromatics of the national cooking, the leaf without which the guiso, the stew, would not taste of home. It is essential above all to the escabeche, the great Iberian technique of preserving cooked fish, game, or chicken in a cooled marinade of olive oil, vinegar, garlic, and a generous hand of bay, where the laurel's fragrance is not a background note but a leading flavour; and it goes into the bean and lentil pots, the marinades and adobos, and the slow-cooked meats of the whole peninsula. From Spain the laurel set sail for the New World and the East: the conquistadors and colonists carried the Mediterranean bay across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and Latin America, where 'laurel' became a fixture of the Hispanic kitchen, and across the Pacific, by the Manila galleon, to the Philippines, where it would lodge at the heart of the national dish. The Spanish bay leaf thus became one of the most widely travelled aromatics on earth, carried on the same ships that carried the language.
The Romans first carried the laurel to Britain, planting the Mediterranean evergreen in the cold soils of their northernmost province, and the British kitchen in time gave the leaf a use all its own: the infusion of milk. Where the Mediterranean dropped bay into oil, wine, and the stew, the British and the French steeped it in warm milk and cream, and from that habit come some of the most characteristic British uses of the leaf. Bread sauce, the soft, fragrant sauce of bread crumbs simmered in milk infused with bay, onion, and clove, is the immovable companion of the Christmas and Sunday roast bird; rice pudding and the old nursery milk puddings are perfumed with a bay leaf laid in the dish; and the leaf scents the custard, the poaching liquor, and the pickling spice besides. Beyond the milk pan, bay is a fixture of the British stockpot, the stew, the marinade, and the pickle jar, the quiet aromatic of the slow Sunday kitchen. It is a leaf used with restraint and almost never remarked upon, yet its absence from the bread sauce or the rice pudding would be noticed at once.
The Spanish carried the laurel across the Atlantic to their Caribbean colonies, and the Mediterranean bay leaf, the hoja de laurel, sank deep into the Hispanic-Caribbean kitchen, where it remains one of the essential aromatics of the everyday pot. It is a building block of the sofrito, the fragrant base of sautéed onion, garlic, pepper, and tomato on which so much of the cooking rests; and it is indispensable to the great bean dishes that, with rice, are the heart of the Cuban and wider Caribbean table, above all frijoles negros, the slow-simmered black beans cooked with sofrito, cumin, oregano, and a bay leaf or two until thick, dark, and richly savoury. The leaf goes likewise into the ropa vieja, the sancocho, the picadillo, and the marinades for roast pork, lending its background depth to the whole repertoire. In the Caribbean, as in Spain, the bay is a quiet workhorse, rarely the star but rarely absent, the aromatic that makes the beans taste as they should.
Across the Pacific, the Manila galleon trade that bound Spanish Mexico to the Philippines carried the Mediterranean laurel to the islands, where the bay leaf found perhaps its single most important home in any cuisine: the heart of adobo, the national dish. Filipino adobo is older than the Spanish name later given to it, a pre-colonial method of cooking and preserving meat, seafood, or vegetables in vinegar; but in its classic and best-loved form the braise turns on a defining quartet of vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, black peppercorns, and bay leaves, the laurel lending the rounding, savoury fragrance that marks a true adobo. Chicken or pork is simmered in this sharp, dark, glossy sauce until tender, and the bay is as essential to it as the vinegar itself. The same aromatic runs through the wider Filipino repertoire, the menudo, the mechado, the caldereta, and the afritada, the Hispanic-influenced braises of the islands, so that the humble bay leaf, carried halfway round the world on a Spanish galleon, became one of the indispensable flavours of the Filipino kitchen.
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Journey Point Map Key
Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
c. 1700 CEThe Philippines
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1700 CE
AntiquityPre-Columbian1500 CE1700 CE
Ingredient originBecame a culinary stapleTrade or transit routeColonial / trade control
Bay Leaf
Laurus nobilis (bay laurel, the true or sweet bay of the Mediterranean); together with the unrelated 'bay leaves' of other cuisines: Cinnamomum tamala (Indian bay, tejpat), Syzygium polyanthum (Indonesian bay, daun salam), and Litsea glaucescens (Mexican bay)
HerbsLauraceae
🌍Origin
Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean, the homeland of the true bay laurel (Laurus nobilis); with wholly separate origins for the Indian bay of the Himalaya, the Indonesian bay of the Malay archipelago, and the Mexican bay of Mesoamerica — Gathered and revered since deep antiquity in the Mediterranean; the laurel of the Greek and Roman world
🌱Domestication
More than almost any other seasoning, 'bay leaf' is a name worn by several quite unrelated plants, bound together by nothing more than a broadly similar habit of use: a tough, aromatic, evergreen leaf, dropped whole into the simmering pot to lend its fragrance and lifted out before serving. The original and the true bay is the bay laurel, Laurus nobilis, an evergreen tree of the Mediterranean and Asia Minor and a member of the Lauraceae, the laurel family that also gives the world cinnamon, the avocado, and sassafras. Its dark, glossy, leathery leaf carries a warm, faintly bitter, eucalyptus-and-clove fragrance from the compound eugenol and others, and it is the bay of European, Mediterranean, and Latin American cooking, the silent backbone of the stock, the stew, and the marinade.
Three other 'bays' matter greatly at the table, and not one is a close relative. The Indian bay leaf, tejpat (Cinnamomum tamala), is a cousin of cinnamon rather than of the laurel: a long, three-veined leaf from the Himalaya whose scent is frankly that of cinnamon and clove, nothing like the Mediterranean leaf for which it is so often, and so wrongly, substituted. The Indonesian bay, daun salam (Syzygium polyanthum), belongs to a third family altogether, the Myrtaceae of the clove and the allspice, and lends a gentle, sour, herbal note to the cooking of the Malay archipelago. The Mexican bay (Litsea glaucescens) is, like the true laurel, a member of the Lauraceae, and is the 'laurel' of the Mexican kitchen. Two further plants borrow the name without earning a regular place in the pot: the pungent California bay (Umbellularia californica), the so-called headache tree, used sparingly as a stronger stand-in, and the West Indian bay (Pimenta racemosa), a clove relative grown chiefly for bay rum. It is worth a word of caution that the cherry laurel and other ornamental 'laurels' are not culinary at all and are poisonous; only the true bay laurel and its named culinary namesakes belong in food.
⛵Global Voyage
The true bay laurel was sacred long before it was culinary. To the Greeks it was the tree of Apollo, sprung from the nymph Daphne who was changed into a laurel to escape the god, and its leaves crowned the victors of the Pythian Games, wreathed the brows of poets, and were chewed, so it was said, by the Pythia, the priestess of the Delphic oracle, to bring on her prophetic trance. Rome took the laurel as the emblem of triumph and victory, crowning its generals and emperors with it, and as the legions marched the tree went with them, planted across Gaul, Iberia, and Britannia, so that the Mediterranean laurel struck root throughout the European provinces. From this Roman diffusion the leaf passed quietly into the kitchen of medieval and Renaissance Europe and became indispensable: the heart of the French bouquet garni and court-bouillon, the perfume of the stock pot, the stew, and the milk pudding from Italy to England.
With the age of sail the laurel crossed the oceans. The Spanish and Portuguese carried it to the Americas, where 'laurel' became a fixture of the Hispanic kitchen, scenting the sofrito, the black beans, and the adobo of the Caribbean and Latin America; and across the Pacific the Manila galleon carried it to the Philippines, where the bay leaf lodged at the very centre of adobo, the national dish. Meanwhile, on the far side of the world and quite independently, the other bays kept to their own homelands: tejpat had long flavoured the Mughlai and North Indian kitchen; daun salam was woven through the cooking of Java, Sumatra, and the Malay world; and the Mexican laurel seasoned the caldos and adobos of Mesoamerica. Four leaves, four families, four corners of the earth, gathered under a single borrowed name.
🍽Modern Culinary Role
The Mediterranean bay is the great anonymous workhorse of the Western kitchen, so quietly pervasive that its absence is felt more than its presence. It goes into almost every stock, court-bouillon, and bouquet garni; into the long braises and daubes of France, the ragùs and braised meats of Italy, the bean pots and lentil stews of Spain and Portugal, and the escabeche and adobo of the whole Hispanic world. The British and French infuse it into milk for béchamel, bread sauce, rice pudding, and custard; the cooks of Latin America drop it into the sofrito and the frijoles; and it perfumes pickles, marinades, and the American pickling spice and crab boil. It is rarely tasted on its own and almost never the dominant note, yet it rounds, deepens, and binds the flavours around it.
The other bays hold their own regional thrones. In northern India tejpat, the Indian bay leaf, is one of the whole spices dropped into hot fat at the start of a biryani, a pulao, a dal, or a Mughlai curry, and a classic component of garam masala, lending its cinnamon-clove warmth. In Indonesia and the Malay world, daun salam is as fundamental as the Mediterranean bay is in Europe, scenting the coconut rice, the gulai, the sayur, and the sambal goreng of the everyday table. In Mexico, the native laurel seasons the caldo, the adobo, the pot of frijoles, and the long-simmered mole. Each is, in its own cuisine, the indispensable aromatic leaf; and though a European cook and an Indian and an Indonesian would scarcely recognise one another's 'bay', each would be lost without their own.
