By Joel Denker
The tea I was enjoying had a tantalizingly sweet taste reminiscent of licorice. I had recently purchased a box of Royal Anise tea imported from Egypt and was sampling the soothing drink for the first time. The anise flavor was extracted from an ancient aromatic plant, probably native to Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean. Curious about my find, I asked the Egyptian counterman at the Astor Mediterranean, the Columbia road eatery that was a favorite haunt of mine, about the spice. It was a “pharmaceutical,” he responded, very pleasing to the stomach. Anise tea, I later learned, has been given for ages to babies with colic.
The flavor of anise was inseparable from its reputed curative powers. It was said to conquer flatulence, calm the stomach, and sweeten the breath. The spice acquired the nickname, solamen instestinorum, comforter of bowels.
The aromatic hot weather plant with its feathery leaves and clusters of yellowish flowers has the distinctive features of the carrot family, which includes coriander, cumin, parsley, and fennel among others. Its scent and flavor are created by anethole, the fragrant oil contained in its seeds or fruits. The pale yellow oil gives off the telltale smell of licorice. Anise, in fact, provides the taste in licorice candy (licorice is another plant altogether).
Its sweetness, thirteen times that of sugar according to scientist Harold McGee, derives from anethole. The oil, which makes anise so seductive to us, protects the plant by repelling insects.
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To learn more about anise, see The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat, coming in October from Rowman & Littlefield: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442248861/The-Carrot-Purple-and-Other-Curious-Stories-of-the-Food-We-Eat.
