Journal
The herb library
Monographs on the plants we sell — what they are, where they grow, how they taste — and the kitchen notes that make them worth keeping in the cupboard. Written from the packing bench, not from a content calendar.
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Cold-Brewing Herbs Overnight
Cold water pulls different compounds than hot water — less bitterness, more of the delicate top notes, and…
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Osmanthus: The Flower That Smells Like Apricots in the Middle of Autumn
Four varieties, one fragrance, and a very short season. How to tell Jin Gui from Yin Gui from…
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Red Dates: The Sweetener That Isn’t Sugar
A red date is not a date. It is a jujube — a buckthorn fruit the size of…
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Magnolia Bud: The Flower That Went Into a Patent
Xin Yi Hua has been used for blocked noses for two thousand years, and it is one of…
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Storing Dried Herbs So They Still Taste of Something
Most herbs do not go off — they go quiet. Four conditions decide how fast, and the fridge…
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Lily Flowers: A Delicate Bloom, and a Different Ingredient Entirely
Dried lily flowers are a pretty, mild infusion. The Chinese pharmacy item called Bai He is not the…
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Rehmannia: Raw and Prepared Are Two Different Herbs
One is pale, bitter and cooling; the other is black, sticky and sweet. They come from the same…
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Lotus: The Flower, the Seed, and the Root Are Three Different Herbs
A lotus petal makes a pale, faintly sweet, cooling cup. The seed makes a nutty one, and the…
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Hawthorn: Sour, and Better For It
Nobody eats hawthorn for its sweetness. It is the fruit you reach for when a dish is too…
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Plum Blossom: The Winter Flower That Became Tea
Plum blossoms open in the cold, on bare branches, weeks before anything else. What the dried bud tastes…
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Honeysuckle: Picking the Right Moment
A honeysuckle bud and a honeysuckle flower are two different things in the cup — one is sweet…
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Snow Chrysanthemum: The Red-Gold Flower That Is Not a Chrysanthemum
It is called chrysanthemum, it is not a chrysanthemum, and it brews a deep copper cup that tastes…
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How to Read a Dried Herb Label
Latin name, part used, harvest date, origin, grade. Five lines that separate a herb you can cook with…
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Peony: The Flower Is a Tea, the Root Bark Is the Medicine
Peony is one herb with three separate pharmacy identities — root, root bark and flower. This is about…
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Dried Longan: The Fruit That Tastes Like Caramel
Fresh longan is floral and thin. Dried, it collapses into something dark, chewy and unmistakably of caramel —…
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Violet: A Sweet Flower with a Complicated Name
The flower in the cup and the herb in the pharmacy are both violets, but they are different…
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Whole, Sliced, or Powdered: What You Actually Lose
Cutting a herb opens it to air. Every step between the whole plant and the powder costs aroma,…
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Safflower: A Flower for Colour, a Flower for Circulation, and a Warning
It bleeds a deep red-gold into water, it colours rice and dough, and it is one of the…
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Pingyin Roses: Why Rose Petals Are Not All the Same
Most dried rose on the market is a decorative flower with no scent left. A culinary rose is…
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Goji Root Bark: The Part of the Wolfberry Nobody Drinks
Everyone has heard of the goji berry. Di Gu Pi — the root bark of the same plant…
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Dried Ginger and Fresh Ginger Are Not Substitutes
Fresh ginger is bright, juicy and hits the front of the mouth. Dried ginger is hotter, drier and…
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Mulberry Leaf: The Tea That Became a Diabetes Research Subject
Sang Ye contains the same compound that underlies a prescription diabetes drug. That makes it genuinely interesting —…
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Dried Mulberry: The Fruit That Looks Wrong and Tastes Right
Fresh mulberries are purple and delicate and fall apart in your hand. Dried, they go black-brown and wrinkled…
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Sang Bai Pi: The Inner Bark of the White Mulberry Tree
A pale, flavourless bark with one of the longest records in the Chinese pharmacopoeia. What it is used…
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Green Tangerine Peel: The Bitter Young Peel That Cuts Through Fat
Qing pi is the peel of an unripe tangerine, and it is the opposite of aged chen pi…
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Dried Lemon: How Much of the Lemon Survives the Drying
Vitamin C does not survive. The aroma mostly does. What a dried lemon slice is actually good for,…
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Kumquat: The Small Citrus You Eat Whole
You can eat the peel, the skin is thin enough, and that single fact changes how kumquat is…
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Citron: A Citrus That Nobody Eats and Everybody Keeps
Too thick to peel, too dry to juice, too fragrant to ignore. The citron is a fruit that…
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Pomelo Peel: The Strongest and Driest of the Chinese Citrus Peels
Hua Ju Hong is the peel of the pomelo, and it is a blunt instrument compared with chen…
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Buddha’s Hand: A Citrus Shaped Like a Hand
Fo Shou Gan has no pulp at all — it is a fragrant, segmented rind that looks like…
One email a month, sent the day we pack.
What came in, what is running low, and one way to actually use it. No discount codes shouting at you.