Star anise has nearly pushed true anise out of Western kitchens
The liquorice note in ouzo, sambuca and pastis comes from anethole, a compound shared by Mediterranean anise and a Chinese spice from a completely unrelated plant. Star anise is cheaper to grow, and by 1999 the world made just 8 tons of anise oil against 400 tons from its Asian rival.
Pimpinella anisum is an annual herb of the carrot family, native to the eastern Mediterranean and Southwest Asia. It grows 60 to 90 cm tall, with simple lobed leaves near the ground and feathery ones higher up, and bears loose umbrella-shaped clusters of tiny white or yellow flowers. What cooks call aniseed is actually its fruit, a dry, curved, oblong capsule 4 to 6 mm long. The plant feeds the caterpillars of moths such as the wormwood pug.
The name took a detour through dill. It came via Old French from Latin anisum or anethum, borrowed from a Greek word that meant dill, and English once had an obsolete form, anet. First grown in the Middle East, anise has been farmed in Egypt for around 4,000 years and reached Europe as a medicinal plant. Gardeners sow it once spring soil warms, and because of its taproot it resents being moved.
Its sweet, aromatic seeds flavour teas and a long roll of sweets, from British aniseed balls to Italian pizzelle. Mexico uses it in atole de anis, and in India and Pakistan it is chewed as an after-dinner digestive. Italian sausage and pepperoni rely on it too, and fresh leaves go into salads and dips. Across the Mediterranean it defines clear spirits such as Turkish raki and Levantine arak, which turn milky when water is added, an effect called the louche or ouzo effect.
Older medicine prized it mostly for easing wind, as the herbalist John Gerard recorded in his Great Herball. Pliny the Elder described it as a remedy for sleeplessness and a breath freshener chewed with honey, and 19th-century pharmacists dispensed it as aqua anisi. Turkish folk practice has used the seeds to stimulate appetite. Those uses are historical accounts rather than proven treatments.
Source: Anise
