Either way you spell it, you either love that black candy or can’t get away fast enough. Amy dives into why.
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Episode Transcript:
Welcome to Brain Junk. I’m Trace Kerr, and I’m Amy Barton, and this is a Brain Storm. Actually this is a Brain Freeze Brain Storm.
TK: Yeah, this is our ice cream episode. Why do we not have ice cream? I’m all, where is my ice cream?
AB: Um, my pants aren’t fitting very well as it is. So no ice cream for us today.
TK:Um, I’m getting punished for that, but all right.
AB: It’s only going to be peripherally about ice cream for a brief moment.
TK: Okay.
AB: We went into the Brain Freeze Creamery, which I totally recommend are on Grand* here in Spokane. And the kids that were working there, they’re probably like 23, they’re not kids. The scoopers that were working that day were like offering us samples. And I’m cruising the case and I saw one called blackless licorice. I said, nah. And I looked down at the case and it’s white ice cream. So I asked the kid about it. I’m like, why didn’t, well, it’s not black. He’s like, licorice isn’t black. I said, no. So I’m going to blow the lid off the black licorice conspiracy for us today.
TK: Oh no!
AB: I know. Sit down, you black licorice eaters, it’s going to get crazy and wait till we get to red licorice, grab a tissue.
TK: I don’t want to talk about it.
AB: I know. So it turns out that the scoopers are right. Why would they not be, why would they lie about licorice is a root and it is indeed not black. It is a kind of a creamy white color. It’s okay. We’re going to do some pronouncing. I really looked hard for a pronunciation guide for this and there are none. They pronounce licorice for us. They show us the British spelling. They do not pronounce this name. So we’re going to try it. Here it is. I’m going to let you see it and you try it.
TK: This is my favorite part of Amy presentations is the Latin.
AB: What do you think? Is that about what you think that’s about right? Glycyrrhiza glabra, Glycyrrhiza uralensis and it’s a root that comes pretty much everywhere that doesn’t have a strong winter. Anything East of Europe and South. Oh. Uh, of not the Americas. So pretty much everywhere else. It’s big in Greece and Turkey. Asia, it is not anise oil and it’s not fennel. So it’s its own distinct similar flavor but its own thing.
TK: So anise and licorice are two separate critters.
AB: Yeah, no they do have, I believe they both have a common chemical in them. Um, but again it’s, it’s a white creamy looking root. It does have a brown skin on it. And so I went looking for like, why do we make it black? There’s not a lot of description online about why licorice is black. The biggest thing that I could find was that it was originally colored with the skin of the root, which is a medium brown color. And we hypothesize that they just intensified the color cause as chocolate became more popular, it’s not chocolate, but it’s brown.
TK: We have theories but not a lot of information.
AB: Yeah. You go to Google and you say, why is licorice blac...
