Cilantro vs. Parsley: Taste, Looks and Swaps

Flat-leaf parsley looks enough like cilantro to get mixed up with it, and Britannica even lists “Chinese parsley” as another name for cilantro.¹ Crush a leaf, though, and you’ll know which is which. The two are close relatives in the carrot family, Apiaceae, but they don’t taste alike: one can garnish for the other, and that’s about it. More than 80% of cilantro’s leaf oil is aldehydes, the compounds behind both its citrusy lift and the soapy taste some people get.²³ Parsley’s oil is led by different compounds, and the fresh herb has much less of it.⁴

Side by side

	Cilantro	Parsley
Species	Coriandrum sativum	Petroselinum crispum
Family	Apiaceae (carrot or parsley family)	Apiaceae (carrot or parsley family)
Native range	Eastern Mediterranean to western Pakistan	Northwest Africa and the Balkan Peninsula (Kew); “Mediterranean lands” (Britannica)⁵⁶
Life cycle	Annual	Biennial
Types	One species; the leaf is cilantro, the dried fruit is the spice coriander	Curly-leaved, flat-leaved (often sold as Italian) and turnip-rooted
Leaves	Shiny green; the lowest leaves deeply lobed and toothed, the upper ones divided into narrow, pointed lobes	Dark green and glossy, flat or curled; wedge-shaped to linear leaflets cut into pointed segments
Volatile oil	About 4 mg per gram of fresh leaves²	0.07 to 0.15% of the fresh herb in curly types, 0.04% in flat-leaved⁴
Leading oil compounds	Aldehydes, over 80%; (E)-2-dodecenal largest at 15.6%²	1,3,8-p-menthatriene about 20%, then myristicin and limonene, in German samples⁴
Flavor	Bright, citrusy and sharp; soapy to some people	Green, fresh, lightly bitter; flat-leaf stronger than curly⁴
In the pot	Delicate: add in the last minute or two	Delicate: add in the last minute or two
Fresh or dried	Much weaker dried	Much weaker dried
Typical uses	Latin American, Indian and Chinese dishes; Mexican salsas and meat dishes	Fish, meats, soups, sauces and salads
Safety note	FDA import controls on some fresh cilantro from Puebla, Mexico, over Cyclospora⁷	Among the foods MedlinePlus lists as able to affect the blood thinner warfarin⁸

The oil figures come from separate PROSEA entries, measured on different samples and in different units, so they show which compounds lead in each herb, not a precise difference in strength. Only one bit of the flavor row is sourced: PROSEA’s note that flat-leaved parsley is the stronger-flavored type.⁴

For the individual herbs, see cilantro and parsley.

The flavor gap, and the soapy taste

Cilantro’s smell is built almost entirely on aldehydes. PROSEA puts them at more than 80% of the leaf’s volatile oil, led by (E)-2-dodecenal, (E)-2-tetradecenal and (E)-2-decenal.² Eriksson and colleagues note that the (E)-2-alkenals in cilantro are described as soapy, fatty, “like cilantro” or pungent.³ Descriptions of cilantro’s flavor run from citrusy with a biting tang to soapy.

Part of that split is genetic. In a study of 14,604 people of European ancestry who reported whether cilantro tasted soapy, Eriksson’s team found a variant near a cluster of smell-receptor genes, one of which codes for a receptor that binds several of cilantro’s aldehydes. The heritability tagged by common variants was low, about 0.087, so genes explain only part of the reaction.³

Parsley has no such reputation. Its leaves are mildly aromatic, and PROSEA describes parsley oil’s flavor as warm but slightly burning and bitter. The two parsleys differ more than you might expect. In PROSEA’s figures for German-grown leaf oil, both had about 20% 1,3,8-p-menthatriene, but curly parsley’s oil carried 32% myristicin against 9.1% in flat-leaved, and flat-leaved had more limonene, 18% against 14%.⁴ See Italian vs. curly parsley.

Telling them apart at the store

Cilantro looks a lot like fresh flat-leaf parsley, but the leaves give you a few clues. Cilantro’s change shape up the stem, from lobed, toothed lower leaves to finely divided upper ones with narrow, pointed lobes. Parsley’s leaves are dark green and glossy, with wedge-shaped to linear leaflets cut into pointed segments. Curly parsley, with its frilly leaves, is easy to tell from either.

The quickest test is to crush a leaf and smell it. Cilantro’s sharp, citrusy smell is hard to miss.

How they are used

The two do much the same job in different cuisines. PROSEA says parsley plays a role in Western cooking much like coriander leaves do in Asia.⁴

Cilantro. The young leaves are widely used in Latin American, Indian and Chinese dishes. In Mexico it goes into salsas and meat dishes, and into guacamole. In China and Thailand, the taproots are eaten as a vegetable.
Parsley. Parsley goes with fish, meats, soups, sauces and salads, and the fresh leaves of curly cultivars are commonly used for garnishing and seasoning. Flat-leaf parsley is the main herb in chimichurri, gremolata and tabbouleh.

Both are fragile in the pan. LSU AgCenter lists cilantro and parsley among the delicate herbs to add in the last minute or two of cooking.⁹ Both lose a lot when dried, too: ATK’s Danielle Lapierre lists parsley and cilantro among the herbs that are much weaker once dried.¹⁰ See dried vs. fresh cilantro and fresh vs. dried parsley.

Safety

Cilantro. The FDA links recurring US outbreaks of cyclosporiasis in 2012 through 2015 to fresh cilantro from the state of Puebla, Mexico. Under Import Alert 24-23, that cilantro offered for entry from April 1 through August 31 each year can be detained without physical examination.⁷

Parsley. MedlinePlus lists parsley, along with endive, lettuce, spinach, watercress, garlic and scallions, among foods that can change how warfarin works. It doesn’t say to avoid them. It advises keeping the amount steady from day to day.⁸ If you’re on warfarin, follow your prescriber’s guidance.

Can one stand in for the other?

As a garnish, yes. For flavor, only loosely.

Swap	Treatment	Starting amount	Notes
Flat-leaf parsley in place of cilantro	Method	Same amount	A Couple Cooks lists parsley first but gives no amount, and says it is grassy and citrusy but doesn’t taste like cilantro.¹¹ Also the swap for people who find cilantro soapy. A squeeze of lime helps in salsa.
Cilantro in place of parsley	Method	About half the amount	The Spice House calls cilantro stronger and more citrusy,¹² and Healthline warns its bright flavor may clash with some dishes that usually get parsley.¹³ Best as a garnish or in Latin American and Asian dishes.

Use flat-leaf parsley, not curly, when it’s standing in for cilantro, since PROSEA rates it the stronger-flavored type.⁴ Ratio (Attributed): for dried herbs in place of fresh, LSU AgCenter’s general rule is 1 tablespoon of fresh to 1 teaspoon of dried,⁹ though both of these herbs lose more in drying than most. Full rankings are on cilantro substitutes and parsley substitutes.

What isn’t known

No published sensory study compares cilantro and parsley directly.
No study has tested whether people who find cilantro soapy dislike parsley. Parsley’s leading compounds aren’t cilantro’s aldehydes,²⁴ but that’s chemistry, not a taste test.
The Eriksson study doesn’t say what share of people taste soap, and neither do we.
You’ll often see the tip that parsley is a brighter green than cilantro. PROSEA describes parsley as dark green and glossy and cilantro as shiny green,⁴² so color isn’t a reliable way to tell them apart.

“Coriander”, Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com · Reference work ↩
Coriandrum sativum, Plant Resources of South-East Asia (PROSEA). uses.plantnet-project.org · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Eriksson et al., “A genetic variant near olfactory receptor genes influences cilantro preference”, Flavour, 2012. link.springer.com · Peer-reviewed ↩ ↩² ↩³
I.B. Ipor and L.P.A. Oyen, Petroselinum crispum, Plant Resources of South-East Asia (PROSEA). uses.plantnet-project.org · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰
Petroselinum crispum, Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. powo.science.kew.org · Reference work ↩
“Parsley”, Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com · Reference work ↩
Import Alert 24-23, U.S. Food and Drug Administration. accessdata.fda.gov · Regulator ↩ ↩²
“Taking warfarin”, MedlinePlus, U.S. National Library of Medicine. medlineplus.gov · Regulator ↩ ↩²
“Flavorful Herbs”, LSU AgCenter. lsuagcenter.com · Reference work ↩ ↩²
Danielle Lapierre, “When You Should Actually Use Dried Herbs (and Which Ones to Avoid)”, America’s Test Kitchen, 2022. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩
Sonja Overhiser, “Best Cilantro Substitute”, A Couple Cooks, 2026. acouplecooks.com · Publication ↩
“The 8 Best Parsley Substitutes”, The Spice House, 2018. thespicehouse.com · Merchant ↩
SaVanna Shoemaker, “10 Tasty Parsley Substitutes”, Healthline, 2020. healthline.com · Publication ↩

Also drawn on

Coriandrum sativum L., Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. powo.science.kew.org
Cilantro, by Susan Mahr (posted 6 Feb 2017), Wisconsin Master Gardener Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension. mastergardener.extension.wisc.edu

Cilantro vs. Parsley: Same Family, Different Chemistry