Huacatay Substitutes: What Works When You Can’t Find Peruvian Black Mint

Huacatay is sometimes called black mint, but it’s a marigold native to South America, and no common herb tastes like it. Its leaves are the defining flavor of ocopa, the peanut-and-chile sauce from Arequipa served over boiled potatoes. For ocopa or any sauce where huacatay leads, a jar of huacatay paste is your best bet. Failing that, a blend of fresh herbs, mostly mint with some basil and a little tarragon, gets you into the same neighborhood. One herb that often gets suggested, epazote, is worth skipping.

Quick answer

How the ratios on this page are labeled

Every ratio carries one of four labels.

• Computed: based on a measurable physical relationship.
• Attributed: a named source publishes this ratio. We quote it as theirs.
• Disputed: named sources give different answers to the same swap. You get each one, side by side.
• Method: our starting point, based on how the two compare. Taste and adjust.

Why nothing matches

Huacatay’s aroma is built mainly on a group of compounds called ketones, though the proportions vary a lot from sample to sample.¹ Those analyses are of distilled oil, not the fresh leaf.

The usual substitutes, like mint, cilantro, muña and lemon verbena, are built on other compounds. None of them has huacatay’s ketones. So a blend of herbs, each covering part of the flavor, usually works better than any one herb alone. Chemistry can’t tell you how huacatay tastes, but here’s how we’d put it: loud and resinous, somewhere between mint, basil, tarragon and citrus peel, with a musky marigold edge.

If huacatay is the lead herb in a sauce

Huacatay paste

Jarred huacatay paste is the same plant, made shelf-stable. Chef Flavio Solórzano’s ocopa recipe, published on Peru Delights, lists huacatay leaves or 1 teaspoon of huacatay paste.² Look for it in Latin American groceries and online.

Ratio (Attributed): Solórzano uses 1 teaspoon of paste in place of the fresh leaves.² His recipe doesn’t give an amount for the leaves, so this isn’t a measured equivalent. The same recipe marks huacatay as optional,² so the sauce still works without it. It just won’t taste like classic ocopa.

If huacatay is an herbal top note

Fresh mint and basil, with a little tarragon

Ratio (Method): In a sauce or salsa that calls for a handful of huacatay leaves, start with about half that volume of mixed herbs: mostly mint, some basil and a few leaves of tarragon. Blend, taste and add more. We found no test of this blend; it comes from matching flavors by taste. Mint covers huacatay’s cool, minty side, and basil and tarragon bring some of its sweet, anise-like depth.

Only have dried herbs? NDSU Extension equates 1 tablespoon of finely cut fresh herbs with 1 teaspoon of dried.³ That conversion is Computed on a fresh-to-dried basis. It tells you nothing about whether dried mint resembles huacatay, and in a fresh sauce like ocopa, fresh herbs are the better pick.

If huacatay is a fresh green note

Cilantro

Cilantro is easy to find and adds a fresh green note to salsas and garnishes. It tastes very different from huacatay. You’ll sometimes hear that the two taste alike. We found no source for that.

Ratio (Method): Start with about half the volume of huacatay called for, taste, and add more. Use it where freshness matters more than huacatay’s particular flavor.

In Andean cooking, if you can find it

Muña

Muña is a mint-family plant from western South America. Its oil puts it closer to the mints than to huacatay.⁴

Outside the Andes, muña is about as hard to find as huacatay.

Ratio (Method): Start with about half the volume of huacatay and taste.

Other suggestions, and one to avoid

Lemon verbena. Its oil is dominated by citral.⁵ That gives it a strong lemon note huacatay doesn’t have. If you use it, pair it with mint and stick to a few leaves.

Skip epazote. It gets suggested because it’s another pungent herb from the Americas, but the flavor is unrelated. Katzer finds its fragrance strong but hard to describe,⁶ and its essential oil is high in ascaridole, which he calls toxic.⁶ TRAMIL reports that a single oral dose of 5 ml of the oil has killed adults.⁷ Katzer notes the fresh herb goes into soups, salads and meat dishes,⁶ but nothing about epazote makes it a better huacatay stand-in than the herbs above.

What isn’t known

• The oil analyses describe distilled oil from specific samples. We found no analysis of the fresh leaves sold in Peruvian markets.
• You’ll sometimes read that huacatay is a good swap for cilantro if you hate cilantro’s soapy taste. We found no source for that, and the two herbs’ chemistry is unrelated.

Related

• Huacatay and Peruvian spices
• Mint, spearmint and mint substitutes
• Cilantro and cilantro substitutes
• Lemon verbena, epazote and epazote substitutes
• Tarragon and basil vs. mint