Appears in
Oxford Companion to Food

By Alan Davidson

Published 2014

  • About

mitsuba is the Japanese name of a perennial herb, Cryptotaenia japonica, which is cultivated almost exclusively in Japan. It is sometimes called wild chervil; and also has the names honewort (used of the closely related C. canadensis in N. America) and trefoil (but this last is used of other plants also).

Mitsuba comes in two principal varieties, kansai (green) and kanto (whiter); and the Japanese devote great care to their cultivation and to techniques such as winter and summer blanching to make them more tender. The leaf stalks look more like coriander than parsley, but have a milder flavour than coriander.