Peppermint (Mentha piperita L.)

Leaves.

Lamiaceae (mint family).

The term Vietnamese mint does not refer to peppermint or one of its relatives, but to Vietnamese coriander, a plant botanically not related at all.

Charac­teristically pure and refreshing odour, pungent and burning taste.

The typical mint scent is most pure in peppermint, Japanese mint (Mentha arvensis var. piperascens) and some varieties of green mint (Mentha spicata, but not spearmint), whereas in most other mints additional flavour components are discernible; for example, crispate or curly mint (Mentha crispa), though minty, somewhat reminds of caraway. The doublemint flavour of spearmint is difficult to describe; it’s minty but not pungent.

Pineapple mint (sterile twig)

There are, how­ever, yet other mint cultivars whose fragrance bears no similarity with tradi­tional mint aroma: Orange mint (M. citrata, also called Eau de Cologne mint, similar to the bergamot orange used to flavour Earl Grey tea), apple mint (M. rotundifolia = M. longifolia × M. suaveolens, very mild, slightly minty, hardly reminiscent to apples), ginger mint (M. gentilis = M. arvensis × M. spicata, neither minty nor ginger-like at all) and pineapple mint (M. suaveolens, weakly pineapple-like) These plants are more used as tea herbs than for culinary purposes; still, gifted cooks may find effective applications.

The essential oil of peppermint (up to 2.5% in the dried leaves) is mostly made up from menthol (ca. 50%), menthone (10 to 30%), menthyl esters (up to 10%) and further monoterpene derivatives (pulegone, piperitone, menthofurane). Traces of jasmone (0.1%) improve the oil’s quality remarkably.

Menthol and menthyl acetate are responsible for the pungent and refreshing odour; they are mostly found in older leaves and are preferentially formed during long daily sunlight periods. On the other hand, the ketones menthone and pulegone (and menthofurane) have a less delightful fragrance; they appear to higher fraction in young leaves and their formation is preferred during short days.

Japanese mint

Pineapple mint with flowers

The world’s most im­portant source of menthol is, however, not pepper­mint but field mint. Field mint is the only mint species that became natural­ized in tropical Asia; there are many dif­ferent cultivars, some of which are grown for direct con­sump­tion, others for the distilla­tion of essen­tial oil. The Ja­panese variety of field mint (Mentha arvensis var. piper­ascens Malinv. ex Holmes), now grown in many Asian countries, may contain up to 5% of essential oil in its tips; more common, however, are 1 to 2%. Chief component of the oil is menthol (50 to 70%, in rare cases up to 90%). After parts of the menthol have been removed from the oil, the oil is marketed as (dementholized, rectified) Japanese peppermint oil; it typically contains 30 to 45% menthol, 17 to 35% menthone, 5 to 13% menthyl acetate, 2 to 5% limonene and 2.5 to 4% neomenthol. Other terpenes occur but in traces (piperitone, pulegone, β-caryophyllene, β-caryophyllene-epoxide, α-pinene, β-pinene, germacrene D, 1,8-cineol, linalool, menthofurane, camphene). A trace component characteristic for this species and missing in other mints is β-hexenyl phenylacetate.

The oil of this so-called Japanese peppermint is often attributed with an incredible wealth of useful medical properties; it is even more incredible, though, that it never failed to help me in a number of different conditions like nausea, mild stomach upset or cold.

The menthol obtained as a by-product in the rectification of Japanese peppermint oil is used for medical products and for chewing gum. A comparatively small fraction goes in the production of menthol-flavoured cigarettes, which have been quite popular in Western Europe a few decades ago. See tonka bean for more on flavoured tobacco products.

Pennyroyal (M. pulegium) was a popular culinary herb in ancient Rome (see also silphion)

Spearmint, a characteristically scented variety of M. spicata

Moroccan green mint (sterile plant)

Whenever high­ly concentrated menthol is used, one must consider that menthol is toxic to infants and can (allegedly) induce apnoea.

Other mints may contain rather different constituents: Mentha pulegium (pennyroyal) contains 80% pulegone, and M. crispa (crispate mint) contains 50% carvone. Another famed cultivar, spear­mint, owes its phantastic aroma to carvone, limonene, dihydro­carvone, men­thone, pule­gone, 1,8-cineol and β-pinene.

Pepper­mint is a (usually sterile) hybrid from water mint (M. aquatica) and spearmint (M. spicata). It is found sometimes wild in Central and Southern Europe, but was probably first put to human use in England, whence its cultivation spread to the European continent and Africa; today, Northern Africa is a main cultivation area.

Other mint species are indigenous to Europe and Asia, and some are used since millennia. Cultivars in tropical Asia always derive from field mint and are, therefore, botanically not closely related to European peppermint, although they come close to peppermint in their culinary value. Mints from Western and Central Asia, however, are comparable not to peppermint but to horsemint and applemint.

All species of genus Mentha are aromatic, although not in all of them the aroma is that pure than in peppermint. As a rule of thumb, any mint can be substituted by peppermint, but not always vice versa.

Curly mint, M. spicata var. crispa

Flowering horsemint, M. longifolia

Water mint, M. aquatica

The names for mint are fairly uniform in most Euro­pean lan­guages: German Minze, Danish and Nor­wegian mynte, Dutch munt, Basque menda, Estonian münt, Finnish minttu, Czech máta, Polish mięta, Russian myata [мята], Lithuanian mėta, Latvian mētra, French menthe and Italian menta. All these names derive from Latin mentha mint.

The Latin name mentha itself was borrowed from Greek minthe [μίνθη], whose origin is, however, unknown. It is already found in Mycenaean, the earliest recorded version of Greek, as mintha [𐀖𐀲].

The English homonym meaning place where coins are produced or the corresponting verb are not at all related to the name of the plants; rather, they derive (together with the more familiar money) from the eponymous Latin noun moneta, itself being derived from an epithet of the goddess Juno, in whose temple coins were minted.

The pepper-element in peppermint, found in many other languages and also in the botanical species epithet, piperita, refers to the peppery and pungent taste of this specific mint type. See also long pepper for the etymology of pepper.

In the New Testament, the mint is called hedyosmon [ἡδύοσμον] (see also pomegranate). This compound means the sweet smelling one: hedys [ἡδύς] sweet, pleasant (see licorice for more information) and osme [ὀσμή] smell, related to English odour, cf. Latin olere to smell. In modern languages, names derived thence have the meaning green mint, spearmint, not peppermint, e.g., Greek diosmos [δυόσμος] and Bulgarian giozum or dzhodzhen [джоджен].

In Semitic tongues, closely similar names for mint may be observed: Arabic an-na'na' [النعناع], Aramaic nanea [ܢܢܥܐ] Hebrew nana [נענע], Maltese nagħniegħ and Tigrinya naenae [ናዕናዕ]; there are also similar forms in languages outside the Afro-Asiatic family, e.g., Turkish nane, Albanian nenexhiku, Pashto nauna and Farsi nana [نعناع]. I don’t know about the exact origin of that group of words, yet it is of ancient origin as testified by Akkadian nīnū.

Indian Spices: Spearmint (indianetzone.com) Indian Spices: Mint (indianetzone.com) Indian Spices: Peppermint (indianetzone.com) Ilkas und Ullis Kochecke: Minze (rezkonv.de via archive.org) A Pinch of Mint (www.apinchof.com) The Epicentre: Mint Chinese Herb Database: Mint Nature One Health: Pennyroyal Nature One Health: Mints Pflanzen des Capitulare de Villis: Poleiminze (biozac.de) Pflanzen des Capitulare de Villis: Roßminze (biozac.de) Pflanzen des Capitulare de Villis: Wasserminze (biozac.de) Pflanzen des Capitulare de Villis: Grüne Minze (biozac.de) Saskatchewan Herb and Spice Association: Spearmint Saskatchewan Herb and Spice Association: Peppermint Saskatchewan Herb and Spice Association: Horsemint chemikalienlexikon.de: Menthon chemikalienlexikon.de: Menthol Crop and Food Research: Mints (crop.cri.nz via archive.org) Alles over Pepermunt (natuurlijkerwijs.com) Herbs by Linda Gilbert: Mint Desirable Herb and Spice Varieties: Mint Minzen (Herrmann Rachinger) Rain Tree: Peppermint Recipe: Shahjahani Biriyani [शाह जाहानी बिरयानी] (soulkurry.com) Rezept: Kärntner Kasnudeln (www.zdf.de) Rezept: Kärntner Kasnudeln (www.chefkoch.de) Recipe: Carinthian Ravioli (travel.discovery.com) Recipe: Laab gai [ลาบไก่] (Thai chicken salad) (recipezaar.com) Recipe: Lab kai [ลาบไก่] (Thai chicken salad) (bigpond.com via archive.org) Recipe: Larb muh [ลาบหมู] (Thai pork salad) (low-carb-recipes.ws)