A herb is a plant used to flavour food, especially its leaves, such as basil or thyme, while a spice is a dried plant substance, such as pepper or cinnamon, often from bark, seeds, or roots. A simple memory hook is that herbs are the leafy green things you sprinkle on at the end, while spices are the dried, often ground ingredients you cook in from the start.
The core difference
Herbs are mainly the flavouring leaves of a plant, while spices are dried plant substances such as bark, seeds, or roots.
- herb — a plant used to flavour food, especially the leaves: she sprinkled fresh herbs like basil and thyme over the pasta.
- spice — a dried plant substance, such as pepper or cinnamon, used to flavour food: the curry was rich with spices like cumin, turmeric, and coriander.
How to tell them apart
The clearest test is the part of the plant and its state: herbs are typically the leaves, used fresh or dried, while spices come from other parts of a plant, such as seeds, bark, roots, or dried fruit, and are almost always sold dried or ground. Basil and thyme are herbs because they are leaves; cinnamon and cumin are spices because they are dried bark and seed.
The mix-up often shows up in recipe writing, where “herbs and spices” gets used as one loose phrase for anything that adds flavour, blurring the distinction. Spice also has a second, non-food sense, meaning something that adds interest or excitement to an experience, as in a bit of friendly rivalry adding spice to a quiz night, a sense herb does not share.
