Safflower vs. Saffron: Color Without the Flavor, and a Long History of Fakes

Safflower is called “false saffron” in English, and it has often been passed off as the real thing. Safflower and saffron both turn food yellow, but only saffron brings a strong aroma and a bitter taste. Safflower florets contain no essential oil, and their flavor is very weak.¹ Saffron is the dried stigma of a crocus, while safflower is the dried flower of an unrelated daisy-family plant grown mostly for its oil seed. That gap is why safflower has served for centuries as a cheap stand-in for saffron, and too often as a fake.

Side by side

When people call saffron honeyed or hay-like, those are cooks’ words, not measurements. You’ll also see a claim that safflower tastes of chocolate. We couldn’t find a source for it.

Color: the one job they share

Each colors food with a different pigment. Saffron’s is crocin.⁵ Safflower florets hold two: a water-soluble yellow, carthamidin, and carthamin, an orange-red dye that was once commercially important.³ Carthamin was used as a red textile dye.

They’re not equally strong. Gernot Katzer says safflower gives food a “rather pale” color.¹ Saffron’s coloring strength gets measured. Under ISO 3632, absorbance at about 440 nm tracks crocin, and the 2025 edition sets minimums from 120 for the lowest grade to 230 for Extra Class, according to Agilent’s application note on the method.⁶

Flavor: where they part ways

Katzer calls safflower’s flavor very weak and herbaceous and puts its value as a spice at “nearly nil.”¹ Saffron is the opposite, with a strong aroma and a bitter taste, and the ISO test measures both: picrocrocin for bitterness at about 257 nm and safranal for aroma at about 330 nm.⁶ In a dish, safflower changes how food looks. Saffron changes how it looks and how it tastes.

How safflower is used to fake saffron

The two come from different plant families: safflower from the daisy family, saffron crocus from the Iridaceae. Safflower’s long career as a saffron stand-in shows in its names: “false saffron” in English, and safran bâtard, “bastard saffron,” in French.

• Openly. PROSEA describes safflower as a natural food colorant that substitutes for saffron, and Katzer notes some use as a poor imitation of saffron in Middle Eastern cooking.³¹
• As an adulterant. Britannica records safflower’s use to adulterate saffron.⁸ A 2022 bulletin from the Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program, as reported by NutraIngredients, lists safflower among the materials found sold as or mixed into saffron.¹¹
• Sold as saffron. Katzer says safflower is often sold as “saffron” to tourists in Hungary and North Africa.¹

Saffron is one of the most adulterated spices, and powdered saffron is the easiest form to cheat with.⁹ The fraud goes way back. Records from mid-14th-century Montpellier describe inspectors seizing impure saffron from a pepperer’s shop and the town ordering it burned.¹² A Metropolitan Museum of Art essay, citing a secondary herbal reference, says a 15th-century Nuremberg trader was buried alive with his adulterated product.¹³

Telling them apart. Whole, they look different. Saffron is sold as threads, the stigmas. Safflower comes as loose florets. Powder is the form most open to fraud, so threads are the safer buy. A rule of thumb, not a test: be suspicious of “saffron” that’s very cheap and colors food without much smell. See saffron for how ISO grading works and where it falls short.

Can one stand in for the other?

Only for color. See saffron substitutes and safflower substitutes for the full lists.

Safflower for saffron. Food Republic’s equal swap doesn’t say whether it means volume or weight, and with Katzer’s “rather pale” color,¹ expect to go by eye. The yellow pigment is water-soluble,³ so it makes sense to steep the florets in some of the recipe’s warm liquid first. You get the color and lose the aroma. Paella is saffron-flavored rice, and safflower will make it yellow, not saffron-flavored.

Saffron for safflower. It works, but it changes the dish, adding bitterness and a strong aroma where safflower added almost none. Use far less than the safflower called for.

Where each is used

Saffron. It goes into Mediterranean and Asian dishes, especially rice and fish; English, Scandinavian and Balkan breads; and bouillabaisse, where it’s an important ingredient. In Spain it’s part of paella. Risotto, Persian rice dishes and Indian sweets are often linked to saffron too, but we didn’t find a qualifying source for each.

Safflower. PROSEA says the florets are commonly mixed into rice, bread and pickles to color them.³ Katzer reports them brightening broths, soups and stews in Azerbaijan, and giving a yellowish hue to the broth of piti.¹ Specific Syrian and Spanish uses that get repeated a lot couldn’t be traced.

What isn’t known

• Food Republic’s one-for-one swap is a rule of thumb, with no stated basis or unit.
• We found no current, sourced price for safflower, and the saffron figure is a ceiling, not a market price.
• We found no regulator safety assessment of safflower florets.

Related

• Safflower, safflower uses and safflower substitutes
• Saffron, saffron uses, cooking with saffron and saffron substitutes
• Why is saffron so expensive?
• Saffron vs. turmeric and saffron vs. sassafras
• Turmeric and annatto seeds, two more spices used mainly for color