Hyssop: The Bitter Mint-Family Herb, Its Biblical Namesake, and How to Use It

The “hyssop” of the Bible was almost certainly not the hyssop you can buy today, and people still argue over which plant it was. Garden hyssop is a small, woody mint-family perennial, long known to botanists as Hyssopus officinalis, with strongly aromatic, slightly bitter leaves. It smells somewhere between mint, sage and rosemary, and it flavors meats, fish, vegetables, salads, sweets and liqueurs such as absinthe. The leaves are a seasoning; the concentrated oil is a different story, with case reports of seizures.¹

At a glance

What hyssop is

Hyssop is a perennial about half a meter (1.5 feet) tall. It has slim, woody, four-sided stems and leafy spikes of small flowers that open in summer, usually violet-blue but sometimes pink, red or white. Kew calls it a subshrub.

A new botanical name

Kew’s Plants of the World Online now treats Hyssopus officinalis as a synonym and lists the plant as Dracocephalum officinale (L.) Y.P.Chen & B.T.Drew, moving it into the genus Dracocephalum.² FDA’s regulations still say Hyssopus officinalis, and so do most labels and references.⁵ Both names mean the same plant.

Not anise hyssop

Anise hyssop is Agastache foeniculum, a North American perennial native from Canada to the northwestern and north-central United States. It’s in a different genus but the same family, the Lamiaceae, so calling the two “unrelated” goes too far.⁷

Flavor and aroma

Hyssop smells strongly herbal, somewhere between mint, sage and rosemary, with a floral note and a distinct bitterness on the tongue. It’s potent, so a little goes a long way.

What’s in the oil

The leaves contain oil of hyssop, which perfumers use. A 2011 review of the plant’s chemistry reports pinocamphone, isopinocamphone and β-pinene among the principal components of oils from the aerial parts.⁴ The Wolters Kluwer monograph published on Drugs.com puts the plant’s volatile oil at up to 2%, made up mainly of pinocamphone, isopinocamphone, α- and β-pinene, camphene and α-terpinene. It also lists tannins at 5–8%, oleanolic and ursolic acids, and marrubiin.¹ Neither source we could open gave percentages for the oil components, so we don’t either.

The hyssop of the Bible

Scripture mentions hyssop in several passages, including the Passover (Exodus 12:22) and Psalm 51:7.⁸ Which plant that word, ezov in Hebrew, meant is disputed:

The sources agree on one thing: the garden hyssop sold today isn’t the biblical plant. They differ on what the biblical plant was. Origanum syriacum is a mint-family subshrub native from the eastern Mediterranean to the Arabian Peninsula.⁹ The Old Dominion page notes it’s known in Arabic as za’atar and is one of the most widely used herbs of the Palestinians.⁸ It’s a different species from the hyssop we’re talking about here. See za’atar and oregano.

Origin and history

Kew gives hyssop’s native range as Europe and the Mediterranean to Iran, and lists it as introduced in parts of northern Europe, Great Britain, and the US states of New York, Vermont and Wisconsin.² Britannica gives the range as southern Europe east to Central Asia and says it’s become naturalized in North America.³

Pliny the Elder gives a recipe for hyssop wine made from Cilician hyssop and grape must. The 19th-century Bostock and Riley translation calls it hyssopites and identifies the plant as Hyssopus officinalis.¹⁰ The plant has long flavored foods and drinks and served as a folk medicine.

Other stories we couldn’t trace to a source we could open, so we’ve left them out: Egyptian priests using it for purification, Hippocrates prescribing it for chest congestion, its name coming from Greek and Hebrew words for “herb”, John Winthrop Jr. bringing its seed to New England, and its presence in Benedictine liqueur.

How hyssop is used

Hyssop goes into meats, fish, vegetables, salads, sweets and liqueurs such as absinthe. The Wolters Kluwer monograph adds that extracts have flavored liqueurs, sauces, puddings and candies, and gone into perfumes and soaps.¹

Because it’s bitter and strong, hyssop works best in small amounts. Try a few chopped leaves with lamb, rich meats or oily fish, in a bean or vegetable soup near the end of cooking, in a fruit salad, or steeped into syrups and custards for dessert. For more, see cooking with hyssop.

Buying and quality

We found no grading standard for culinary hyssop. Fresh sprigs should be firm and strongly aromatic, and dried hyssop should still smell pungent when you rub it. If you’re buying seeds or plants for the kitchen, check the botanical name, since anise hyssop and other “hyssops” are different plants.

Storage

We found no published shelf-life figure for fresh or dried hyssop from a regulator or extension service. For the dried herb, trust your nose.

Health and safety

Culinary amounts. FDA lists hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis) among spices and among essential oils generally recognized as safe for their intended use.⁵⁶ In the EU, dried herbs including hyssop are capped at 400 µg/kg of pyrrolizidine alkaloids, plant toxins that can contaminate harvests.¹¹

The essential oil. The Wolters Kluwer monograph reports that in rats, commercial hyssop oils caused convulsions at 0.13 g/kg and death at 1.25 g/kg. It says the neurotoxicity appears linked to pinocamphone and isopinocamphone, and that there are case reports of seizures in adults and children. It advises against use in pregnancy.¹ These findings are about the concentrated oil, not hyssop leaves used as a seasoning.

Medicinal claims. The same monograph says hyssop has many traditional uses but no clinical trial data behind them,¹ and the 2011 review found human studies and clinical trials lacking.⁴ Britannica records a strong leaf tea sweetened with honey as a traditional remedy for nose, throat and lung complaints. That’s tradition, not evidence.³ We’re not claiming hyssop treats or prevents any condition. We couldn’t trace to human evidence the claims that it lowers LDL cholesterol, works as an expectorant through its marrubiin content, or helps digestion by stimulating gastric juices.

Substitutes and comparisons

Mint with a pinch of sage or rosemary covers some of hyssop’s character, and lavender shares its floral side. See hyssop substitutes and hyssop vs. lavender.

• Profiles: lavender, mint, rosemary, sage, oregano
• Blend: za’atar