Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Fennel along with all the recipes employing Fennel presented on this site, with 311 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Fennel recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Fennel as a major wild food ingredient.

Fennel, Foeniculum vulgare is a species in the family, Apiaceae also known as Umbelliferae which also includes carrots, cumin, caraway and fennel. It is an aromatic perennial herb, a native of southern Europe and south-western Asia that can grow to 2m tall. The leaves grow up to 40 cm long and are finely dissected and frond-like. The flowers are produced in terminal compound umbels 5—15 cm wide, each umbel section with 20—50 tiny yellow flowers on short pedicels. Once fertilized these form dry fruit some 4–9mm long and it is these that are used as a spice (and whch are commonly mis-named fennel seeds).



Fennel is widely cultivated both in its native range and elsewhere of for its edible, strongly flavoured leaves and seeds. The flavour is similar to that of anise and star anise, though usually not so strong. Once cultivar, Florence Fennel (F vulgare Azoricum) has inflated leaf bases that form a bulb-like structure ad the plant's base. It comes mainly from India and Egypt and it has a mild anise-like flavour, but is more aromatic and sweeter.



The bulb, as well as the leaves and the fruit are all edible. Dried fennel seed is an aromatic, anise-flavoured spice; they are brown or green in colour when fresh, and slowly turn a dull grey as the seed ages. For cooking, green seeds are optimal. Many cultures in the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East incorporate fennel seed into their culinary traditions. It is an essential ingredient in the Bengali spice mixture panch phoron and in Chinese five-spice powders. In the west, fennel seed is a very common ingredient in Italian sausages and northern European rye breads. Etymologically, the word fennel developed from Middle English fenel, fenyl itself derived from the Latin fœniculum a diminutive of fœnum (hay).