I've just been down a minor rabbit hole trying to understand why US-bought "Herbes de Provence" tasted so weird for me and made my croque monsieur taste off. The answer was both confusing and lovely.

I realize this is a very French thread, my apologies in advance.

As many others, the pandemic and closed borders means I've been separated from my family for almost a year. I'm homesick and clinging to whatever can bring a taste of home in NY. This has resulted in an increase in French cooking at home despite my being quite the incapable cook.

Hence my frequent use of the typical French spice blend Herbes de Provence. I usually bring some back from , but I've now officially run out and have been struggling with the ones I could find in the . I've tried a few! Different brands and blends: they all taste weird to me.

Herbes de Provence is actually fairly easy to find anywhere in the US (Julia Child is credited for popularizing the herb blend in the 1960s), and it’s usually a pretty straightforward mix of herbs such as thyme, rosemary and oregano.

I started considering making my own blend. As I looked up the different options I quickly found the suspect for the mystery taste of the US version (merci @Wikipedia):

I texted my dad to ask if it was normal to see LAVENDER in a Herbes de Provence blend

As predicted, he had plenty of feelings on the matter: "Lavender is to put under your pillow to sleep at night! Or in cakes! Not in a HDP blend! N'importe quoi!"

I looked up leading providers' HDPs on both sides of the Atlantic, and lavender was systematically in the US blends, and never in the French ones. I started wondering why? Lavender isn't particularly abundant in the US nor is it a particularly typical taste in foods, afaik.

I found a few articles suggesting that lavender got added to the US blend because tourists strongly associated Provence to the lavender fields, and it essentially made people feel good to see lavender in something labelled “Provence”. Then I suppose they got used to the taste.

(I get that. Lavender fields are gorgeous. Please enjoy this Google image-search screenshot as a proof of the stereotypical association AND as a reminder of their beauty! Google even autosuggests "lavender" as soon as you type "Provence".)

So in short, the visual appeal of the lavender fields and their association with Provence led to lavender being added to the traditional spice blend, creating a totally different product for the US market. As someone from Provence living in the US, I find this oddly fascinating.

(And yes it does mess up all the recipes that call for the normal blend. But you can easily recreate the blend by using getting the herbs yourself and assembling them!)