Origanum majorana L., sweet marjoram; and Origanum syriacum L., the za'atar of the Levant, both of section Majorana
Origin: Cyprus, Southern Anatolia & the Levant
Sweet marjoram, Origanum majorana, is a small, soft, grey-green perennial of the mint family, native to Cyprus, southern Anatolia, and the Levant. It cannot stand frost, and in the north it is grown as an annual and sown each spring. It is the sweet member of its genus: where oregano and thyme take their bite from carvacrol and thymol, the essential oil of sweet marjoram is dominated by sabinene hydrate and terpinen-4-ol, which give it a warmer, more floral, faintly piney smell that fades quickly once the herb is dried and crumbled.
The genus Origanum holds some forty species, and the standard account of them, J. H. Ietswaart's taxonomic revision of 1980, divides them into ten sections. Oregano, O. vulgare, sits in the section Origanum. The section Majorana holds sweet marjoram; the pot marjoram O. onites, which the spice trade sells as Turkish oregano; O. dubium; and O. syriacum, the herb of za'atar, which older botanists called Majorana syriaca. This entry carries two of them, sweet marjoram and za'atar, each with an origin of its own. Pot marjoram, which the kitchen treats as an oregano, stays with Oregano, and hardy marjoram, a hybrid of marjoram and oregano, is a garden plant rather than a kitchen one.
Marjoram has its own entry, rather than living inside Oregano, because the cooks who use it treat it as a different herb. German, Polish, Czech, and Ligurian cooking is specific about it, and oregano in a żurek or a Thuringian sausage gives the wrong result. Za'atar is filed here because it belongs here botanically, and because it has no better home: in the kitchen it is neither thyme, as its old English name 'wild thyme' suggests, nor sweet marjoram, but its own herb.
How long either plant has been cultivated is not recorded. Za'atar has been gathered wild for as long as the Levant has been inhabited and is still largely foraged. Sweet marjoram was known to the Greeks, who called it amarakon and dedicated it to Aphrodite, and to Dioscorides, who described it in his herbal; the dates of both origin points are placements.
In antiquity sweet marjoram was a perfume and an ornament before it was a seasoning: a herb for wedding wreaths, scented oils, and medicine. It travelled west through the Mediterranean with the other garden plants of the classical world and was grown in Italy from Roman times, and in the Middle Ages it went north into the gardens of France, England, and the German lands, by routes that are not recorded. The Ménagier de Paris, written in the 1390s, lists it amongst the herbs a household should grow.
It became a kitchen herb of the first rank in two places. On the Ligurian coast, maggiorana became the scent of the stuffings, the pasta fillings, and the Easter pie of Genoa. And in Central Europe it became Wurstkraut, the sausage herb: the seasoning of the Thuringian bratwurst, of liver sausage and liver dumplings, and of the soups of potato, lentil, and pea. From the German lands it spread with sausage- and soup-making into the Czech lands, where majoránka is the herb that makes a dish taste Czech; into Poland, where majeranek is called the most Polish of herbs; and across the Baltic to Sweden, where mejram seasons the Thursday pea soup.
The English took their herb garden to the Caribbean, and on Barbados, settled in 1627, marjoram and thyme became the two herbs of Bajan seasoning. In North Africa, Moroccans add marjoram, merdeddouch, to their tea in the cold months. Za'atar, meanwhile, stayed at home as a wild plant and travelled as a blend: the Levantine communities of the Americas, Europe, and Australia took the mixture of za'atar, sumac, and sesame with them, and it is now sold across the world, though outside the Levant it is very often made with thyme.
Marjoram is a staple herb of Central and Eastern Europe and of Liguria, and a working one almost everywhere else. Germany grows much of what it uses: the Aschersleben district of Saxony-Anhalt has cultivated it since 1890 and is the largest marjoram-growing area in Europe, and Egypt is one of the world's leading producers and exporters of the dried herb. It is sold dried far more often than fresh, which suits the sausage-maker and disappoints anyone who has tasted it fresh; cooks from Kraków to Prague rub the dried herb between their palms over the pot to wake it up.
Za'atar has become one of the best-known flavours of the Levant worldwide, and its wild plant is under some pressure as a result. Slow Food lists za'atar barri, wild za'atar, in its Ark of Taste of foods at risk, citing the plant's small area of occupation in Jordan, and the herb is increasingly cultivated as well as foraged.
The names confuse nearly everyone. In older English 'wild marjoram' means oregano, O. vulgare, and the atlas's Oregano entry keeps that name; 'pot marjoram' means O. onites, sold as Turkish oregano; and 'Syrian marjoram' is za'atar. Italian keeps maggiorana and origano firmly apart, as do German and Polish, and a recipe that names one means that one.
Historical Journey of Marjoram
Cyprus & Southern Anatolia — c. 1000 BCE
Sweet marjoram is a plant of the warm limestone hills of the eastern Mediterranean, and Cyprus and the southern coast of Anatolia are the heart of its native range, which runs on into the Levant. When people first took it into their gardens is not recorded, and the date of this point is a placement for the herb as the ancient world knew it.
That world knew it first as a perfume and an ornament rather than a seasoning. The Greeks called it amarakon and gave it to Aphrodite; one story makes Amaracus a royal perfumer of Cyprus who was turned into the plant, and newly married couples were crowned with wreaths of it for happiness. Dioscorides described it in his herbal in the first century. The island is not now a place that cooks with it much, and this point records the plant's home rather than a kitchen: the kitchens that made it their own lay far to the west and north.
Mount Lebanon & the Levant — c. 1000 BCE
The second marjoram of this entry is za'atar, Origanum syriacum, the grey, soft-leaved herb of the stony hills of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Jordan. It belongs to the same section of its genus as sweet marjoram and was once classed as Majorana syriaca, but it is a wild plant and a staple, gathered from spring into late summer, eaten fresh in salads, and hung in bunches to dry for the year. It was probably the ezov of the Hebrew Bible, the hyssop bunched to sprinkle the waters of purification, an identification most scholars accept. The date of this point is a placement for foraging far older than any record.
Dried and pounded with sour red sumac, toasted sesame, and salt, it becomes the blend that has carried its name around the world: spread on flatbread with olive oil as the man'oushe of the Beirut breakfast, showered over labneh, and eaten fresh, in spring, as salatet za'atar, with onion and lemon. In Arabic the word za'atar also covers several related herbs of the region, among them Thymbra spicata and Satureja thymbra, and many blends sold under the name are made with thyme; the dishes therefore also appear on the thyme journey.
Marjoram had been grown in Italy since antiquity, but it was on the Ligurian coast that it became the herb of a whole kitchen. Maggiorana is to Genoese cooking what basil is to its most famous sauce: it scents the stuffings of vegetables and the fillings of pasta, goes into the walnut sauce, and is the defining aroma of the Easter pie. The date of this point is a placement.
The torta pasqualina is the plainest proof: chard and fresh curd with whole eggs baked into it under many sheets of thin pastry, which Ligurian cooks say is distinguished from every other vegetable tart in Italy by its fresh marjoram alone. Pansoti, the plump triangles of pasta filled with wild greens and curd, are seasoned with it and dressed with salsa di noci, the raw sauce of walnuts, garlic, and bread, which takes marjoram too.
Marjoram reached northern Europe as a garden herb in the Middle Ages, and by the fourteenth century it was grown in England and France amongst the sweet herbs of the household garden; the Ménagier de Paris, a household book written in the 1390s by a Parisian for his young wife, names it amongst the plants she should grow. The route by which it reached the north is not recorded, and the date of this point is a placement.
In England it was a herb of the stillroom and the pottage, one of several sweet herbs used together, and it never became the defining flavour of an English dish in the way it did in Germany or Liguria, so this point records a passage rather than a cuisine. What makes it matter is where it went next: the English herb garden travelled with the colonists to the Caribbean, and in Barbados marjoram became one of the two herbs of the island's seasoning.
Erfurt, Munich & the German Lands — c. 1500 CE
German calls marjoram Wurstkraut, the sausage herb, and no country uses it more. It came north into the gardens of the German lands in the Middle Ages, by a route that is not recorded, and settled into the kitchen as the seasoning of pork, sausage, potatoes, pulses, and liver; the date of this point is a placement for that kitchen. The Thuringian bratwurst, first mentioned in a document of 1404 in the archives of Arnstadt, is seasoned with it, and so are liver sausage, liver dumplings, and the everyday soups of potato, lentil, and pea.
Germany now grows much of its own. Marjoram has been cultivated around Aschersleben, in Saxony-Anhalt on the northern edge of the Harz, since 1890, on about 350 hectares yielding some 500 to 600 tonnes a year, and packets of Thüringer Majoran are sold for the sausage-maker. The dishes that show it are the Thüringer Rostbratwurst, grilled over charcoal and eaten in a roll with mustard; the Leberknödelsuppe of Bavaria and Austria; and the plain German potato soup.
The Czech lands took marjoram from their German neighbours with the rest of Central European sausage- and soup-making, and majoránka became the herb Czech cooks reach for with potatoes, pulses, and liver. The date of this point is a placement.
Czech cooks say that marjoram is the seasoning that makes a dish taste Czech. It goes by the tablespoon into bramboráky, the thin, crisp potato pancakes of the markets, with garlic; into bramboračka, the potato soup of dried forest mushrooms; and into hrachová kaše, the pea purée of Moravia topped with fried onion. The potatoes themselves came from the same direction, and later: their Czech name, brambory, comes from Braniborsko, Brandenburg.
Polish cooks call marjoram, majeranek, the most Polish of herbs, and the claim is hard to argue with. It came east with the Central European kitchen, by a route that is not recorded, and it is the seasoning of Polish sausage, of the sour soups, and of offal; the date of this point is a placement.
It is the second flavour of żurek, the sour rye soup of the Easter table, after the ferment itself, and it goes by the tablespoon into flaki, the tripe soup that would not be recognised without it. Garlic and marjoram are the whole seasoning of biała kiełbasa, the fresh white sausage blessed on Holy Saturday and sliced into the żurek, and marjoram is what tells a Pole that kaszanka, the buckwheat blood sausage fried with onions, is the right one.
Marjoram reached Sweden through the Baltic trade with the German lands and became, as mejram, the classic herb of the country's most ritual everyday dish. The date of this point is a placement.
Ärtsoppa, yellow pea soup simmered with salted pork and onion and seasoned with marjoram and thyme, is eaten on Thursdays across Sweden, in schools, the army, and restaurants, followed by thin pancakes with jam, a custom usually traced to the Catholic practice of eating well before the Friday fast. The deposed King Erik XIV is said to have died in 1577 from arsenic served to him in a bowl of pea soup. The arsenic is real, and was found in his remains when they were examined in the 1950s, but the soup rests on an account written decades later, and the historian Dick Harrison thinks wine the likelier vehicle.
English settlers landed on Barbados in 1627, and the herbs of the English kitchen garden came with the colony. On the island they became the basis of its seasoning. The date of this point is a placement for the settled colony of the mid-seventeenth century.
Every Caribbean island has its green seasoning, and each is recognisably its own; Trinidad's is built on culantro, and Barbados's on fresh thyme and marjoram, blended with spring onion, onion, garlic, parsley, scotch bonnet, and lime. Bajan seasoning is kept in a jar in every household, pressed into scored fish and rubbed into chicken overnight, and it starts the sauce for the flying fish of the national dish, served with cou-cou.
To explore — select an ingredient below · click any location dot on the map for recipes and stories · browse the information panel on the right · trace the full journey on the timeline.
