Licorice is a fun childhood candy, great after a grilled cheese sandwich!
Liquorice is a confectionery flavoured with the extract of the roots of the liquorice plant. A wide variety of liquorice sweets are produced around the world. In the U.S., liquorice is called black licorice (see also spelling differences), to distinguish it from similar confectionery varieties that are not flavoured with liquorice extract, and commonly manufactured in the form of chewy ropes or tubes. Most popular in the United Kingdom are liquorice allsorts. Dutch and Nordic liquorice characteristically contains ammonium chloride instead of sodium chloride, prominently so in salty liquorice.
The essential ingredients of liquorice candy are liquorice extract, sugar, and a binder. The binder is typically starch/flour, gum arabic, or gelatin, or a combination thereof. Additional ingredients are extra flavouring, beeswax for a shiny surface, ammonium chloride, and molasses to give the end product the familiar black color.(Ammonium chloride is mainly used in salty liquorice candy, with concentrations up to about 8 percent. However, even regular liquorice candy can contain up to 2 percent ammonium chloride, the taste of which is less prominent due to the higher sugar concentration.) Some liquorice candy is flavored with anise oil instead of or in combination with liquorice root extract.
Health benefits
The liquorice-root extract contains the natural sweetener glycyrrhizin, which is over 50 times sweeter than sucrose. This ingredient has acts as an expectorant (facilitating removal of mucus from the lungs by coughing) and that it increases blood pressure. Liquorice is also a mild laxative, and has several varied uses in herbal medicine. Alexander the Great supplied his troops with rations of liquorice root whilst marching, due to its thirst quenching qualities.
In Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom and the United States, there is also a product known as red liquorice, which is extruded in a way to resemble liquorice, but is made with strawberry, cherry, raspberry, or cinnamon flavourings as the main flavourings rather than liquorice. More recently similar products have been introduced in a wider variety of flavours including apple, mango, blackcurrant, and watermelon, among others. Twizzlers (by Hersheys) and Red Vines are the most well known product brands of this type in the United States; in Australia these are produced by Darrell Lea and several other companies. While the common name for this candy has now become "red liquorice", or often simply "liquorice", this candy has little connection to actual liquorice root in flavour. The term "black liquorice" (or "black licorice") would formerly have been redundant and has become a retronym in North America.
(Source: Wikipedia; photo credit: black liquorice straws, mariescandys.com; soft Salmiakki candy, halva.fi brand, from Finland, 250-gram package, , Wikipedia; a bag of red licorice, flickr, Wikipedia)
No comments:
Post a Comment