Blueberries Are 10x More Flavorful When Paired With This Spice

Culinarily speaking, there are few better feelings than scoring the tastiest, perfectly ripe blueberries from the grocery store. Tangy, sweetly floral, and subtly earthy, blueberries are at their most flavorful eaten out of hand when there's no competing ingredients to overshadow their delicate flavor. However, if your favorite dessert happens to be your grandma's bakery-worthy blueberry pie, an underrated spice hiding in your cabinets can elevate blueberries' flavor: coriander.

Coriander is the seed of the Coriandrum sativum plant, the same plant that produces cilantro as its leaves (though coriander and cilantro are very different). Coriander is pleasantly aromatic, flavorful, and has been used in Mediterranean dishes for thousands of years, adding cedar, citrus, and floral notes to savory and sweet dishes alike. The coolest thing about coriander is that it contains a compound called linalool, as do blueberries, which is responsible for that signature zesty flavor that sits somewhere between lemony and sweet.

Combined in baked goods, the double dose of linalool mingles and intensifies. Since blueberries also contain natural sugars, this combo pushes the blueberries' flavor forward and lets it cut through the other flavors in pies, muffins, scones, and more. However, the coriander doesn't disappear, instead becoming a beautifully spicy, warm background note. Paired with a pinch of lemon zest and a dash of vanilla, this flavor profile can definitely win you contests.

Though coriander and blueberries are a perfect pair, it's possible to have too much of a good thing. Since coriander contains much more linalool than blueberries, using too much can easily overpower blueberries' natural fruitiness. You only need a pinch of coriander (between ¼ and ½ teaspoon) to get the full benefit of the aromatic linalool contained within the seeds. 

This is especially true if you store your spices correctly by keeping them whole. Ground coriander loses its verve after just a few weeks while whole coriander can stay fresh and pungent for years at a time (provided it's kept in an airtight container in a cool, dry cabinet). While you can certainly use an electric or handheld spice grinder to pulverize your coriander when it's time, you need such a small amount that it takes only a few seconds to crush it against a cutting board with the back of a spoon. You can also use an old-school mortar and pestle.

Since the idea is to encourage the linalool in the coriander and blueberries to mingle in delicious harmony, leaving your blueberries whole is also a mistake. Giving the majority of your fruit a gentle squish to crack the skins not only releases more blueberry goodness into your baked goods, it also lets the juices mix more readily with the coriander, flooding doughs and batters with flavor.