Carene

Sweet pine and cypress, with a lemon edge.

Pine again, but sweeter and thinner than pinene. Mediterranean cooking is the natural home — olive oil, lemon, rosemary, white fish. Do not expect much of it to survive a long bake.

In the kitchen

Goes early

These are the lightest compounds in the plant and they leave first. Decarbing costs you most of them before the fat is even involved — the coolest step on the schedule is 200 °F, and that is already well past where they start moving. If this is the aroma you want, it has to come back into the dish from somewhere else: fresh zest, fresh herbs, a spirit, stirred in off the heat.

Pure carene boils at 168 °C / 334 °F. That figure is the isolated compound at atmospheric pressure, not a threshold in a pan. Dissolved in fat it leaves gradually and the butter holds some of it the whole way — which is why the band above is the number to plan around and this one is only a bearing.

Cook it with

rosemary lemon bell pepper pine nut cypress white fish potato

The same compound is in pine, cypress, rosemary and bell pepper — which is the short version of why these pairings work. You are not matching a flavor to the cannabis, you are adding more of something the flower already tastes of.

Recipes that suit it

All recipes →

SauceLowNo cookNo smell

Basil pesto

Made in a food processor, no heat at all. Keeps a week in the fridge and doses pasta, eggs or bread by the spoonful.

Contains lemon juice, pine nuts or walnuts

Written for

2.5 mgper serving

8 servings · 10 min

DessertStandard

Apple crisp

Oat streusel over apples firm enough to hold their shape — Granny Smith or Braeburn, not a soft eating apple that collapses into sauce. Baked in ramekins, which takes the guesswork out of serving it.

Contains lemon juice

Written for

5 mgper ramekin

8 ramekins · 60 min

SideLow

Brown butter mashed potatoes

A side dish carrying a modest dose, for a table where not everyone wants dessert. The butter goes in off the heat.

Contains floury potatoes

Written for

2.5 mgper serving

6 servings · 35 min

AppetizerLowNo cookNo smell

Classic hummus

Canned chickpeas, tahini and ice water blended pale and light. Nothing is heated at any stage, which makes it one of the gentlest carriers on this site, and a scoop is easy to measure.

Contains lemon juice

Written for

2.5 mgper serving

16 servings · 20 min

SideLow

Garlic butter green beans

Blanched until they still snap, then tossed in infused butter off the heat. A side dish that carries a light dose for a table where not everyone wants a brownie.

Contains lemon juice

Written for

2.5 mgper serving

6 servings · 15 min

MainStandard

Garlic herb butter pasta

A ten-minute emulsified butter sauce built in the pan with pasta water. Dinner that happens to be dosed, rather than a dessert pretending to be dinner.

Contains lemon

Written for

5 mgper plate

4 plates · 17 min

Flower that carries it

From StrainTrackr. Each of these breeders named carene on their own product page — a claim about their cultivar, not a lab result. Most strains have no terpenes published at all, so this is a sample of what is documented rather than a ranking of what is strongest.