Caraway is a plant; the part cooks use is the small brown seeds. The seeds smell warm and a little like anise or fennel, but they are their own taste — sharp, earthy, good in rye bread, cabbage, cheese, and some stews. It is a European kitchen spice more than a Taiwanese one, so you may know the bread more than the plant. The plant has fine leaves and umbels of tiny flowers, in the same broad family as parsley and carrot. Though actually, people often treat caraway, cumin, and fennel as if they were one spice. They are not. Cumin is hotter and more common in Indian and Mexican cooking; fennel is sweeter; caraway is the seed in a lot of Central and Northern European rye bread.