Oregano
Origanum vulgare · Lippia graveolens
Origin: Mediterranean (Greece) and Mesoamerica (Mexico)
Oregano, more than almost any other herb, is a flavour before it is a plant. The word names not one species but a whole category of aromatic herbs, perhaps sixty of them across several genera and even separate botanical families, that share the warm, peppery, faintly bitter pungency of the compound carvacrol. Two of them matter most in the kitchen, and they are not even close relatives. True oregano is Origanum vulgare, a perennial of the mint family, Lamiaceae, native across the Mediterranean and western Eurasia; its most pungent and prized form, the Greek oregano Origanum vulgare subsp. hirtum, is the herb of the Greek and Italian table. Mexican oregano is Lippia graveolens, a shrub of the wholly unrelated verbena family, Verbenaceae, native to Mexico, Central America, and the southern fringe of the United States, with a bolder, more citrus-and-resin flavour all its own. They taste enough alike that both are called oregano, and they belong to two different worlds.
In the Old World, oregano is the wild herb of the sunbaked Mediterranean hillside, gathered from the limestone mountains where it grows in dense, grey-green, sweetly resinous mats. Its very name declares this home: from the Greek, by the usual reading, oros and ganos, the joy of the mountain. It is closely bound to its gentler sibling marjoram (Origanum majorana), the sweet, mild oregano of cooler cultivation, and to the Turkish pot oregano (Origanum onites) and the Levantine wild oregano or bible hyssop (Origanum syriacum), the latter the herb of za'atar. Unusually amongst herbs, oregano gains rather than loses by drying: the slow loss of water concentrates its carvacrol and rounds its harsher notes, so that dried oregano is not a poor substitute for fresh but very often the preferred form, the only one of the great culinary herbs of which this is routinely said.
In the New World, an entirely separate plant came to bear the same name. When the Spanish reached Mexico they found the indigenous peoples seasoning their food with the pungent leaves of Lippia graveolens and, recognising the familiar flavour, called it oregano too. It had already been used in Mesoamerica for thousands of years, and it remains the true oregano of the Mexican kitchen, distinct enough from the Mediterranean herb that a cook who knows both will never confuse them: where Greek oregano is sharp and herbal, Mexican oregano is deeper, more floral, with notes of citrus and a faint liquorice warmth that stand up to chilli, lime, and long-simmered chile sauces as the Mediterranean herb cannot.
Oregano's story runs along two separate lines that meet only in the modern kitchen. The Old World line begins in ancient Greece, where oregano was already the joy of the mountain: a herb of weddings and of funerals, woven into the bridal crown as a promise of happiness and planted on graves so that the dead might rest in peace, sacred to Aphrodite, and prescribed by Hippocrates and Dioscorides as a medicine. Rome took the herb, the name (origanum), and the lore, seasoned with it in the recipes of Apicius, and carried it across the empire. Through the Mediterranean it became one of the defining flavours of the southern European table: the rigani that scents the Greek salad, the grilled meats, and the oil-braised vegetables of Greece; the origano that, above all in the south of Italy, is the inseparable partner of the tomato and the very breath of the pizza; and the kekik of Turkey, where oregano grows so abundantly on the Aegean hills that the country became, and remains, the largest exporter of dried oregano in the world.
The New World line begins far away and long before, with the wild Lippia graveolens of the Mexican and Central American uplands, gathered and dried by the Maya and the Aztecs and woven into the cooking of Mesoamerica thousands of years before any European arrived. It is the oregano of the pozole and the menudo, the salsa and the frijoles, the birria and the mole, the herb whose deep, citrus-resin pungency is built for chilli and lime; and it spread north with the cuisine of the borderlands into the Tex-Mex and New Mexican kitchens, where it seasons the bowl of red and the red-chile pork.
The two lines met, and oregano made its greatest leap, in the middle of the twentieth century. Until then the Mediterranean herb was all but unknown in the United States and northern Europe. Then the soldiers of the Second World War, stationed in Italy and Sicily, came home with a craving for the food they had eaten there, and above all for pizza; American oregano sales rose by more than five thousand per cent between 1948 and 1956, and the herb earned the nickname by which a generation knew it, 'the pizza herb'. Italian emigration carried the same taste to the River Plate, where oregano became central to the cooking of Argentina and Uruguay: the chimichurri spooned over grilled beef, the oregano-and-chilli crust of grilled provolone, and the great Italian-Argentine tradition of pizza. From a wild herb of the Greek mountains and a separate wild herb of the Mexican sierra, oregano became, in a single modern lifetime, one of the most widely used flavours on earth.
Oregano is one of the most heavily used culinary herbs in the world, and the defining herb of two of its most popular foods: the pizza and the Greek salad. In its Mediterranean heartland it is indispensable to Greek cooking (the salad, the souvlaki, the lemon-and-oregano roast), to the southern Italian kitchen and its tomato sauces, pizzas, and grills, and to Turkish cooking, where it crowns the kebab and the grill. Turkey, Greece, and Mexico are amongst the largest producers, and Turkey dominates the global export trade in the dried herb. It is one of the very few herbs that the world prefers dried, its flavour deepening and concentrating as it dries, which has made it the great storable, shippable, year-round herb of the spice shelf.
Mexican oregano (Lippia graveolens) holds its own separate and unshakeable place. It is the herb of the Mexican and Central American kitchen and of the Tex-Mex and New Mexican cooking of the borderlands, the finishing scatter on a bowl of pozole or menudo, the backbone of a chile adobo, the seasoning of beans and salsas, distinct enough from the Mediterranean herb that serious cooks keep both jars on the shelf and never substitute one for the other.
Beyond the kitchen, oregano keeps its old medicinal life: oil of oregano, rich in carvacrol and thymol, is a popular antimicrobial and dietary supplement, and the herb remains a folk remedy for coughs and digestive complaints across the Mediterranean. But it is as a flavour that oregano now belongs to the whole world, carried out of two distant mountain ranges to become, by way of the pizzeria and the taqueria, one of the universal tastes of modern cooking.
Historical Journey of Oregano
The Mountains of Greece and the Aegean — c. 5000 BCE
True oregano (Origanum vulgare) is a wild herb of the sunbaked Mediterranean mountainside, and nowhere is it more at home, or more revered, than in Greece, whose most pungent native form, Greek oregano (O. vulgare subsp. hirtum), is the standard of the world. The herb's very name proclaims this origin: by the usual reading it joins the Greek oros, mountain, and ganos, joy, into 'the joy of the mountain'. To the ancient Greeks oregano was sacred to Aphrodite and a symbol of happiness, woven into the wedding crown and planted upon graves, and prescribed as medicine by Hippocrates and Dioscorides. It remains the defining herb of the Greek kitchen, the rigani that seasons the horiatiki salad, the souvlaki and grilled meats, the lemon-and-oregano roast chicken (kotopoulo riganato), the oil-braised okra, and the rusks and tomato of the Cretan table. From these mountains the herb spread, with Rome and with the whole sweep of Mediterranean cooking, across the Old World.
- Kotopoulo riganato (Greek lemon and oregano roast chicken)
- Souvlaki (Greek oregano and lemon grilled pork skewers)
- Patates riganates (Greek lemon and oregano roast potatoes)
- Horiatiki (Greek village salad with oregano)
- Dakos (Cretan rusk salad with tomato and oregano)
- Ladi bamies (Greek okra braised in oil with oregano)
Central Mexico and Mesoamerica — c. 3000 BCE
Half a world from the Greek mountains, an entirely separate plant became the oregano of the Americas. Mexican oregano (Lippia graveolens), a shrub of the verbena family unrelated to the Mediterranean herb, grows wild across the uplands of Mexico and Central America, and was gathered, dried, and cooked with by the Maya and the Aztecs for thousands of years before the Spanish arrived and, recognising the familiar pungency, gave it the Greek name oregano too. Bolder, more floral, and more citrus-and-resin in flavour than its Old World namesake, it is the true oregano of the Mexican kitchen, built for chilli, lime, and the long-simmered chile sauce. It is the finishing scatter on a steaming bowl of pozole, the backbone of the chile adobo that makes birria, the seasoning of frijoles and salsa and taco, the herb without whose deep, warm fragrance Mexican cooking would not taste like itself.
- Birria (Jalisco chile-braised meat with Mexican oregano)
- Sopa de lima (Yucatecan lime soup with Mexican oregano)
- Pozole (Mexican hominy soup finished with oregano)
- Salsa roja (Mexican red chilli and oregano sauce)
- Frijoles refritos (Mexican refried beans with oregano)
- Tacos al pastor (with Mexican oregano in the adobo)
Rome, Roman Empire — c. 50 CE
Rome inherited oregano from the Greek world along with its name, latinised as origanum, and made it a common seasoning of the imperial kitchen. The first-century recipe collection attributed to Apicius calls for origanum in sauces, dressings, and the seasoning of meat and fish, and Roman writers from Pliny the Elder to the physicians repeated the Greek praise of the herb as a medicine for the digestion, the chest, and the bites of venomous creatures. With the legions, the colonists, and the gardens of empire, Rome carried the Mediterranean herb across its provinces, and through Rome and the long continuity of Italian cooking that followed, oregano passed down to become one of the defining flavours of the southern Italian table.
The Aegean Coast and Anatolia, Turkey — c. 1500 CE
Oregano grows wild in extraordinary abundance on the dry hills of Anatolia and the Turkish Aegean, where it is known as kekik, a name that gathers oregano, thyme, and their kin together. Turkish cooking leans on it heavily, in the marinades and rubs of grilled meats and kebabs, in salads and stuffed vegetables, and brewed as a herbal tea. The Aegean hills proved so rich in the herb, and Turkish cultivation so successful, that Turkey became and remains the largest exporter of dried oregano in the world, supplying the pizzerias and kitchens of Europe and the Americas with the herb that flavours their food. Grilled lamb chops (kuzu pirzola) rubbed with oregano and served with a squeeze of lemon are a classic of the Turkish grill, and the Aegean table sets oregano beside watermelon and white cheese in the long Turkish summer.
- Kuzu pirzola (Turkish oregano grilled lamb chops)
- Turkish watermelon with beyaz peynir and oregano
Andalusia, Spain — c. 1520 CE
Oregano (orégano) grew wild in Spain as it did across the whole Mediterranean, and the Spanish kitchen made it a quiet mainstay of the spice rack: the herb of the adobo marinades that flavour and preserve meat and fish, of the marinated olives, and of the Andalusian aliño dishes such as zanahorias aliñadas, the cumin-and-oregano carrots of the tapas bar. It was through Spain, and above all through the Andalusian ports of Seville and Cádiz that launched the Atlantic trade, that the Mediterranean oregano was first carried across the ocean towards a vast new home in the Spanish Americas, by way of the Canary Islands and onward to the Andes.
- Zanahorias aliñadas (Andalusian cumin and oregano carrots)
Canary Islands, Spain — c. 1550 CE
The Canary Islands, the Spanish archipelago set in the Atlantic off the coast of Africa, were the last provisioning stop of the ships bound for the Americas, and they grew a cuisine all their own at this crossroads of Spanish, indigenous Guanche, African, and New World flavours. Its defining creation is mojo, the pounded sauce that comes to the table with almost everything. The red mojo rojo (mojo picón when fiery) is made from dried red peppers, garlic, cumin, paprika, and oregano, the New World chilli married to the Old World herb; the green mojo verde swaps coriander or parsley for the peppers. Spooned over the islands' celebrated papas arrugadas, the salt-wrinkled little potatoes boiled in seawater, mojo is the heart of Canarian cooking, and oregano is one of its defining notes. The Canaries, where the Mediterranean herb met the American pepper on the very threshold of the ocean crossing, are a fitting waypoint on oregano's road from the Old World to the New.
- Mojo rojo (Canarian red pepper, garlic, and oregano sauce)
Arequipa and the Southern Andes, Peru — c. 1560 CE
Carried across the Atlantic by the Spanish, Mediterranean oregano found in the dry, high valleys of the southern Andes a second homeland so suited to it that Peru is now amongst the largest producers and exporters of oregano in the world, its terraces around Tacna, Moquegua, and Arequipa scenting the mountain air. The herb sank deep into Peruvian cooking, and nowhere more than in Arequipa, whose Sunday-morning adobo, pork slow-braised in fermented-maize chicha with ají and a lavish hand of oregano, is the most oregano-laden dish of the Peruvian south. Oregano flavours the bean stews and broths of the highlands and the coast alike, the Old World herb naturalised so completely in the Andes that Peruvians count it amongst their own.
- Adobo arequipeño (Arequipa Sunday pork with oregano)
- Peruvian bean stew with oregano
- Chupe de pallares (Peruvian lima bean chowder)
Central Valley, Chile — c. 1570 CE
Down the Andes from Peru, oregano took root in Chile too, grown across the dry north and woven into the national table. Its most constant home is pebre, the fresh chopped salsa of coriander, onion, chilli, garlic, and oregano that sits on every Chilean table beside the bread, spooned over the asado, the beans, and the pastel de choclo. The Spanish-brought Mediterranean herb became, in Chile as in Peru, a fixture of the everyday kitchen, the dried oregano in the cupboard as essential to a Chilean cook as the ají and the coriander.
- Pebre (Chilean coriander, chilli, and oregano table salsa)
Naples and Southern Italy — c. 1760 CE
It is in the south of Italy, and above all in Naples, that oregano found its most famous partnership, with the tomato. When the New World tomato settled into Neapolitan cooking in the eighteenth century, dried oregano became its inseparable companion, and the union produced some of the most beloved foods on earth. Oregano is the defining herb of the pizza, above all of the austere pizza marinara, the original Neapolitan pizza of tomato, garlic, oregano, and oil with no cheese at all; of the simple tomato sauces (marinara) that dress pasta across the Mezzogiorno; and of countless southern dishes, from fish poached in tomato 'crazy water' (acqua pazza) to the tomato-rubbed rusks (friselle) of Puglia. Where the northern Italian kitchen reaches for basil, the south reaches for oregano, and from the pizzerias of Naples the herb would travel, in the twentieth century, to conquer the world.
- Pizza marinara (Neapolitan tomato, garlic, and oregano pizza)
- Pesce all'acqua pazza (Neapolitan fish in oregano-tomato broth)
- Friselle pugliesi (Pugliese tomato and oregano rusks)
- Pizza Margherita (Naples)
- Marinara sauce (Neapolitan tomato and oregano sauce)
- Polenta al sugo (Northern Italian polenta with tomato sauce)
Texas and the US Southwest Borderlands — c. 1850 CE
Mexican oregano (Lippia graveolens), whose native range reaches north across the Rio Grande into Texas and New Mexico, became the defining herb of the borderland cooking that grew up where Mexican and Anglo-American foodways met. In the Tex-Mex and New Mexican kitchens it seasons the great regional dishes of chilli and chile: the Texan bowl of red, chili con carne, in which Mexican oregano joins cumin and dried chillies; and the New Mexican carne adovada, pork slow-braised in a pure red-chile sauce thick with oregano. The herb crossed no ocean to get here, only a river and a border, and it carried the deep, citrus-resin pungency of the Mexican sierra into one of the most distinctive regional cuisines of the United States.
- Carne adovada (New Mexican red chile pork with oregano)
- Chili con carne (Texan bowl of red with cumin and oregano)
- Lentil chili (with oregano and chilli)
Buenos Aires and the Pampas, Argentina — c. 1900 CE
The great wave of Italian and Spanish immigration that remade Argentina around the turn of the twentieth century carried oregano to the River Plate, where it became one of the defining herbs of the cooking of Argentina and Uruguay. It is the dried herb at the heart of chimichurri, the sharp green sauce of parsley, oregano, garlic, vinegar, and oil spooned over the grilled beef of the asado; the oregano-and-chilli scatter that crowns provoleta, the round of provolone grilled until molten at the edge of the parrilla; and a defining flavour of the vast Italian-Argentine pizza tradition. In the beef-and-fire culture of the pampas, oregano is the herb that seasons the grill, the immigrant Mediterranean flavour naturalised on the far side of the Atlantic.
- Provoleta (Argentine grilled provolone with oregano and chilli)
- Chimichurri (Argentine oregano, parsley, and garlic sauce)
New York and Italian America — c. 1945 CE
Oregano made its greatest leap in the middle of the twentieth century, in the United States. Until the Second World War the Mediterranean herb was all but unknown to the American kitchen; it had not even a settled English name. Then the American soldiers who had fought their way up through Sicily and Italy came home with a hunger for the food they had eaten there, and above all for pizza. The demand was extraordinary: American sales of oregano rose by more than five thousand per cent between 1948 and 1956, and the herb acquired the nickname by which a generation knew it, 'the pizza herb'. From the pizzerias and red-sauce restaurants of Italian America it passed into the national kitchen, into the dried oregano of the store cupboard, the Italian-American red sauce, and the bottled Italian dressing whose oregano-flecked tang became a flavour of the American table in its own right.
- Italian dressing (American oregano vinaigrette)
