Most liquorice sweets get their flavour mainly from aniseed, not liquorice
The root of Glycyrrhiza glabra holds glycyrrhizin, a compound 30 to 50 times sweeter than sugar, with a slow, lingering taste. Yet many black sweets sold as liquorice contain little of it; aniseed oil does much of the work. Real liquorice goes into Dutch salty drop, Italian pastilles, Egyptian street drinks and tobacco.
Liquorice is a perennial member of the bean family, native to West and tropical Asia, North Africa and southern Europe. It grows to about a metre, with feathery leaves of 9 to 17 leaflets, purple to pale blue flowers and oblong pods. Its name travelled from the Greek glykyrrhiza, sweet root, through Late Latin, where the verb for becoming fluid nudged the spelling, reflecting how the sweetness is extracted. Growers favour deep, sunny, well-drained valleys and dig the roots in autumn two or three years after planting; Turkey, Greece, Iran and Iraq are among the producers.
Glycyrrhizin makes up 7 to 10 percent of the root, and flavonoids turn it yellow. Anethole, the compound behind aniseed's aroma, accounts for around 3 percent of the root's volatile scent. Much of the world's harvest flavours and moistens tobacco, from American blend cigarettes to chewing tobacco.
Tastes vary wildly by country. The Dutch eat drop in many forms, including zoute drop made salty with ammonium chloride, and Nordic countries share the taste for fierce salty sweets. Pontefract in Yorkshire pioneered liquorice mixed with sugar as a modern sweet, and in parts of northern England it is still nicknamed Spanish, supposedly after Spanish monks who grew the root at Rievaulx Abbey. Italians chew plain dried root or tiny black pieces of pure extract; Calabria makes a liqueur from it, and in Egypt and the Levant a drink of soaked root, baking soda and water is a Ramadan favourite.
The sweetness has a catch. In large amounts glycyrrhizin slows the breakdown of cortisol, so the body holds sodium and sheds potassium, which can raise blood pressure and cause weakness and swelling. The US Food and Drug Administration treats liquorice as safe in food when not eaten to excess, and some other regulators suggest no more than 100 to 200 milligrams of glycyrrhizin a day, roughly 70 to 150 grams of sweets. Research into medical uses remains too weak for firm conclusions.
Source: Liquorice
