Ginger Mint (Scotch Spearmint): What It Is and How to Use It

Despite the name, there’s no ginger in ginger mint, and whether it even tastes of ginger is up for debate. In the kitchen you can treat it as a spearmint. Ginger mint (Mentha × gracilis) is a hybrid of corn mint and spearmint, and it also goes by Scotch mint, Scotch spearmint and redmint. As Scotch spearmint, it’s a commercial source of spearmint oil, and that oil is dominated by carvone, just like spearmint’s.

At a glance

What ginger mint is

Mentha × gracilis is a vigorous, spreading perennial with upright stems, lance-shaped, slightly wrinkled, aromatic dark green leaves, and pale purple flowers in whorled spikes in summer. The variegated garden form sold as ginger mint ‘Variegata’ has golden yellow stripes on its leaves. The RHS rates the plant hardy throughout most of the UK, even in severe winters.²

Kew gives the hybrid formula as M. arvensis × M. spicata. Some references use Mentha × gentilis for the same plant (Katzer does), and Kew lists Mentha × cardiaca among its many synonyms.

Does it grow wild?

Yes. You’ll often read that ginger mint doesn’t occur in the wild, but Kew gives it a native range, western Europe to Italy, listing it as native to France, Corsica and Italy and extinct in Belgium, and records it as introduced across much of Europe and North America.³ Commercial Scotch spearmint is another story: a US plant patent describes it as a normally sterile mint propagated asexually.¹

Names that cause confusion

• Scotch spearmint vs. spearmint. Commercial spearmint oil comes from two plants. A US plant patent names “Scotch Spearmint” as M. × gracilis and compares its oil with that of “Native Spearmint”.¹ HistoryLink’s history of Washington mint farming gives the botanical names differently, labeling Scotch spearmint as Mentha spicata and native spearmint as Mentha cardiaca.⁴ We go with the patent and the RHS, which list Scotch spearmint as a name for M. × gracilis.²
• “Vietnamese mint.” This name sometimes gets attached to ginger mint. Katzer says “Vietnamese mint” doesn’t refer to peppermint or its relatives, and that it’s also used, confusingly, for Vietnamese coriander.⁵ We found no source linking it to M. × gracilis.

Flavor and aroma

Here the sources argue with the plant’s name. Katzer describes ginger mint as neither minty nor ginger-like at all.⁵ The name promises a warm, spicy edge. In practice, think of it as a mild, sweet spearmint.

The chemistry points toward spearmint. In comparison data in a 2017 US plant patent, L-carvone made up 69.2% of the oil from ‘Scotch Spearmint’ and 68.8% of the oil from ‘Native Spearmint’. Carvone is the main component of spearmint oil.⁶ No source we found reports a ginger-like compound in this mint. Those patent figures describe the oil of specific commercial clones, not every garden plant sold as ginger mint.¹

History

Ginger mint itself has little recorded history. Most of what gets passed around is the history of mint in general:

• Pliny the Elder notes mint as a common ingredient in Roman sauces.
• The Gospel of Matthew mentions paying tithes of mint, anise and cummin.
• People have used mint plants for digestive problems since ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt.

None of those are about ginger mint specifically. We couldn’t trace the claims that Ovid wrote about mint, that Ayurvedic texts list it as an appetite stimulant, that Native Americans used it for toothache and fever, or that ginger mint reached Wisconsin in the late 1960s.

In the US, spearmint oil has been a farm crop for decades. HistoryLink records that in 1946 I. P. Callison planted 160 acres of Scotch spearmint near Sunnyside, Washington, and notes that American candy, chewing gum and toothpaste makers ran major advertising campaigns for their products.⁴ We found no current, sourced figure for how many states grow Scotch spearmint commercially.

How to use ginger mint

Use it anywhere you’d use spearmint: with fruit, in salads, in tea, with tomatoes, in fish dishes, and in jellies and sauces. You may read that Vietnamese cooks put ginger mint in pho; we couldn’t trace that.

A couple of handling tips that go for mint in general:

• LSU AgCenter lists mint among the delicate herbs best added late, because long heat costs flavor and aroma.
• LSU’s rule of thumb for herbs in general is 1 tablespoon of finely cut fresh herbs to 1 teaspoon of crumbled dried.⁷

See cooking with mint, mint uses, how to store mint, how to dry mint and can you freeze mint. For the wider family, see mint, types of mint and spearmint vs. peppermint. If a dish has gone over, see too much mint.

Health and safety

We didn’t find anyone who’s studied ginger mint as a food. The best-studied mint product is peppermint oil, from a different plant: NCCIH says enteric-coated peppermint oil capsules may improve irritable bowel syndrome symptoms in adults, and that very little research has been done on peppermint leaf.⁸ Those findings don’t carry over to ginger mint.

We couldn’t trace the claim that ginger mint can cause miscarriage to any source. NCCIH’s peppermint page says only that the long-term safety of consuming large amounts of peppermint leaf is unknown.⁸ Claims that ginger mint is a rich source of vitamins, iron or manganese, or that it speeds digestion by raising bile production, had no source we could find either. We’re not claiming ginger mint treats or prevents any condition.

Substitutes

Spearmint is the obvious stand-in, since both oils are dominated by carvone.¹ See mint substitutes.

Ratio (Method): Start with equal amounts and adjust to taste.