So black licorice tastes like death and our taste buds have a receptor for finding dying things. So many things to learn but can’t get over the fact that black licorice will get a lot of hate from this.
For anyone curious about the taste but not curious enough to try it, if you’ve ever had to rinse your mouth with tcp antiseptic liquid- it tastes kinda like that but saltier. Or like if rootbeer was salty instead of sweet.
Or like if rootbeer was salty instead of sweet.
I think your description might be better than mine. (I don’t remember my experience with licorice being salty so mine is like a gingerly, tingly sensation)
I’ll steal this one for the future when I explain it to newbs.
Salmiak is a black liquorice that’s processed with amonium chloride and salt. It isn’t the same thing as ordinary black liquorice sweets.
Is it edible?
Debatable: http://www.salmiyuck.com
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It is very popular flavour for candy in Scandinavia and some parts in North Europe. The varieties are endless, there’s even have salmiac chocolate and salmiac booze.
I think it is delicious. I also have foreign friends who have vomited after a taste.
In a great piece of N=1 research, I ate the stuff ALL the time as a kid, and I’m not dead yet. I’m dating myself a bit, but salmiak jars were great for bringing pogs to school.
Wait a second! Umami is considered a basic taste?
It’s under the ‘savory’ category
Thank you! I was wondering how a Japanese word could be a basic flavor that we don’t have defined, and why we wouldn’t have a word for it. Savory is it. Cheers!
The reason why umami is the word is because the scientists studying the flavour were Japanese so that’s what their paper used to name it. I think the term spread around in the food science world before actually making it down to the layman
Back in the very early 1900s, the Imperial Japanese University was trying to figure out what exactly the ‘core’ flavour of Dashi actually was, and how to make something that tastes only of that to serve as a building block (like how sugar is only sweet and citric acid is only sour). That flavour is umami, and that building block chemical is MSG. Kikunae Ikeda, the head researcher for the project, would then go on to found Ajinomoto using MSG as it’s base product, which is now a massive food conglomerate in Japan. It’s name is actually the Japanese word for MSG
MSG is Umami? I didn’t know that. I’ve always simmered various ingredients like dried mushrooms to achieve that flavor.
Yup - and given Dashi can have mushroom in it, you’re not too far off either recipe wise either
Same thing - those mushrooms have lots of glutamates.
Yeah it’s sort of taken over the word savory in culinary culture for the most part.
It’s not sweet, sour, bitter, or salty, so yeah
I need to find a good place to buy Salmiak in the UK… you just don’t get it here. You can find Liquorice, but a nicely enhanced Salmiak? Nope.
