Thursday 17 June 2010

Licorice


Licorice! Some people love it (like me), others hate it. Licorice is a glossy, gelled candy with a semi-firm consistency that is flavored with licorice root extract. Typically, it is a moderately sweet candy, and is available in a variety of flavors such as black licorice, strawberry, cherry and chocolate. Extruded licorice candy is thought to have originated in the Netherlands at the start of the seventeenth century.

In the Netherlands, liquorice candy (which we call 'drop' over here) is one of the most popular forms of sweet. Mixing it with mint, menthol or laurel is popular, and mixing it with ammonium chloride creates the very popular salty liquorice known in Dutch as 'zoute drop' (salted licorice).

2 comment(s):

Pam Walter said...

Would love to taste the salty licorice. Will have to watch for it at World Market. www.satisfiedsole.com

Anonymous said...

In Australia, Dutch liquorice (which is what we call salted liquorice) is seen rarely. When we do see it, it's usually being handed out as a practical joke so we can see the expressions on people's faces as they spit it out.