Licorice: Dark Mystery of Industry

by WILLIAM W. WALKER

President, MacAndrews & Forbes Company

Licorice is at once the most mysterious and the most familiar of plants. The use and refinement of this sweet root have followed the march of civilization. Licorice was treasured by ancient man. In China the Buddhist priests used a liquid extracted from it in their ceremonies. The Scythians discovered that licorice quenched thirst: legend had it that Scythian warriors could go for twelve days without drink when supplied with licorice and mare’s-milk cheese.

In our time licorice is known to every American boy who has bought penny candy. In cough drops it has had a soothing effect on the mouth and throat, and the same properties have made it indispensable in almost all tobacco products. More than 90 per cent of the licorice extract processed in the United States today is consumed by the tobacco industry.

As the result of research and invention over the past four decades a number of diverse by-products have been created — fire-fighting foam, a compost for mushroom culture, paperboard for shipping cartons, insulation board resistant to sound, heat, and cold. Now the healing qualities of licorice are being analyzed and tested in the field of medicine, and it is here perhaps that it will find its greatest usefulness in the last half of the present century.

Where Licorice Is Found

Licorice has been grown in many parts of the world, as far north as England and the United States, but the primary supply still comes from the old countries around the Mediterranean — Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Syria — and from Iraq and parts of Russia and of China. Of these, the most important source of supply by far is Turkey and its Levantine neighbors.

The licorice plant is a leguminous shrub reaching a height of several feet. It sends down a taproot which develops a thicket of runners sometimes 25 feet long. When the tangled root is pulled out of the ground at harvest timeevery three or four years — some tendrils remain to carry on the propagation ot a new crop. Only the root ot the plant has commercial value.

The root is gathered from the riverbanks, where it grows profusely in frequently flooded land. It is hauled by camel, donkey, ox, and boat to collecting stations where it is baled for shipment to the factory.

The botanical name for licorice is Glycyrrhiza — a word derived from the Greek, meaning “sweet root.” The characteristic principle of the root is known in chemistry as glycyrrhizin, a substance nearly fifty times as sweet as cane sugar. The sweetness is still detectable in water at a dilution of one part in 20,000. It has the reputation of being the sweetest compound in nature.

How the Ancients Used It

The Indian prophet Brahma recommended licorice to his people as a tonic and as an elixir of life.

In China on the morning of Buddha’s birthday, a liquid extract obtained by steeping and soaking licorice root was poured over Buddha’s statue three times in quick succession. Meanwhile the priests chanted incantations and the worshipers prayed. The fluid that dripped from the image was caught and portioned out to the faithful for curative uses.

Egyptian hieroglyphics tell us that in the days of the Pharaohs, licorice root was mixed with water to produce a drink known as mai sus — still a perennial favorite refreshment among the Egyptian people. And Lord Carnarvon discovered a generous supply of the root in the tomb of King Tut-ankh-amen.

Licorice was an iron ration for the Scythians and for the armies of Alexander the Great, and the conquering Caesars regularly carried licorice root as an indispensable supply on their marches into Africa, Gaul, and Spain.

The Greek physicians of Aristotle’s day prescribed licorice for patients suffering from asthma, dry cough, and maladies of the chest. Mixed with honey it was also administered for wounds.

In the Dark Ages

In the Dark Ages, the lore of licorice was kept alive in the cloisters and monasteries of southern Europe by the monks who, in addition to their religious duties, administered to the sick. During the Renaissance it again became popular as a sweet medicine brought from the Orient. Cultivation was started in Italy and Spain and eventually extended to southern Germany and England.

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth the cultivation of licorice root was confined to a small area near Pontefract Castle. That was its chief source for the British Isles throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Licorice as a Candy

In the eighteenth century, George Dunhill, a chemist, decided that licorice extract had too strong a flavor to be used as a confection. He blended the extract with sugar, molasses, flour, and other ingredients and produced what were called Pontefract Cakes.

The popularity of Pontefract Cakes soon led to the production of other licorice confections, which today have a wide sale in Great Britain. Bassett’s Allsorts, which is a mixture of variously flavored licorice candies, was the result of an accidental mixing in a salesman’s sample case. Allsorts is vastly popular not only in England but also in the United States, Canada, and other countries. Last year the British consumed 813 pounds of licorice candies per thousand population, many times the amount used in the United States.

In the penny candy stores early in this century American boys were buying licorice whips, licorice shoestrings, licorice jujubes — and the kids loved them because they were chewy and lasted so long. What few people realize is that much of the candy which passes as licorice among the young citizenry contains little if any licorice. It draws its characteristic flavor from oil of anise which has long been confused with licorice because it is frequently used to give licorice confections a more aromatic character.

Another fact which will surprise the licoriceconsuming public is that candies containing the extract of (he sweet root need not be black. Pure licorice extract is a brownish black.

With the development of an easy-to-mix licorice syrup some years ago, the National Confectioners’ Association undertook to promote the manufacture and sale of new and improved forms of licorice candies and confections. Licorice has long been recognized as a valuable health ingredient in candy. As such, it deserves to find favor with millions of Americans who enjoyed the flavor of licorice in their youth. With an eye on the many people constantly reducing and denying themselves ordinary sweets, at least one American manufacturer proclaims the low-calorie virtue of his licorice candy.

In view of these trends in the American confectionery industry and the demonstrated popularity of British-made licorice sweets in the United States, it is safe to say that our candy lovers will be consuming more licorice in the future.

Licorice in Tobacco Products

Americans demand mildness in their tobacco products; and licorice, with its soothing effect, is one of the important ingredients that lend mildness to the most popular pipe tobaccos, cigars, and cigarettes in the United States.

Every manufacturer has his own exclusive blending formulas which, of course, are carefully guarded secrets of the trade. It is known, however, that licorice in varying amounts plays an important part in most — but not all — formulas.

In some tobacco products, the extract of licorice is present in relatively small amounts. This is especially true of many cigarette tobaccos. In other products — particularly plug for chewing licorice is present in such large quantities as to give the positive sweetness and pleasant flavor demanded by the users of this form of tobacco.

Some brands of pipe tobacco contain 5 to 10 per cent licorice. Plug tobacco may have as high as 20 per cent licorice content. Production of snuff, which is maintaining its popularity, especially throughout the South and Southwest, consumes large quantities of powdered licorice root and powdered licorice extract annually.

Licorice is used in tobacco products because of three properties which are not to be found in combination to the same degree in any other compound. It serves as a flavoring and sweetening agent. As a blending ingredient, it improves the quality of mildness. And it helps the tobacco to retain the proper amount of moisture and flexibility between the time of manufacture and its use by the consumer. Considering the American preference for sweetness and mildness, it is no accident that the manufacturers of the top-selling cigarettes in this country are also the largest consumers of licorice.

In the last ten years, MacAndrews & Forbes Company, Camden, N.J., the largest importer and processor of licorice root in the country, has sold annually some 20 million pounds of licorice products to the tobacco industry. It is a stable market which falls only when consumption of tobacco products drops off, and increases when tobacco sales gain or manufacturers add more licorice to their formulas.

Today, millions of Americans who associate the use of tobacco in one form or another with enjoyment and relaxation can thank licorice, to some degree, for the satisfaction they find.

Licorice in Modern Medicines

In the pharmaceutical field, licorice has been proved remarkably efficient in covering up the taste of bitter drugs. Its soothing properties, valued here as in tobacco manufacture, explain the wide use of licorice in cough syrups, throat lozenges, and pastilles.

While the pharmaceutical uses of licorice in the United States now require only one per cent of the extract processed here, consumption is expected to increase as research workers and clinical physicians in this country and throughout the world work to wrest from the root its medicinal secrets.

Research projects are now under way in this country and in Europe to test the properties of licorice and some of its derivatives in combating Addison’s disease, a form of anemia which has long baffled medical science. Some research, financed by the licorice industry itself, has resulted in favorable reports. But they are not yet conclusive. The reported use of licorice in healing of stomach ulcers is being seriously investigated.

It is difficult for many to believe that licorice — valued as medicine by emperors and slaves, kings and peasants, wisemen and soothsayers for forty centuries — is without properties of value in the modern surge forward of medical science. Perhaps in no other field will licorice emerge as a more bountiful servant to mankind when its full medicinal properties are finally revealed.

The By-products of Licorice

As a result of research experiments in the licorice industry over the last four decades, a number of products of great usefulness — serving widely separated fields —have been created. Two seemingly unrelated facts are responsible for the development of Foamite Firefoam. One of these is that a fire cannot continue to burn once oxygen is shut off. The other is that a foam of unusual staying power forms in the process of extracting licorice from the root.

When these facts were set up side by side and examined critically, the possibility of using the foam as a fire extinguisher was first considered feasible. Experiments soon revealed that boiling the licorice root after the primary extract had been drawn off resulted in a liquid of extraordinary foaming power. In this way, the spent root yielded a foaming agent which became the basic component in the now famous Foamite Firefoam. When projected on a fire, the foam blankets the flames and clings to the burning surfaces so stubbornly that oxygen is completely shut off. Even fires of great intensity, such as petroleum and chemical-liquid fires, are quickly quelled through this method.

A second major development resulting from a war on waste among the licorice industry’s research men involves a further use of the spent root. Experiments proved that an insulating board of great structural strength could be made from the tough fibers of the root.

Tests show that a sheet of this board a half-inch thick is equal to a stone, brick, or concrete wall six inches thick as insulation against noise, heat, and cold. The new product became an instantaneous hit with architects and builders for home and industrial construction.

Pulp made from the spent root of licorice is also used in the manufacture of paperboard. The tough root fibers give boxes made from the board unusual durability and rigidity.

Still another use for the fibers of the spent licorice root has been found in the manufacture of compost for mushroom culture. They are ideal for aeration of the compost nutriments, promoting tastier mushrooms with a chalky color.

Although the present proved and widespread uses of licorice and its by-products are not great in number, certainly the varied fields to which they have been adapted in the past quarter century suggest great possibilities in the years that lie ahead.

The Intimations of the Future

The research program in licorice, increasingly intensified over the past twenty-five years, has paid off, as already noted, in the development of commercial uses for every fiber of the root remaining after the extraction process.

Continuing research is directed toward increasing the consumption of licorice in the manufacture of products in which some is already used, toward improvement of the quality of these products, and toward the development of new products.

The use of more licorice is being encouraged in the manufacture of cigarettes and other tobacco products. The confectionery field in America is wide open to the development of new types of quality licorice candies made to suit American tastes. In recent years, ice cream and soft drink manufacturers have experimented with licorice as a flavoring.

In small quantities, licorice adds a hittersweetness to some types of chocolate and is credited with stabilizing fat dispersions, the cause of bloom — a grayish discoloration — on chocolate candy.

The antioxidant properties of licorice help to keep chewing gum fresh and flexible.

Medical research, with the encouragement of the licorice industry, is renewing and intensifying its efforts to crack the ancient secrets of licorice and emerge with scientifically established facts about licorice as a remedy.

The British use licorice as a flavoring and to stimulate and preserve the foam in stout, porter, and ale. American brewers may find a method of incorporating it in equivalent beverages here.

Licorice has been used to flavor bran flakes and other similar cereals, to age and mellow smoking pipes, to pickle sheet metals, to enhance fish and meat appetizers and sauces, to make light-density, air-pocketed foam boards.

Manufacturers use licorice as sweetening, a mild tonic, and a regulator in feed for cattle, horses, and chickens. The American Pharmaceutical Association sponsors a formula containing a large percentage of licorice as a remedy for roup, an infectious disease of poultry.

In agriculture, licorice has been used in connection with colloidal sulphur as a dispersing agent in sprays in which its adhesive and wetting qualities also add to the effectiveness of the mixture.

A patent has been issued on the use of licorice for stabilizing acid latex and a method of manufacture. Considerable experimental work has been done in using licorice as a flotation agent in the separation of ores by gravity.

No one can say — at least no one in the licorice industry today is willing to hazard a guess where prospecting for new and better uses of the sweet root will end.

In an age in which test-tube miracles are the rule rather than the exception, when the literature runs panting in an effort to catch up with new processes, new products, and new applications, few things seem impossible.

What is in store for licorice, the solace of the mighty and the meek down the corridors of time, the familiar and the unknown, the untested gift of nature whose potential after thousands of years has only been glimpsed in the last forty?

Time alone will tell. But if the promise of an almost incredible past, the assurances of the last few years, and the determination of the licorice industry are any indication, a dormant giant may well spring into amazing activity in the service of mankind.