Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Bayleaves along with all the Bayleaves containing recipes presented on this site, with 491 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 Bayleaves recipes added to this site.

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

As their name suggests, Bayleaves are the leaves of Bay tree (Laurus nobilis) a member of the Lauraceae or laurel family of trees.



The whole leaf is used in many European cuisines (most notably Mediterranean cooking) where they are commonly used to flavour soups, stews, meat, seafood, and vegetable dishes as well as for the creation of stocks such as the classic French bouillabaise and bouillon. Generally the dried leaves are added whole to a dish and are removed before serving.



It should be noted that the taste of fresh bay leaves is fairly mild and they only really develop their full pungency some ten days or more after being picked and dried. The distinctive, rather bitter, taste of bay leaves is, to a large extent, due to the high levels of the essential oil, eugenol, found in the leaves. Just about any meat-based sauce such as spaghetti sauce or chilli or any meat stew can be enhanced by adding a few dried bay leaves whilst cooking.

It should be noted that it's not just the leaves of the bay tree that are edible. The dried fruit (berries) are edible too and have been used as a spice since Roman times.