page_title: Liquorice
section_title: Food and confectionery
hierarchical_section_title: Liquorice / Cultivation and uses / Food and confectionery
caption_attribution_description: Coarsly grated radix of Glycyrrhiza glabra (Liquorice). Also called Liquiritiae radix according to the European Pharmacopoeia.
context_page_description: Liquorice or licorice is the common name of Glycyrrhiza glabra, a flowering plant of the bean family Fabaceae, from the root of which a sweet, aromatic flavouring can be extracted.
  The liquorice plant is a herbaceous perennial legume native to the Western Asia and southern Europe. It is not botanically related to anise, star anise or fennel, which are sources of similar flavouring compounds. Liquorice is used as a flavouring in candies and tobacco, particularly in some European and West Asian countries.
  Liquorice extracts have been used in herbalism and traditional medicine. Excessive consumption of liquorice may result in adverse effects, such as hypokalemia, increased blood pressure, and muscle weakness.
context_section_description: Liquorice flavour is found in a wide variety of candies or sweets. In most of these candies, the taste is reinforced by aniseed oil so the actual content of liquorice is very low. Liquorice confections are primarily purchased by consumers in Europe, but are also popular in other countries such as Australia and New Zealand.
  In the Netherlands, liquorice confectionery (drop) is one of the most popular forms of sweets. It is sold in many forms. Mixing it with mint, menthol, aniseed, or laurel is quite popular. Mixing it with ammonium chloride (salmiak) is also popular as it is in Finland. A popular example of salmiak liquorice in the Netherlands is known as zoute drop (salty liquorice), but contains very little salt, i.e., sodium chloride. Strong, salty sweets are also popular in Nordic countries where liquorice flavoured alcohols are also popular, particularly in Denmark and Finland.
  Dried sticks of the liquorice root are also a traditional confectionery in their own right in the Netherlands as were they once in Britain although their popularity has waned in recent decades. They were sold simply as sticks of zoethout ('sweet wood') to chew on as a candy. Through chewing and suckling, the intensely sweet flavour is released. The sweetness is 30 to 50 times as strong as sucrose, without causing damage to teeth. Since about the 1970s, zoethout has become rarer and been replaced by easier to consume candies (including 'drop').
  Pontefract in Yorkshire, England, was the first place where liquorice mixed with sugar began to be used as a sweet in the same way it is today.  Pontefract cakes were originally made there. In County Durham, Yorkshire and Lancashire, it is colloquially known as 'Spanish', supposedly because Spanish monks grew liquorice root at Rievaulx Abbey near Thirsk.
  In Italy (particularly in the south), Spain and France, liquorice is popular in its natural form. The root of the plant is simply dug up, washed, dried, and chewed as a mouth freshener. Throughout Italy, unsweetened liquorice is consumed in the form of small black pieces made only from 100% pure liquorice extract. In Calabria a popular liqueur is made from pure liquorice extract. Liquorice is used in Syria and Egypt, where it is sold as a drink, in shops as well as street vendors.
caption: Liquorice root chips
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