Erva-de-santa-maria

The ascaridole hits a muddy pulse and leaves it tasting green and clean.

Nixtamal is sweet and lime-scented; epazote is the only herb loud enough to answer.

Sour green fruit takes the ascaridole edge and turns it into something citric.

Sweet kernels plus a petrol-medicinal leaf, both native to the same field.

Dried chilli fruitiness needs a bitter herb, not more sweetness.

Rendered fat mutes the turpentine spike and keeps the mint underneath.

Acid pins the volatile leaf down; without it epazote just smells of solvent.

Fungal earth under a medicinal leaf, the closest thing to huitlacoche you can buy.

Salty crumbled cheese does the job queso fresco does: fat, salt, no flavour fight.

Fruity heat and ascaridole bitterness, from the same peninsula and the same pot.

Sharp esters against turpentine. Grill the fruit and the pairing stops being a dare.

Petrol-and-mint herb that only makes sense over an equally strange green spirit.

Both run on terpenes with a medicinal edge. Nobody has bottled it. They should.

Both green and resinous. Mexico has never sweetened this herb, and it should.