Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Spice guide to Lovage Seeds along with all the Lovage Seeds containing recipes presented on this site, with 156 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 Cornish recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain as a major flavouring.

Lovage, Levisticum officinale is an herbaceous perennial of the Apiaceae (carrot) family. It grows to about 1.8m tall and recalls celery in both its appearance and flavour. It is a wildlife attractant in the garden and is a good companion plant.

All parts of the plant are edible and the leaves and stems may be used as a savoury flavouring in salads, soups, stews etc and impart a yeasty celery-like flavour. Young stems can also be blanched and used as celery. The seeds can be used as a spice and have a strong yeasty flavour. In Central Europe they are often used as a flavouring in cakes, soups and salads. The root, when cooked, has a strong savoury taste and it can either be used as a flavouring or can be served as a vegetable. A tea can also be made from the leaves, though this has a strong flavour that is more like a broth than a tea. Lovage tea is often applied to wounds as an antiseptic.

The Romans were particularly fond of lovage seeds as a spice and you will find many references to lovage levisticum in Latin in Apicius' De Re Coquinaria, the classic Roman cookbook. Lovage seeds are also used in the cuisine of Bangladesh.

Lovage seeds smell distinctly of hay and have a strong, bitter and warm flavour, not unlike that of a celery stalk.

There seems to be considerable confusion between Ajwain (Bishop's Weed) and Lovage Seeds and I have seen several references in Indian recipes and Spice pages that equate Ajwain seeds with Lovage seeds. They are separate species and distinct spices, though, they are closely related and the seeds look similar (but lovage is more closely related to celery). To confuse matters even more, the seeds sold as 'celery seeds' in spice stores are actually, more often than not, lovage seeds.