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Comment by mrarjen | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of feeding black licorice "Drop" to non Dutch people, make sure napkins or a trash can is nearby for them to spit it back out.

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Are those the really salty ones? I like black licorice, but have only ever enjoyed it with a sweetener.

I had what may be an equivalent experience when I gave a bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to my Italian hosts. One adventurous set of tastebuds out of the bunch had led me to believe they'd be a good gift. People were practically knocking each other over looking for a place to spit :-)

The chocolate in Reese’s replaces some of the delicious cocoa butter with something called PGPR. If you’re not used to it, it’s like eating chocolate flavored wax.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyglycerol_polyricinoleate

American and European chocolate are very different tastes.

https://www.gourmetboutique.net/blogs/tasting-room/17250043-...

very different is a pretty huge overstatement, and this article only describes the mandatory legal minimums. There is plenty of american chocholate (including easy to find mass market stuff) that meets or exceeds the european standards.

Probably more like to people not from northern Europe. In Sweden and licorice is very popular here, as well as in Finland to my knowledge.

It's also very popular in Italy (SAILA Lquirizia Purissima — very powerful stuff!), so definitely not the Northern thing.

The northern (danish/swedish/finnish) things are liquirice candies salted with ammonium cloride, not black liquirice. Very, very different taste.

It's still black liquorice of course, but yes, it's salted with ammonium chloride.

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