Chai Spices: What Goes Into Masala Chai, and Why

There’s no single recipe for masala chai, but four spices turn up in all three bylined recipes compared below: cardamom, cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Black pepper and fennel show up in two of them, and star anise, often said to lead the flavor, isn’t in any. Together they flavor black tea simmered with milk, sugar and spices. And chai as India’s everyday drink is younger than you might think: the historian Philip Lutgendorf places it mostly in the 20th century.

At a glance

What goes in: three recipes side by side

The CIA’s headnote sums up the pattern: chai masala mixtures “may include cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, and peppercorns.”⁴ Saveur’s headnote mentions black pepper, even though its ingredient list leaves it out.²

You won’t find star anise or nutmeg in any of these three. You’ll often read that cardamom and star anise lead the flavor. The cardamom part fits all three recipes. The star anise part fits none of them.

Flavor and the compounds behind it

Each spice brings its own smell, and the balance depends on the recipe. The compound notes below come from reference works on the individual spices. We found no analysis of a chai blend as a whole.

Cardamom is used to flavor coffee and tea, and the plant is native to southwestern India. Cinnamon is a key ingredient of masala chai, and ginger is a core one.

History

The word. Chai comes from the Russian or Arabic word for tea. Its first English citation, in 1908, is in an Arabic context, and these days it’s used especially for spiced teas.¹

Tea in India. Tea came to the Indian subcontinent in the early 19th century as a colonial cash crop. According to the historian Philip Lutgendorf, it became the everyday drink called chai mostly during the 20th century, thanks to aggressive marketing by British and Indian companies, advances in processing Assam tea, and changes in city social life.¹¹ In a University of Chicago profile of his work, Lutgendorf notes that tea producers saw no need to build a home market in India until the Great Depression. In 1936, the Indian Tea Market Expansion Board launched South Asia’s first mass marketing campaign, which ran for two decades with limited success. The profile describes a housewife or street vendor blending tea with sugar and spices, and factories turning out teas that could stand up to lots of milk. In many parts of north India, he says, tea drinking only arrived in the 1960s and ’70s or later.¹²

What we couldn’t trace. You’ll often hear that masala chai is 5,000 or 9,000 years old, that it began in Thailand, that it started as an Ayurvedic spice drink with no tea leaves, or that the British first added milk and sugar for export. We didn’t find any of that in a source we could open. The sources above describe chai as a 20th-century development.

How chai spices are used

• Masala chai. Whole spices simmer with water, tea, milk and sugar, then get strained out. All three recipes above work this way. Crush the cardamom pods and ginger first.
• Chai lattes and iced chai. The CIA notes its chai can be served hot or chilled over ice.⁴
• Baking and desserts. Ground chai spice goes into cookies, cakes, pumpkin pie and other desserts. Compare pumpkin pie spice.

Making your own blend. Start from one of the recipes above and tweak it: more cardamom for a floral cup, more ginger and pepper for bite, fewer cloves if it tastes medicinal.

Buying

• Read the label. Chai spice blends vary a lot. Check whether yours has sugar, tea or milk powder in it (a chai “mix”) or just spices.
• Which cinnamon. Cassia is the type most commonly sold in North America. Its coumarin content is the main safety point for chai (see Safety). See Ceylon vs. cassia cinnamon.

Storage

We found no published shelf-life figure for chai spice blends from a regulator or standards body. Store them airtight, away from heat and light, and trust your nose. A blend that smells faint will taste faint.

Safety and health

Coumarin in cassia. Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) reports that cassia cinnamon contains about 3,000 mg of coumarin per kilogram on average, and up to about 10,000 mg/kg.¹³ At the average level, a 60 kg adult reaches the tolerable daily intake with about 2 g of cassia a day, and a 15 kg child with about 0.5 g.¹⁴ We found no measurement of how much coumarin passes from a cinnamon stick into simmered tea, so we can’t give a per-cup figure. NCCIH says cinnamon is likely safe in food amounts, and that long-term use of cassia could be an issue for sensitive people.⁷

Star anise. If your blend includes star anise, buy it from a reputable source. In 2003 the FDA advised the public not to drink teas brewed from star anise after about 40 illnesses, including about 15 in infants. Its concern was that Chinese star anise may contain the toxic Japanese species.¹⁵ See star anise.

Health claims. Chai is often said to aid digestion, ease arthritis and protect the heart. The evidence on the individual spices is narrower:

• Ginger: NCCIH says it may help with nausea and vomiting in pregnancy, and that ginger supplements might help knee osteoarthritis symptoms. Most studies haven’t shown it helps motion sickness.¹⁶
• Cinnamon: NCCIH says it’s unclear whether cinnamon supplements help with diabetes or weight loss.⁷
• Cardamom: a 2024 meta-analysis of randomized trials reported drops in total cholesterol, triglycerides and two inflammation markers (hs-CRP and IL-6) in adults, with no significant effect on HDL or LDL cholesterol.¹⁷

None of these studies tested chai, and we’re not claiming chai spices treat or prevent any condition.

Nutrition. At the amounts in a cup of tea, chai spices aren’t a meaningful source of vitamins or minerals. Take ground black pepper: USDA data put a teaspoon at 2.3 g. At that weight, a teaspoon gives you about 31 mg of potassium (under 1% of the FDA Daily Value of 4,700 mg), about 10 mg of calcium (under 1% of 1,300 mg) and about 0.6 g of fiber (about 2% of 28 g).¹⁸¹⁹

The individual spices

• Cardamom, with cardamom pods vs. seeds and cooking with cardamom
• Cinnamon, cassia cinnamon and Ceylon cinnamon
• Ginger and fresh vs. ground ginger
• Cloves, black pepper, fennel seed, star anise, nutmeg
• Related blends: garam masala, pumpkin pie spice
• If a batch tastes too strong: too much cardamom, too much cinnamon, too much clove, too much ginger