Cooking With Orange Mint: Teas, Desserts, Drinks and How to Keep It

Herbalist Susan Belsinger says orange mint has no menthol and compares its citrus, floral taste to bergamot and Earl Grey.¹ It cooks like any soft mint, but don’t expect peppermint’s cool bite. Where it shines is tea, cream and fruit desserts, chocolate and soft drinks. It’s the citrus-scented mint also sold as bergamot mint and eau-de-Cologne mint. For the plant itself, see orange mint.

At a glance

How orange mint behaves in the kitchen

It’s a delicate herb. America’s Test Kitchen sorts herbs into hearty and delicate, and puts mint in the delicate group, to be added at the last minute.⁵ LSU AgCenter says the same, and gives the reason: long heat costs flavor and aroma.² Treat orange mint like basil, not rosemary. Stir it into a warm dish off the heat, scatter it over the plate, or steep it in a liquid you strain afterward.

It tastes floral, not cool. Menthol, the compound behind peppermint’s chill, isn’t among the main compounds a 2008 study found in its essential oil.³ Belsinger puts it plainly: there’s no menthol, so you taste citrus more than mint.¹ The leaves smell like eau de Cologne.

Bruise, don’t pound. In drinks, crushing mint hard can release vegetal, bitter flavors and shred the leaves, according to Tasting Table.⁸ A light press or a quick shake with ice is enough.

Where it works

Tea

Belsinger dries orange mint leaves for tea. Fresh sprigs steeped in hot water work too, on their own or added to black tea. Belsinger compares its bergamot-like note to Earl Grey, so black tea is a natural partner.¹

Desserts and chocolate

Belsinger bakes orange mint into peach pies and steeps it in cream to give dark chocolate ganache an orange note.¹ The steeped cream is the trick to steal. Warm the cream, add the leaves, cover, let it sit, then strain. That same infused cream can go into ice cream, panna cotta or custard. Belsinger doesn’t give amounts or a steeping time.

Ratio (Method): Start with a small handful of leaves per cup of cream and taste as it steeps.

Fresh leaves chopped into fruit salad, or scattered over berries and stone fruit, should work for the same reason, though no source we found names that use.

Drinks

Orange mint suits lemonade, iced tea, and gin or rum drinks where you want a softer, more perfumed mint. When a drink depends on menthol’s sharp cool, like a classic mojito or julep, plain spearmint or peppermint is the better pick. In a mojito, Belsinger notes, it’s the brightness of menthol that stands up to rum and lime.¹ For simple syrup, steep leaves in the warm syrup and strain.

Savory dishes

Used sparingly, orange mint can go anywhere ordinary mint would: salads, grain salads, a vinaigrette, or with lamb. Its perfume comes on stronger than spearmint’s there, so start with less and add more at the table.

Using it in place of other mints

• For peppermint. The two can trade places in desserts and teas, but you’ll get floral instead of cool, because orange mint lacks the menthol that defines peppermint.³¹ Ratio (Method): Start with the same volume of fresh leaves and adjust to taste.
• For “lemon mint” in a recipe. That’s very likely the same plant. Lemon mint is one of the names for M. aquatica var. citrata, the plant the 2008 study analyzed.³
• For lemon thyme or lemon basil. These are different plants with different flavors. Orange mint can cover the citrus note in a dessert or drink, but not the thyme or basil side. See lemon thyme and lemon basil.

You’ll hear that orange mint is unusually concentrated and easy to overdo. We found no source measuring its strength against other mints. The real risk is the type of flavor, not the dose: its perfume can take over a savory dish that expects ordinary mint.

Fresh vs. dried

For cooking, dried mint is a weak swap for fresh. America’s Test Kitchen lists mint among the herbs not to buy dried, because they’re much weaker that way.⁴ Dried orange mint still makes good tea, which is how Belsinger uses it.¹

Keeping orange mint

In the refrigerator. ATK wraps delicate herbs in slightly damp paper towels in an open zipper-lock bag, and warns that the leaves shouldn’t touch liquid, which encourages rot.⁵ More on how to store mint.

Freezing. Penn State Extension names mint among the herbs that freeze well. For ice cubes, half-fill a tray with water and put about a tablespoon of chopped herbs in each section. Frozen herbs swap in for fresh in the same proportion, should go into cooked dishes without thawing, and go limp when thawed.⁶ So frozen orange mint is fine for tea and sauces, less so for garnish. See can you freeze mint?

Drying. Mints hold a lot of moisture and will mold if they don’t dry quickly, so the National Center for Home Food Preservation (NCHFP) recommends drying them fast. A Wisconsin extension guide calls a dehydrator the best choice for these high-moisture herbs.⁹ NCHFP preheats the dehydrator to 95°F to 115°F.⁷ The sources disagree on the faster shortcuts:

For full instructions, see how to dry mint.

Herb vinegar. Colorado State University Extension lists mint among the fresh herbs for flavored vinegar. Its method uses 3 to 4 sprigs per pint, vinegar heated to just below boiling, sterilized containers, and at least 10 days for the flavor to develop. It gives the vinegar up to three months in a cool, dark place and six to eight months in the refrigerator, and says to throw out any batch that shows mold or fermentation.¹¹

Extracts. Lots of people suggest making orange mint “extract” by soaking leaves in vodka, but we found no tested method or timing from a food-safety or recipe source, so we’re not giving one.

Related pages

• Orange mint, watermint and types of mint
• Cooking with mint and mint uses
• Peppermint, spearmint and spearmint vs. peppermint
• Mint substitutes and too much mint

Footnotes

1. CJ Lotz Diego, “Meet the Mints”, Garden & Gun, 2017, quoting Susan Belsinger. gardenandgun.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

2. “Flavorful Herbs”, LSU AgCenter. lsuagcenter.com · Reference work ↩ ↩²

3. Zaks et al., “Biosynthesis of linalyl acetate and other terpenes in lemon mint (Mentha aquatica var. citrata, Lamiaceae) glandular trichomes”, Israel Journal of Plant Sciences, 2008. cris.haifa.ac.il · Peer-reviewed ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. Danielle Lapierre, “When You Should Actually Use Dried Herbs (and Which Ones to Avoid)”, America’s Test Kitchen, 2022. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩²

5. Liz Bomze, “Our Guide to Fresh Herbs”, America’s Test Kitchen, 2019. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. Martha Zepp, “Freezing Herbs”, Penn State Extension, 2025. extension.psu.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩²

7. “Drying Herbs”, National Center for Home Food Preservation. nchfp.uga.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

8. Sylvia Tomczak, “Why You Should Think Twice Before Muddling Mint In Your Next Mojito”, Tasting Table, 2024. tastingtable.com · Publication ↩

9. Susan Mahr, “Drying Herbs”, Wisconsin Master Gardener Program, 2012. mastergardener.extension.wisc.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³

10. “Let’s Preserve: Drying Herbs”, Penn State Extension, 2023. extension.psu.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩²

11. “Making Flavored Vinegar”, Fact Sheet 9.340, Colorado State University Extension, 2021. foodsmartcolorado.colostate.edu · Reference work ↩

Also drawn on

• Mentha aquatica L. var. citrata (Ehrh.) W. C. Werner, GRIN Taxonomy, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Germplasm Resources Information Network. npgsweb.ars-grin.gov
• Mentha × piperita f. citrata (eau de Cologne mint), Royal Horticultural Society. rhs.org.uk