Bay
Also known as Laurus nobilis, bay leaf, laurel, sweet bay, Lorbeer, laurier, alloro, laurel
The leaf that goes into a brine or a brawn whole and comes out again. Almost never ground into a farce, because the leaf is tough, and its flavour needs time and liquid to emerge.
Bay is the leaf of Laurus nobilis, an evergreen of the Mediterranean, and it behaves differently from every other herb in the charcuterie cupboard. Its aroma, chiefly eucalyptol with a resinous, slightly tea-like background, is locked in a tough leathery leaf and comes out slowly. A bay leaf tasted raw is bitter and harsh. The same leaf simmered for an hour in a brine or a stock has given up something rounded and savoury that is hard to name and immediately missed when absent.
That slow release dictates how it is used. Bay is a wet-process herb. It goes whole into brines and pickling liquors, into the pot for a brawn or a head cheese, into the stock for a jellied product, into a braise, and into the marinades for game. It is fished out before the product is finished. It is very rarely ground into a raw farce: it would need far longer than the sausage has to give up its flavour, and the fibrous fragments are unpleasant to eat.
In the cured meat traditions it runs through the Spanish and Portuguese work, above all in the brined and adobo-cured products, in the French charcuterie and its aromatic brines, in the Italian preserved and potted preparations, and across the brawns and head cheeses of northern Europe. Where a Curesmith recipe lists bay in a dry mix, it is worth checking whether the source meant a wet stage.
One genuine safety point separates it from other herbs, and it is physical rather than microbiological. Bay leaves do not soften. A whole leaf left in a finished product is a choking and laceration hazard, particularly in a brawn or a terrine where it can be hidden by the set jelly and where the eater is not expecting it. Count them in and count them out. That is not fussiness; it is why every professional kitchen does it.
Dried and fresh differ in the usual direction but less than most herbs: a fresh bay leaf is slightly more bitter and a well-dried one slightly rounder, and dried bay of good quality is entirely legitimate. Old dried bay that has faded to a pale khaki has lost most of what it had and is contributing colour to the pot and nothing else. There is also a genuine confusion of species: California bay, Umbellularia californica, is a different plant with a far more aggressive flavour and is not a like-for-like substitute.