Clove Potpourri: A Dried Bowl and a Simmer Pot

Whole cloves are already generous with their scent; a bowl of them with orange peel and cinnamon will perfume a room for weeks. The question is what to do when the bowl begins to fade, and the answer is a few drops of clove oil, added in the right place. Here is a bowl blend, a refresh method, and a stovetop version for the days you want it all at once.

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A dried bowl for the coffee table

These are starting amounts for a medium bowl, worked out from ingredient logic. Everything except the oil comes from a grocery or craft shop.

2 cups dried orange slices
1 cup whole cloves
6 cinnamon sticks, broken in pieces
1 cup small pine cones or bark chips
1 cup dried cranberries or rosehips, for colour

Toss it together and set it out. Orange gives the sweetness, cinnamon the warmth, cloves the backbone, and the cones add texture. That is a perfectly good bowl without a drop of oil.

Building the bowl by eye

A wide, shallow dish shows off the ingredients better than a deep one. Start with the larger pieces, orange slices and cinnamon sticks, and let them lean against each other, then scatter the cones and cranberries between them. Last, trickle the cloves over the top so they settle into the gaps. Step back and look at it: you want a mix of colors and shapes, not a pile of one thing. Pick up a handful and smell it before you set the bowl down. If the cloves dominate, add more orange next time.

Refreshing it, the tidy way

When the scent flattens, 10 to 20 drops of clove oil in total is plenty for a bowl this size. The usual advice is to drizzle it across the top, but oil pools on whatever is beneath it and the first pieces you pick up carry the most. Do it this way instead: put only the pine cones or bark chips in a glass jar, add the oil, close the lid and shake. Rough, porous pieces soak up oil far better than smooth fruit slices or whole cloves. Leave the jar closed overnight, then tuck the oiled pieces at the bottom of the bowl and pour the dry spices over them. The scent drifts up through the bowl and the surface stays dry to touch.

Set the bowl on a plate or glass dish, since oil can mark wood finishes and fabric. Wash your hands afterwards.

Small touches that make it feel finished

A few bay leaves or a sprig of dried rosemary add a green note, and a single tied bundle of cinnamon sticks looks lovely resting on top. If you are giving the bowl as a gift, spoon the dry mix into a clean jar, add a tag that says "for display, not for eating", and be clear about it, because a mix of dried fruit and spice looks a lot like snack food. Keep it out of damp corners, since moisture is what turns a bowl of spices from fragrant to musty.

Where the bowl lives matters

Clove oil is concentrated, so an oil-refreshed bowl belongs on a high shelf or in a room pets and small children do not visit. Pet Poison Helpline names cats and birds as the animals at greatest risk from essential oils and lists clove among them, and Poison Control advises keeping oils out of children's reach. If the bowl is within paw or toddler range, the whole-spice version is the one to make, and it will still smell lovely.

Bud or leaf in the bowl

We describe our clove bud oil as warm, rich and sweetly spicy, and our clove leaf oil as bolder, smokier and drier. With orange and cinnamon, we reach for the bud, because the sweetness sits so well with citrus peel. Leaf is a good choice if you like a deeper, smokier bowl built around cones and bark. Our bud versus leaf comparison goes into more detail.

The stovetop version

For an afternoon rather than a month, the same ingredients go in a pot: a handful of orange slices and cloves and a stick or two of cinnamon in a litre or two of water, kept at a bare simmer. Keep the water topped up and never leave the stove unattended. Our simmer pot recipes have five variations. Simmered material is wet, so do not return it to a closed bowl; it will go mouldy.

If you love scent but have asthma or are sensitive to fragrance, a bowl of whole spices set across the room is gentler than any oil. For room scenting with clove oil, we also have diffuser blends. A bowl that smells of oranges and cloves on the first cold evening is hard to beat.