Liquorice
Also known as: licorice
The dried root of the liquorice plant, a perennial legume, valued in drinks for its intense, lingering natural sweetness and warm, faintly anise-like aroma. It is used whole, as chips, or as an extract in herbal infusions, chilled street drinks, soft drinks, root beers, beers, and anise-family aperitifs.
How liquorice is prepared
Liquorice is steeped cold or hot as a standalone infusion, such as the Levantine and Egyptian erq sous and the chilled summer drinks of southeastern Turkey. It also sweetens and rounds out herbal tea blends and is a traditional flavoring in root beer and other root-based sodas. In brewing it appears in dark beers such as porters and stouts, and it adds a characteristic note to pastis and some anise liqueurs. Salty liquorice (salmiak) flavors syrups, colas, and spirits in Northern Europe.
A process that vaporizes volatile compounds from a liquid and condenses them into a separate aromatic distillate.
EPICONE uses Distillation on Liquorice for Liquorice Distillate in FIRE.[6]
Service signal Works as a liquid component.
In depth
Ancient roots: a sweet stick against thirst
Liquorice entered drinking culture long before it became a candy. Its Greek name means simply 'sweet root', and classical writers already knew that chewing the root helped travelers and herders endure thirst. The Latin form of the word was later shaped by a verb meaning 'to become fluid', a nod to the old practice of soaking or boiling the root to draw out its sweetness. That water extraction is the ancestor of nearly every liquorice beverage that followed. Across the plant's native range, from the eastern Mediterranean through Mesopotamia and Persia, a simple steeping of the dried root in water served as both refreshment and remedy.[1]
East Asia: gancao in decoctions and herbal teas
In China a closely related species, Glycyrrhiza uralensis, is known as gancao, or 'sweet grass'. It has long been a staple of traditional herbal decoctions, where it is valued for softening bitter ingredients and, in traditional terms, for 'harmonizing' a formula. The same logic carries into the region's broader culture of medicinal herbal teas, in which a few slices of liquorice root sweeten and round out brews of bitter or cooling herbs without any added sugar. The medicinal claims behind these uses remain unproven by rigorous research, but gancao is still one of the most familiar flavors in East Asian herbal drinks.[1]
The Arab world and Turkey: erq sous and chilled summer drinks
The most celebrated traditional liquorice beverage comes from Egypt and the Levant. There, erq sous is made by soaking dried liquorice root in water, usually with a pinch of baking soda, which deepens the color and draws out more flavor. The dark, bittersweet, frothy liquid is served cold. It is especially associated with Ramadan, when it is drunk to break the fast, and in cities it is often poured by street vendors carrying large vessels on their backs. In southeastern Turkey, around Diyarbakır, liquorice root is likewise steeped into a cold drink taken mainly in the heat of summer, reflecting a shared regional habit of treating the root as a thirst-quencher.[1]
Medieval and early modern Europe: monks, 'Spanish', and dark beers
Liquorice cultivation spread north through Europe with monastic gardens. In northern England the root and its extract were long called 'Spanish', a name traditionally linked to Spanish monks who grew liquorice at a Yorkshire abbey. Beyond its role in the confectionery that later made Pontefract famous, liquorice extract became a brewer's tool. From at least the eighteenth century, English porter and stout brewers used it to add color, sweetness, and body to dark beers. Some traditional and modern stouts still include it. Children in northern England and the Low Countries also shook pieces of liquorice in bottles of water to make a homemade sweet drink, and dried root sticks were chewed as a treat.[1]
The Mediterranean anise tradition
Around the Mediterranean, liquorice became a supporting voice in the family of anise-flavored drinks. In France, pastis is legally defined as an anise spirit that also carries liquorice root flavor, which distinguishes it from absinthe, a spirit that traditionally uses no liquorice. Pastis is almost always diluted with several parts cold water, turning cloudy, and drunk as a refreshment on hot days in Provence. Italian sambuca may include liquorice among its optional botanicals. In southern Italy, Calabria is known for a liqueur made from pure liquorice extract, while Reggio Emilia has a traditional liquorice soft drink called acqua d'orcio. Because these anise-and-liquorice flavors are so familiar, they are increasingly echoed in alcohol-free aperitifs and cordials served with water or soda.[2]
Northern Europe: salty liquorice in drinks
In the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, and northern Germany, liquorice is often paired with sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride) to make the sharply salty, slightly astringent flavor known as salmiak. It likely began in pharmacies as a cough remedy and was being made as pastilles in several northern European countries by the 1930s. Salmiak has since moved from candy into the glass. It flavors syrups, cola-style soft drinks, and ice creams, as well as vodkas, liqueurs, and shots that are especially popular in Finland and Denmark. For drinkers raised on it, the salt-and-liquorice combination is a regional signature with no close equivalent elsewhere.[3]
North America: root beer and root sodas
In North America, liquorice root joined sassafras, sarsaparilla, wintergreen, birch, and other botanicals in root beer. The drink began as a lightly fermented small beer brewed at home from molasses, roots, and yeast, and usually contained no more than a couple of percent alcohol. By the nineteenth century it was sold as a syrup to mix with soda water and marketed partly as a health tonic. Non-alcoholic versions boomed during Prohibition. Liquorice contributes sweetness, depth, and a hint of anise, and it helps fill the flavor gap left after sassafras oil was restricted in commercial foods in 1960. Liquorice root remains a common ingredient in both craft and mass-market root beers, and in homemade brews made from whole roots.[4]
Today: herbal infusions and no- and low-alcohol drinks
In contemporary beverages, liquorice is most widely met as a tisane. It is sold as cut root for steeping on its own or blended with peppermint, fennel, ginger, cinnamon, fruit, and flowers, where it adds natural sweetness to caffeine-free infusions without sugar. Makers of alcohol-free spirits, botanical sodas, kombuchas, and cold brews use it the same way, to add body and a lingering sweet finish. The main limit on its use is its potency. Large or habitual amounts of glycyrrhizin can raise blood pressure and lower potassium, so strong liquorice drinks are best enjoyed in moderation and avoided in quantity during pregnancy.[5]
References
- [1]EncyclopediaLiquorice — Wikipedia↑§1↑§2↑§3↑§4
- [2]EncyclopediaPastis — Wikipedia↑§5
- [3]EncyclopediaSalty liquorice — Wikipedia↑§6
- [4]EncyclopediaRoot beer — Wikipedia↑§7
- [5]EncyclopediaHerbal tea — Wikipedia↑§8
- [6]Producerepicone.life↑prepared