Marjoram

The Essentials

Sweet, calming mint-family herb at home in tea and food.

Traditionally used for headaches, anxious nerves, and gas.

Often confused with oregano: marjoram is softer, sweeter, more aromatic.

Generally very safe in culinary amounts; ease back the essential oil (the concentrated aromatic oil of the plant) in pregnancy.

Marjoram has perfumed Mediterranean kitchens and Persian apothecaries for over two millennia. Dioscorides and Avicenna both wrote about its warming, calming nature. Modern research has explored its antioxidant volatile oil (terpinen-4-ol, sabinene hydrate) for blood pressure, anxiety, and digestive comfort.

Known to botanists as Origanum majorana.