Cloves: Flavor, Eugenol, History and How to Use Them

Count whole cloves into the pot so you can count them back out: they’re strong, hot and pungent, and a few go a long way. They’re the dried, unopened flower buds of Syzygium aromaticum, a myrtle-family tree native to Indonesia’s Maluku islands. Up to 18% of a clove bud can be essential oil, and most of that oil is eugenol, a compound widely used in dentistry.¹ After the Dutch took over the trade in the 17th century, they kept prices high by confining clove growing to a few islands, until Pierre Poivre smuggled seeds out in 1770.

At a glance

What cloves are

The clove tree is an evergreen that grows to about 25 to 40 feet. The clove you buy is a small, reddish-brown flower bud. PROSEA describes the harvest: the whole flower cluster gets picked just before the first buds open, since picking too early lowers yield and picking late sharply lowers oil content. Clove stems, a cheaper by-product, are also traded, and the ripe fruit is known in the trade as “mother of cloves.”³

The native range is Maluku, and the tree has been introduced in places including Tanzania, Madagascar, the Comoros, India, Sumatra, Borneo, the Seychelles and Trinidad and Tobago.

Flavor and aroma

Cloves are strong in aroma and hot and pungent in taste. In food they taste sweet-warm, medicinal and faintly numbing, with a bitter, astringent edge if you use a lot. That numbing note fits eugenol’s anesthetic reputation (see below), though we found no measurement of it at kitchen amounts.

The compounds

Those ranges come from different compilations, so we don’t merge them. The 2020 review names eugenyl acetate, eugenol and β-caryophyllene as the most significant compounds in the oil. PROSEA ranks oil quality as best from the bud, then the stem, then the leaf.³ Clove oil and eugenol have analgesic, anesthetic and antiseptic effects, which is why they’re common in dentistry.¹

Eugenol is also a main part of allspice oil,⁴ and allspice is often described as clove-like.

Origin and history

• China, Han dynasty. PROSEA traces the clove trade back to the Han dynasty in the 3rd century BC. Britannica says that as early as 200 BCE envoys from Java brought cloves to the Han court, where they were held in the mouth to perfume the breath during audiences with the emperor.² You’ll often read that “courtesans” chewed them. The sources say envoys and audiences.
• Indian Ocean trade. Britannica says cloves reached the Roman Empire, India and Arabia through Sri Lanka’s trade, and were used in Europe to preserve, flavor and garnish food.
• Portuguese and Dutch. The Portuguese found the clove’s origin in the Moluccas in the 16th century, and the Dutch took over in the 17th. To keep prices high, the Dutch confined cultivation: Britannica says to Ambon and Ternate, PROSEA to Ambon and three nearby islands, with the crop forcibly eradicated everywhere else.²³
• Breaking the monopoly. In 1770 the French missionary and entrepreneur Pierre Poivre smuggled clove seeds out, leading to plantations in the Seychelles and Zanzibar. For over a hundred years, PROSEA says, Zanzibar was the largest producer of cloves.

Production

Britannica, citing a 2021 report it doesn’t name, ranks Indonesia as the world’s biggest clove producer, followed by Madagascar, the Comoros, Tanzania and Sri Lanka.² PROSEA’s older figures show how things have shifted. Zanzibar averaged about 11,000 tonnes a year in 1960 to 1970. By 1996 to 1998, Madagascar’s 15,000 tonnes was well above Zanzibar’s 6,000, and Indonesia produced 90,000 tonnes in 1996.³ We couldn’t get at a current official world series.

India publishes its own figures: the Spices Board gives clove production at 1,127 tonnes from 1,852 hectares in 2024-25 (final), with an advance estimate of 1,130 tonnes for 2025-26.⁵

A big share of Indonesia’s cloves never gets eaten. PROSEA notes that cloves go into kretek cigarettes with tobacco, smoked mainly in Indonesia.³ In the US, cigarettes with characterizing flavors, clove included, were banned in September 2009; a study of online sellers found that one major clove manufacturer only slightly modified its clove cigarettes and rebranded them as clove cigars.⁶

How cloves are used

Cloves flavor many foods, especially meats and baked goods, and work as a natural preservative. They go in whole or ground, or as an extracted oleoresin.

• Spice blends. Britannica lists cloves among the five spices of Chinese five-spice powder, with fennel seed, cassia, star anise and Sichuan pepper. Great British Chefs lists cloves among the spices commonly used in garam masala.
• Cincinnati chili. Saveur’s recipe uses cloves alongside cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg.
• Whole cloves. Stud a ham or an onion with them, or simmer them in mulled drinks. See mulling spices and chai spices.

You’ll see other uses floating around: that cloves give masala chai most of its flavor, that they’re essential to Worcestershire sauce or ketchup, their role in pho or German cookies. We couldn’t find a source for any of them, so they’re left out.

Technique

A clove goes a long way. Count whole cloves into the pot so you can count them back out, and start small with ground. For whole versus ground, see ground vs. whole cloves; for more, cooking with cloves. If a dish has gone over, see too much clove.

Buying and quality

Good whole cloves are plump, intact and oily enough to give off scent when you press one. PROSEA records the usual adulterants of clove bud oil as clove stem or leaf oil, or the terpenes left after eugenol is extracted.³ You may hear that Madagascar cloves beat all others; we didn’t find a source for that.

Storage

We found no shelf-life figure for cloves from a regulator, standards body or study. Keep whole cloves over ground if you can, tightly closed, away from heat and light, and go by smell.

Safety

The spice

We found no regulator or clinical source that sets an amount at which cloves eaten in food become a concern. The 2020 review states that the FDA has confirmed the safety of clove buds, clove oil, eugenol and oleoresins.¹ Cloves fall under the EU’s general ochratoxin A limit for dried spices, 15 µg/kg.⁷

Clove oil is a different product

Clove oil is far more concentrated than the spice, so don’t use it in place of ground cloves in a recipe. The European Medicines Agency has a monograph for clove oil as a traditional herbal medicinal product, based only on long-standing use, for symptomatic treatment of minor inflammations in the mouth or throat and temporary relief of toothache from a dental cavity.⁸⁹ Its conditions:⁹

• Use in children and adolescents under 18 is not recommended.
• For toothache, avoid contact with the gums.
• Do not use if hypersensitive to the oil or to Peru balsam.
• Mucosal irritation and allergic reactions have been reported.

The 2020 review also cites reports of seizures and liver toxicity after clove essential oil was taken, and notes allergic reactions to eugenol used in dentistry.¹

Health claims

You’ll hear that cloves treat gum disease, control blood sugar, protect the liver, preserve bone density and fight cancer. We found no regulator summary or systematic review backing those claims for the spice; most of the research the 2020 review gathers is lab and animal work.¹ The EMA’s traditional-use monograph covers clove oil for mouth and throat complaints, not the spice in food.⁹ We make no claim that cloves treat or prevent any condition.

Substitutes and comparisons

Allspice shares eugenol with cloves and is the usual stand-in. None of the sources we found gives a tested ratio. See clove substitutes, and:

• Allspice vs. cloves
• Nutmeg vs. cloves
• Cloves vs. cinnamon
• Cloves vs. star anise
• Cardamom vs. cloves