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Comment by WorldMaker | Hacker News Reader

The origin of salty licorice was as a throat lozenge (same reason a singer might gargle salt water ever so often to keep their throat healthy) in cold/freezing fishing waters. (The salt was the important bit, the licorice was just the flavor the fisherman really like to make it sweeter and easier to chew.) It wasn't invented to be an appetite suppressor, though for a lot of people it certainly is. (Not many people like salty licorice, given a choice.) (Also, ironically, salt in general is not an appetite suppressant and there are documentaries about why salt was added to so many foods to increase consumption.)

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> Not many people like salty licorice, given a choice

Whenever I read something weird like this I always need to remind myself to mentally add the quantifier "in America". Salty licorice is very popular in a number of European countries including mine (NL).

Are you sure it's "in America" and not "outside Europe"?

I live in Singapore, and whenever I bring some salty liquorice back from Sweden, my Indian friends are the ones who really enjoy it. I'm guessing that it's because it is a bit similar to Mukhwas.

So it's definitely not just Europe.

When I was in high school, one substitute teacher would try and get kids to compete over who could keep a piece of Dubbel Zout in their mouth the longest. I tapped into my Dutch ancestry and just calmly ate mine while everyone else seemed on the verge of tears.

Yeah I think it's just an acquired taste that American's don't acquire for lack of exposure.

I'm American but was so intrigued after finding it so unpalatable the first time I encountered the salmiak lakrids despite people clearly liking them. I was keen on finding out if it was just a matter of getting used to it.

Now I actually enjoy it and like it. I just still can't handle letting the stronger ones dissolve all the way. It's also very fun to give other Americans to try (I warn them) and see their reaction.

I’m from Minnesota, and my wife is Israeli. We were in Denmark a couple years ago and had occasion to pick up some salty Lakrids licorice. I love it. She thinks it’s vile. To each their own (especially if it means I get more licorice—although clearly in moderation)

There’s a great type of Swedish salty liquorice called “djungelvrål”, or “jungle roar”. It has a screaming monkey on the packet. It’s a bit like licking a battery, and once I got used to it I found it delicious. I recommend it. The first bite is rough.

Hyperpallatability is in part a function of achieving a particular ratio of sweet to savory that convinces some opportunistic mechanism in our lizard brains to gorge on this food because it's high-value and rare.

When they say "betcha can't eat just one" that's not a motto, it's a taunt (or a scientific fact, depending on your perspective).

> (Not many people like salty licorice, given a choice.)

That's about as sensible as saying "Not many people like salty popcorn".

Disclaimer: I've always loved salty licorice and I'm American

Black licorice is already a contentious flavor here, throwing a big pile of salt on it (however delicious that happens to be) further reduces the audience)

It's not salt. It's ammonium chloride. It's really really good actually.

It's not "salt" as in table salt / sodium chloride, but it is a salt.

And yes, it's great!

One of the weird things I’ve found traveling internationally is that salt & butter popcorn is apparently an American thing. In Asia and South America popcorn is almost always sweet. Salt & butter popcorn is one of those things you don’t realize how much you’ll miss it until you go to every market and movie theater in town and can’t find any popcorn that’s not sweet :-/

This is just not true. Salty popcorn is very normal in both Europe and Latin America. The artificial butter component is something that is more American and rarer outside of the US.

Real imitation artificial butter flavor... (from some Looney Tunes cartoon)

I can’t speak to Europe, and admittedly my Latin America experience is somewhat limited to Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, and my Asia experience is mostly China, Hong Kong, Korea, and Vietnam. I’m sure there are places where it’s possible to get salty popcorn, but I have found it incredibly frustratingly difficult to find popcorn that is not sweet on my travels. Often if I do find salty popcorn it will be sweet and salty. I certainly don’t like the popcorn I do find, and I get the impression people from those areas wouldn’t like the kind of popcorn that I enjoy. Which I think was the whole point of this subthread, that culinary preferences are often very regional and things we take for granted in one area might be very different elsewhere in ways we don’t expect. I certainly never anticipated what a quest I would have to mount to find something that seemed so pedestrian to me growing up: salt and butter popcorn

The "salt" in salty licorice isn't table salt like you'd use on popcorn, FYI. It's ammonium chloride. Literally tastes like ammonia. I'm sure it's an acquired taste (I had my first experience with it early this year), but it's frankly awful to my palate.

As a person from a tropical country, I was puzzled with all those salty "candy" sold in the west. I ate one and thought who the hell would eat this horrible salty candy on purpose? So those are actually good for the throat on freezing climate?

From a Nordic country myself and have never experienced that effect, nor heard of anyone who would eat it for that. We just like it for the taste. Getting a little more cautious from reading all the comments here though!

Don’t eat too much of the stuff in one go and you’ll be fine.

What does being from a tropical country have to do with it? I know plenty of tropical country that like salt lassi to which I had the same reaction (who would drink this horrible thing on purpose). But they do. It's a staple.

There might be some little bit salty and spicy drinks, but certainly there is no strong salty candies from where I come from. GP mentioned it might be beneficial in colder climate, which is probably why the culture around here never develops that kind of candies because there is no real need for it. Instead, we have no shortage of sour and spicy traditional candies and snack though.

Is there a brand of this you’d recommend. I love black licorice and salty foods, so naturally I’m curious to try this (in moderation).

There's a bunch of suggestions in the threads around here, but the key word to search for is generally "salmiak" [1]. You can order just about anything on Amazon these days, but if you wanted to check for local stores, try for specialty candy shops, especially those with a traditional nordic background or an adjacency to a major shipping wharf.

(I learned about it myself during a photo scavenger hunt in Seattle in college. I'm still amused by the photo from that where the rest of my scavenger hunt team was dying from taste, and I'm the only one enjoying it. There was a well known wharf candy shop we were directed to as the easiest place to buy it and get that photo op [and they were used to and amused by college kids making the stop].)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salty_liquorice

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