YahGarden

Herb library · Spice · Piper cubeba

Cubeb

The small, stalked berry of a Javanese pepper vine, once a common European spice and a medicine of Arabic, Indian and European doctors. There is no research on it in people: every study found is in the laboratory or in animals.

Traditional use

Arab physicians of the Middle Ages brought cubebs into medicine, and they appear in Sanskrit texts as kankola. In Europe they were used as a spice, and in the 1800s English medical officers in Java learned of their use from local servants and brought them back into European medicine. Culpeper wrote that cubebs expel wind and warm the stomach. Traditional uses center on digestion and breathing.

Traditional energetics

What studies show

No studies in people of this herb on its own yet. What is known of it comes from the traditions that use it.

  • Insufficient

    Any medical use: a 2022 review found many effects in laboratory and animal studies but says there are as yet no systematic data on how the body handles cubeb or on clinical research in people.

Be careful of

Cautions

  • NoteSafe medicinal amounts are not known: the 2022 review says more toxicity studies are needed before any use beyond cooking can be judged.
  • PregnancyNo pregnancy or breastfeeding safety information was found in the sources used here. Talk with your clinician first.
  • Ask a clinicianTalk with a clinician or pharmacist before using this if you take prescription medicines, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or are giving it to a child.

From the old books

What herbals and dispensaries of the past printed. History, in their words.

“In earlier times cubeb pepper was used in Europe as a spice, as it still is, to some extent, in the East.”
William Dymock, C. J. H. Warden and David Hooper, Pharmacographia Indica (1892), vol. 3, p. 181. See the page of Pharmacographia Indica, vol. 3, p. 181 (opens in a new tab) · Read the full passage from Pharmacographia Indica, vol. 3, p. 181
“Cubebs, are hot and dry in the third degree, they expel wind, and cleanse the stomach of tough and viscous humours”
Nicholas Culpeper, Culpeper's Complete Herbal (1814), p. 248. See the page of Culpeper's Complete Herbal, p. 248 (opens in a new tab) · Read the full passage from Culpeper's Complete Herbal, p. 248

Sources

  1. Cubeb (Piper cubeba L.f.): A comprehensive review of its botany, phytochemistry, traditional uses, and pharmacological properties (Front Nutr, 2022) — PubMed record (opens in a new tab) · NIH · read September 25, 2026

Reviewed September 25, 2026.