Juniper Berries: The Cone Behind Gin, Sauerkraut and Game Cooking

That piney, slightly fruity flavor in your gin is juniper, and the “berries” behind it aren’t berries at all. They’re the small, fleshy, bluish cones of the common juniper, Juniperus communis, a conifer that grows across the northern hemisphere, and they take two years to mature. In the kitchen they’re a staple of Central and Northern European cooking, seasoning sauerkraut, pork and game. Crush them just before use, and go easy: too much turns a dish bitter.

At a glance

What a juniper berry is

The common juniper’s “berries” are fleshy, berry-like cones, typically bluish and waxy. The European Medicines Agency calls them berry-shaped cones, globular and up to 10 mm across, and uses the botanical term galbulus.¹ Gernot Katzer says they take two years to mature.² The species is native to the subarctic and temperate Northern Hemisphere.

Flavor and the compounds behind it

Juniper tastes slightly piney, with touches of fruitiness and pepperiness and a sweet accent. It’s resinous and clean, with a faint citrus note, and it turns bitter if you use too much.

The aroma comes from an essential oil made up mainly of monoterpenes.² The European Pharmacopoeia, as quoted by the EMA, requires juniper berries to contain at least 10 mL of essential oil per kg and sets these ranges for the oil:¹

The EMA points out that these are pharmacopoeial requirements, not the full range found in nature. Sabinene and β-pinene are listed among the constituents too.¹

Origin and history

Juniper’s best-documented history is in gin. Britannica credits Franciscus Sylvius, a 17th-century professor of medicine at Leiden, with distilling juniper berries with spirits to make a cheap medicine. It traces the name “gin” to the French genièvre (juniper), which the Dutch turned into genever and the English shortened to gin.³

The EMA’s assessment report notes that the berries were once used to “clean the kidneys,” citing older European herbals.¹

Several juniper stories get repeated a lot, and we couldn’t trace any of them to a source: that berries were found in ancient Egyptian tombs, that Greek athletes took them for stamina at the Olympic Games, that people held them in their mouths against the bubonic plague, and that juniper tea was used to disinfect surgical instruments. The Roman writer Pliny is often said to have described pepper being stretched with juniper berries, but we couldn’t open the passage to check.

How juniper berries are used

• Gin. Juniper is gin’s principal flavoring.
• Sauerkraut. Katzer says traditional sauerkraut is seasoned with juniper and caraway. The Alsatian dish choucroute garnie, sauerkraut braised with pork and sausages, is a textbook example. Saveur’s version ties juniper berries, cloves, garlic and a bay leaf in cheesecloth to cook with the kraut.⁴
• Game and rich meats. Bramen counts game dishes among juniper’s most common uses, and Katzer says it’s felt to be indispensable for venison.⁵²
• Regional cooking. Bramen places juniper in Northern European cooking, especially Scandinavian and German. Katzer calls it much used in the traditional cuisine of Central Europe.⁵²

Crush the berries lightly just before you use them. Bramen advises going easy, after too much juniper spoiled a dish of her own.⁵ Juniper goes well with black pepper, bay leaves, caraway, allspice, marjoram, garlic and thyme.

Buying and quality

Look for deep blue-black to purple berries that are plump, not shriveled, and smell strongly of resin when crushed. That’s a rule of thumb, not a standard. Katzer says the best quality comes from southern European countries.² We didn’t find a grading standard for culinary juniper.

Storage

We didn’t find a shelf-life figure for juniper berries from a regulator or standards body. The flavor lives in a volatile oil, so keep them whole, sealed and away from heat and light, and judge them by smell.

Safety and health claims

In the European Union, juniper berries are recognized as a traditional herbal medicine for two uses: increasing urine output to flush the urinary tract, and relieving digestive complaints like indigestion and flatulence.⁶ That status rests on long-standing use. The EMA’s assessment found no published clinical studies.¹

The EMA monograph’s cautions, which apply to medicinal products, not seasoning:

• Use during pregnancy and breastfeeding is not recommended, because there isn’t enough data.⁶ The assessment report says it can’t conclude whether juniper extracts have antifertility or abortifacient effects.¹
• Use is not recommended in severe kidney disease.⁶
• Use in children and adolescents hasn’t been established, for lack of data.⁶

The old worry that juniper damages the kidneys is contested. The EMA’s report quotes reviewers who weren’t convinced of juniper oil’s renal toxicity, and studies questioning whether the oil or its constituent terpinen-4-ol is nephrotoxic. It also notes an older report that continued use can cause renal damage. Overall, it found no serious adverse events or deaths reported, while noting that clinical safety data are limited.¹

The antibacterial, antioxidant and vitamin claims you’ll often see for juniper berries come from lab work or have no traceable source, so we don’t repeat them. The EMA report says juniper berry oil is approved for food use in the United States.¹

Substitutes and comparisons

• Juniper berries substitutes
• Allspice berries vs. juniper berries
• Cedar berries vs. juniper berries