Curly parsley is better than Italian flat-leaf. There, I said it.

By now, decades into Americans’ pursuit of cooking as a mainstream hobby, certain maxims have become near-law among food lovers.

Pasta water must be salted. Freshly ground pepper is better than the regular old dust in a jar. Fresh herbs and garlic are preferable to their dried counterparts.

Similarly, flat-leaf parsley’s superiority over the curly variety is a shibboleth among savvy cooks.

Curly parsley is remembered by most of today’s cooks as the stiff stuff that was used in whole sprigs and clusters to garnish plates of prime rib and Jell-O molds, perhaps alongside a desiccated orange slice or a radish scored to “resemble” a rose. It features prominently in the kind of concoctions that wind up on the Instagram account 70sdinner party, which is devoted to ogling unappetizing dishes of yore.

But I would like to posit something that might cause people to clutch their Le Creusets and Shun knives: Curly parsley is actually superior to its softer, more tender cousin.

I realize that I’m lonely on this frilly green hill upon which I will die, if necessary. By the turn of the 21st century, contemporary cooking authorities had deemed the taste of flat-leaf, also known as Italian, parsley to be unquestionably better. In its 2013 cookbook “Cooking School,” America’s Test Kitchen offered this snub to curly parsley with its flat-leaf endorsement: “We prefer flat-leafed (or Italian) parsley, which is more assertive than the curly-leaf parsley that once made its living as a ubiquitous restaurant garnish.” Our Lady of Good Taste Ina Garten always calls for flat-leaf.

Here we specify the variety when a recipe calls for parsley — and that variety is almost always flat-leaf.

But as far as flavor goes, with all due respect to the many experts who think otherwise, I don’t find a meaningful distinction. Flat-leaf might be bolder, but if anything, I like the subtlety of the curly variety — and if I want it to be more pronounced, well, I just throw on a little more.

There’s not always consensus on this, anyway. In online forums, some people declare curly to have a stronger flavor than flat, and others, like me, think it’s the other way around. Perhaps those differences in perception have to do not with the variety of herb but its age — after all, we are talking about produce, which can vary. As food scientist Harold McGee notes in his seminal “On Food and Cooking,” “flat leaves have a strong parsley flavor when young and later develop a woody note, while curly leaves start out mild and woody and develop the parsley character when more mature.”

Another major plus for Team Curly? I find it far easier to mince finely because of its more fibrous texture and fluffy shape. My knife goes through the leaves more cleanly than it does flat-leaf, which can bruise and leave knife marks where I didn’t quite manage to cut through. Flat-leaf can also stick to the cutting board and need to be scraped up.

I ran my pro-curly stance by Kenji Hurlburt, an instructor at the Culinary Institute of America, and while he was polite about it, he was unpersuaded. He recalled having a front-row seat to flat-leaf parsley’s ascendance. When he graduated from the institute in the mid-aughts, he said: “We were definitely starting to transition to flat-leaf parsley. It had a bolder flavor, more herbaceous. And it didn’t just, like, curl and frill and just do a bunch of weird things when you cut it.”

These days, Hurlburt said he avoids curly parsley.

Rose Previte, the restaurateur and chef behind Maydan in Washington and Maydan Market in Los Angeles, uses exclusively flat-leaf parsley in her restaurants. “But at home, sometimes I do use curly, I’m not going to lie,” she said. “Maybe I’m going to get in trouble for that, but I’m here for it.”

Growing up in Ohio, Previte said her Lebanese mother often used it for tabbouleh because it was available — along with other substitutes, such as Ben’s Original rice in place of basmati. “These things just kind of got into the cooking, even though back in Lebanon, it doesn’t really even exist there,” she said.

Curly parsley stays fresher longer, I find. Especially lately, I often see tender herbs such as Italian parsley and cilantro in the grocery aisle that are already wilted and even bearing spoiled leaves. Stores often mist their produce too enthusiastically, and flat-leaf parsley suffers more than curly from such baths.

The curly variety also holds up far better both in my crisper and post-chop than flat-leaf does. Now, I admit I don’t always practice the kind of storage that I know prolongs the life of tender herbs. Yes, I know that wrapping them in a damp paper towel and placing them in a baggie can extend their freshness. But some days, by the time I’m done with grocery shopping, I’m just pleased with myself for managing to put everything away at all, and my herbs simply get chucked without ceremony into the crisper. There, alas, they sometimes seem to convert to slime overnight — but not my curly friend.

Herbs that last only a day? In this economy? It’s not happening. The freshness factor might not be relevant to restaurants that cycle through produce quickly, but in my imperfect kitchen, longevity is a virtue.

I find that curly parsley even holds up well once it’s minced. I sometimes find myself mincing parsley for one dish and deciding to just go ahead and finish off the bunch. Then I’ll keep a ramekin of minced parsley in the fridge, covered in plastic wrap, and I’ll sprinkle it like fairy dust for days, instantly elevating whatever I’m serving, whether it’s humble scrambled eggs or a broiled salmon.

And that’s the thing about parsley. Unlike, say, tarragon or rosemary or basil, which can steer the flavor of a dish, it’s relatively neutral. Previte says she particularly likes using it on meat dishes to provide a fresh, bright contrast. “The parsley, she’s not going to hurt anybody,” she said. “She gets along with everybody.”

So why can’t curly parsley get a little more respect to go with those ruffles?