We tried more of that curiously awful Scandinavian candy in the office yesterday. Tricia and Mike suffered through one Lakrisal wafer apiece.
Tricia said: "It's like you scraped soy sauce off the bottom of your pan after you burned it, and formed it into a lozenge, and stuck it into your mouth."
Mike: "I don't think this is meant to be candy."
But it is candy, this combination of sugar, licorice and ammonium chloride. Now we want to understand why the flavor is famously so tough for so many people. Our first inquiries yielded a few leads from you folks, for which we are grateful.
Photo: Wikipedia
Well, this is just a guess, but Ammonium Chloride is produced in nature by volcanos. it is also in that white powdery stuff left over when you burn charcoal. It used in explosives, fireworks, cough syrup and household cleaners.
So, yeah, it takes like drain cleaner.
@Pretzelogic in Philly, PA, wrote:
Only a further guess, but I'm pretty sure that ammonia, while not an inherent component of urine, isproduced by the bacterial breakdown of urine. So the scent of that ingredient would be reminiscent, e.g. of aging cat pee... (not that I let my little buddies' litter box go long enough to know from personal experience).
I am no food scientist or biologist but, my theory is that the ammonium chloride, being an electrolyte, enhances the piezoelectric reactions on the taste buds turning up their sensitivity. The enhanced sensitivity make the tastes buds signal bitter, sour, salty and sweet taste all at once with the combination of the former crowding out signals for sweet.
Our food science quest for the secret of Lakrisal continues. If you've got ideas and/or links, please hit the comments. Thank you.
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All I can say is, you have successfully made me really curious to try one of these, but I have no idea where I could get one.
I am going to take the completely un-scientific approach to ingredients and go with the cultural approach. As an example, I will use whale blubber to (maybe) prove my hypothesis. If you were to give most any American whale blubber, they would probably puke on the spot. But there are many Inuit people who grew up on it and, for them, it doesn't taste like butt.
Did you poison Steve with this stuff? Is that why he was "away from his desk"? :-)
@MsJoanne, Steve is sitting right here beside me. He's quite safe. He's the one who took the video, actually.
I will take your word for it, Laura. After following Steve's posts for something like seven years, whenever the man is "away from his desk" generally speaking something major happened.
I can't imagine what he's doing with all that weekend time. Please tell him I am glad he has his weekends back, but, weekends are a total bore now! (Hi Steve. {{waving}} )
Ammonium chloride is non-toxic but it will dissolve bone if you consume significant amounts for a long time.
About as dangerous as the phosphoric acid and burnt sugar used to flavor Coca Cola.
I completely agree that taste is cultural as in Chinese "sour plums". If you didn't eat these as a child, don't even try...and if you did, you will salivate just at the mention of them!
Cultural culinary preferences are widely varied.
I quite recently saw somewhere on the TeeVee a piece about eating insects. An actual restaurant- in America- was involved.
Apparently "bugs" are quite high in protein, and, given the way both the croplands and the seas are becoming wastelands, farm raised insects may soon be coming to your store shelves!
Hey, if they make them look like shrimp, we'll be chomping away!
Hey, there's Mike! I know you! ;-)
<waves>
Hey there, Chris!
You were very brave to eat that candy!
I love Lakrisal, but then again, I am Danish :)
IIRC Rachel isn't one for shots normally, but I'd recommend trying Hot&Sweet sometime if you can get it. It is basically vodka with crushed Turkish Pepper bonbons dissolved in it, which in turn are hot licorice hard candies with a filling of salmiak powder.
When I was a kid I was introduced to this by a friend whose parents had it mailed in from overseas. I loved the stuff for the same reason I loved sours - it was an extreme taste. There was a sense of pre-adolescent machismo to it. That said, for adults it is clearly an acquired taste that seldom pleases the first time it is encountered. Much like beer.
Those are ok but they are low budget lakrits, once the powder starts to disolve the salmiak dont taste that fresh. I can recomend "Pingvin Lakrits" its sold in most nordic tax-free places like airports. Salmiak lakrits is an aquierd taste outside of scandinavia aperently ;D I have given it to some britts and polish people before and one spit it out and litterly screamed that we're crazy ;D i think nsync tried it one time when they were on tour here in Sweden and visited a tv-show, it kinda freaked out too hehe.
BTW, whale blubber is purely awful, but when playing basketball in Alaska, we sometimes played against Barrow (they were in our Region). Long trip for the away games, let me tell you. And you'd house out with members of the opposing team on these trips.
So folks came back with stories of families trying to share something they called "Eskimo Ice Cream" with them. Some of my teammates had a chance to try some, and they still remembered the taste with horror years later.
Here's a recipe for it that uses Crisco instead of the whale blubber or seal fat purists swear by.
http://www.tartlittlepiggy.com/recipe/eskimo-ice-cream-aqutuk-recipe/
(the other downside for playing B-Ball against the Barrow girls is that, although most of their players were pretty short, they'd spend the endless night winters (very little daylight) in the gym, and they could just shoot the lights out, three-pointers, outside shots for days. Fun girls to play against, too.)
Those people eat lutefisk. What would you expect them to come up with for candy?
Not a fan of liquorish, I know I wouldn't like this candy. However, it can't taste any worse than some of that truly nasty cheap booze I used to drink that tasted like the inside of a burnt car tire.
It's cultural. Took me nearly two years of trying before I really enjoyed cilantro.
I can't stand cilantro. It tastes like a used bookstore smells.
To chime in on the food science discussion, the brain has a funny way of making you like certain foods based on nutrients you happen to be deficient in - either currently or chronically. To build off of docgroucho, it may be cultural in a sense that the people from Scandinavia may be deficient in certain chemicals contained in the candy - or extraneous chemicals that otherwise prove advantageous in that environment - that then makes the brain say, "Hey, this is a good thing. Do more of this."
Or it could just be from a region of sadomasochists. Your guess is as good as mine but, trust me, that is definitely not an acquired taste. I'd sooner acquire a taste for Coors Light.
In Sweden we have something called Lakerol - which is a much nicer version of this candy....I highly recommend it. It's much easier to swallow, so to speak!
I guess peeps are confusing the word candy with sweets. Candy can be other then sweet. Come to Sweden and taste the best candy in the world but yet it is probably gross for Americans. I tried your jelly beans, yuck soap... :) Give me salt licorice any day, and why not together with a good dry red wine. Those combos often tend to be really good :)
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In New York the best way to find Licorice candy is "Sockerbit"https://www.sockerbit.com/licorice.html?page=1 on 89 Christopher St. and yes there are better ones than Lakrisal. The best one is not to be found there unfortunately, the Turkish Pepper, invented by a Dane in the 70´s as "Tyrkisk Peber" That one in with vodka poured on top of it is a good shot - hopefully we'll see that one on a cocktail Friday with Rachel!