Reference point
Crush a sprig of fresh kinh giới from a plate of fresh herbs.
Do this before you read on. An entry only works when you have just smelled the thing.
Green, sharp, with a cool, minty note running over the top — close to mint but much lighter and not cold.
This entry sits between the green family and the medicinal family, just as holy basil sits between green and spicy. Vietnamese balm shows that the borders between scent families are soft in several places, not just one.
Vietnamese balm is quite different from European oregano and marjoram, although in English-language sources all three are sometimes called by the same name. It is one of the places where translated plant names cause the most serious confusion.
How to smell it
Crush a sprig of Vietnamese balm in one hand and a sprig of perilla in the other, and smell them in turn. The balm will show a cool, minty note that perilla lacks entirely. If you have a mint leaf, smell it too to see where Vietnamese balm stands between the two extremes.
Why this one is hard
Because it always sits mixed on the herb plate with five or six other herbs, and the nose is saturated before it can pick it out.
Don’t confuse with
This entry
Vietnamese balm
Green family
Vietnamese balm has a cool, minty note running over the top that perilla lacks entirely.
Scientific note
Vietnamese balm contains both phenols such as thymol and carvacrol and light monoterpenes. The two groups sit at opposite ends of the evaporation range, so its smell changes clearly over time: it opens green and sharp and closes warm with a medicinal note. That is why it stands between the green family and the medicinal family.
In Vietnamese life
Vietnamese balm and perilla are a pair of herbs that almost always come together in northern meals, especially with bún đậu and bún riêu. The pairing is repeated so often that the two smells are stored in memory as a single block.