Cedar Berries vs. Juniper Berries: How They Compare

“Cedar berries” don’t come from a cedar. They’re the cones of eastern redcedar, Juniperus virginiana, a North American juniper, while the juniper berries that flavor gin come from common juniper, Juniperus communis. Same genus, different oils, and in the kitchen the oil is what matters. The one published analysis of eastern redcedar berry oil found it was mostly limonene, while the pharmacopoeial standard for common juniper puts α-pinene, a piney compound, at 20 to 50 percent of the oil.¹² Common juniper is also the only one of the two that US food rules name.³

Both are in the cypress family, Cupressaceae, and neither is a true berry. Both bear fleshy, berry-like cones.

Side by side

	Cedar berries	Juniper berries
Species	Juniperus virginiana L., eastern redcedar	Juniperus communis L., common juniper
Family	Cupressaceae	Cupressaceae
Native range	Southeastern Canada to the central and eastern US, and Coahuila, Mexico	Subarctic and temperate Northern Hemisphere
The plant	A medium-sized tree, 10 to 20 m (33 to 66 ft) tall	A subshrub or tree; Britannica calls it a small tree or sprawling shrub
Part used	Berry-like female cones, 0.4 to 0.7 cm, dark blue or bluish purple and waxy	Fleshy, berry-like cones (galbuli), globular and up to 10 mm across, typically bluish and waxy
Main oil compounds	One study, berries from several trees in Huntsville, Alabama: limonene 63.1%, elemol 18.4%, α-pinene 0.2%¹	European Pharmacopoeia ranges: α-pinene 20–50%, β-myrcene 1–35%, limonene 2–12%²
Flavor	No published sensory description found	Piney, with touches of fruitiness and pepperiness (Bramen); aromatic with a sweet accent (Katzer)
US food status	Not named on the FDA’s list of GRAS essential oils and extracts³	Listed there as “Juniper (berries),” J. communis³
Best-known use	No culinary standard use documented	The principal flavoring of gin; game, sauces, sauerkraut
Price	No dated, sourced price found	No dated, sourced price found

The two oil figures aren’t like for like. The cedar column is one sample set from one study. The juniper column is a pharmacopoeial requirement, which the EMA notes doesn’t cover the full range found in nature.¹² Even so, the α-pinene gap is big: 0.2 percent in the cedar sample against a required minimum of 20 percent for juniper.

What a cedar berry is

Juniper is a big genus, about 60 to 70 species of aromatic evergreen trees and shrubs, and their cones, known as berries, flavor gin and other drinks. Eastern redcedar is one of them. It’s a juniper despite its common name. Its cones are small, fleshy and berry-like. For more on the species, including a Southwestern juniper also sold under the cedar name, see cedar berries.

The differences that change the dish

Aroma. In the 2014 study, eastern redcedar berry oil was dominated by limonene (63.1%) and elemol (18.4%), with α-pinene at 0.2% and myrcene at 1.5%.¹ Under the pharmacopoeial standard, limonene is a minor part of juniper oil and α-pinene leads.² Katzer traces juniper’s kitchen use to its essential oil,⁴ so a cone with a different oil probably won’t just taste like weaker juniper. That’s us reading the chemistry; we didn’t find a published side-by-side tasting. The study’s berries were picked on 6 May 2014 from several mature trees on one university campus, so treat the figures as one sample set, not a market average.

Strength. You’ll often read that cedar berries are simply milder than juniper berries. No source we found measures the flavor strength of either, so there’s no way to show that. The study did record an oil yield of 0.382 percent for the cedar berries,¹ and the European Pharmacopoeia requires juniper berries to contain at least 10 mL of oil per kg.² Those are different measures, so we don’t compare them.

Safety and regulation. The FDA’s list of essential oils and natural extracts generally recognized as safe includes juniper berries only as J. communis.³ We found no regulator or review that assesses eastern redcedar berries as food. The same 2014 study found safrole at 2.0 percent of the cedar berry oil.¹ US rules treat food with added safrole as adulterated, and note that sassafras oil is about 80 percent safrole.⁵ That rule is about added safrole, and no regulator has said how it applies to the safrole a cedar berry naturally contains. For common juniper, the European Medicines Agency doesn’t recommend medicinal use during pregnancy and breastfeeding, because there isn’t enough data.⁶ Its guidance covers medicinal products from J. communis, not cedar berries. You may also read that cedar berries are the more toxic of the two, or unsafe in pregnancy. We couldn’t trace either claim to any source that actually studied them.

Can one stand in for the other?

The chemistry above says the swap changes the flavor, not just the amount.

Juniper in place of cedar berries. Use common juniper, the species with a documented food history and a US food listing. Bramen advises using juniper sparingly.⁷ Ratio (Method): Start with about half the number of cedar berries the recipe calls for, crushed, and taste after the dish has simmered.
Cedar berries in place of juniper. We don’t recommend it, for the reasons in the safety paragraph. Our juniper berry substitutes page ranks gin, rosemary, caraway and bay leaf by the job juniper is doing, with each ratio labeled.

Where juniper earns its place

Juniper is gin’s main flavoring. In the kitchen, it goes with game meats, into sauces and into pickles. Katzer calls it indispensable for venison and names juniper-seasoned sauerkraut as a Central European classic. He also pairs it with black pepper and marjoram, and says to crush the cones just before you use them.⁴ We found nothing like that body of cooking use for cedar berries.

What isn’t known

No published sensory description of eastern redcedar berries, and no tasting that compares them with common juniper.
We found only one analysis of eastern redcedar berry oil, from berries collected in one place on one day. No source says how much the oil varies by tree, region or season.
No regulator or review has assessed cedar berries as food, and no source says how much safrole a serving would contain.
Retail packs of “cedar berries” don’t always say which species is inside. Buy from a seller who names it.

Stewart, Jones and Setzer, “Essential oil compositions of Juniperus virginiana and Pinus virginiana,” American Journal of Essential Oils and Natural Products, 2014. aromaticplant.org · Peer-reviewed ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Assessment report on Juniperus communis L., pseudo-fructus, Revision 1, European Medicines Agency, 2023. ema.europa.eu · Regulator ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
21 CFR 182.20, Essential oils, oleoresins (solvent-free), and natural extractives, U.S. Food and Drug Administration. ecfr.gov · Regulator ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Gernot Katzer, “Juniper (Juniperus communis L.),” Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages. gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com · Reference work ↩ ↩²
21 CFR 189.180, Safrole, U.S. Food and Drug Administration. ecfr.gov · Regulator ↩
European Union herbal monograph on Juniperus communis L., pseudo-fructus, Revision 1, European Medicines Agency, 2023. ema.europa.eu · Regulator ↩
Lisa Bramen, “What the Heck Do I Do With Juniper Berries?,” Smithsonian Magazine, 2011. smithsonianmag.com · Publication ↩

Also drawn on

Juniperus virginiana L., Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. powo.science.kew.org
Juniperus communis L., Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. powo.science.kew.org
Eastern Red Cedar, Juniperus virginiana, Plant Guide (Stevens, Kaiser and Dozier, 2000), USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. plants.sc.egov.usda.gov
Juniperus virginiana, Fire Effects Information System (Anderson, 2003), USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. fs.usda.gov
Juniper, Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com
Common juniper, Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com
Gin, Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com

Cedar Berries vs. Juniper Berries: Two Junipers, Different Oils