jujube

Ziziphus jujuba, dried into what the kitchen calls a red date, and filed botanically in the Rhamnaceae, the buckthorn family. Five teas in this library use it, always whole or halved rather than ground, and always alongside a floral or a root rather than carrying a cup on its own. Rose Milk Tea and its two variants, the original, the Upgraded Rose Milk Tea, and the Woman Well-Being Brew, each simmer three or four pieces into a rose-and-black-tea base. Lavender, Star Anise & Jujube slices two pieces into the pot, and Low Tide splits a single jujube open into a pot already busy with ginger, fennel and licorice.

What jujube gives the pot on simmering is a saponin-and-polysaccharide complex, the jujubosides, long used in Chinese herbal practice to settle the mind; in the recipes it reads mostly as body and a mellow, dried-fruit sweetness rather than a sharp flavor of its own, so it turns up beside stronger botanicals like rose, lavender and star anise rather than carrying a cup alone.