Through the generosity of a Swedish colleague – Thanks Peter! – I now have several months’ supply of one of the mist horrible, disgusting-tasting but thoroughtly moreish candies on the planet: Läkerol Salmiak.
I first encountered the Scandic obsession with Ammonia flavouring from a Danish hacker/friend back in the mid-80s, who with great relish would tell anyone who’d listen about the Danish food and candies “cured or flavoured with Ammonia” with which the Scandic countries were obsessed, and which the rest of the fledgling European Union was trying to ban because it was bad for you.
These memories stayed at the back of my mind until a few years ago, on a business trip to Stockholm, where – looking to dump some spare local coinage in the airport – I encountered a wall of Läkerol candies/pastilles in varying flavours. [www.malacoleaf.com] [www.malacoleaf.com]
Reading the ingredients on the back of the packet I saw:
…, ammoniumklorid (== salmiak), …
…and so I just had to get one to try!
After all: ammonium-chloride-flavoured candies! What true geek could resist?
In retrospect this was probably a mistake, as they (a) taste disgusting, and (b) are incredibly addictive; I suspect that they are not alone in this quality, since most nations seem to have one/more supposedly medical candies that are – from the standpoint of the newcomer – subjectively awful-tasting (Fisherman’s Friend, Victory V, …) but I am willing to bet that Läkerol Salmiak is really close to the top of the global class.
The tablets are small, penny-sized chewable gums, and the initial hit of flavour is of liquorice and table salt, in vast quantity. You should only suck/eat one of these Läkerols at a time – to try more than two at once would possibly be terminal, and I speak as someone who has tried two.
Eating my compost heap would probably be more pleasant.
After a few seconds’ sucking, a cough-mixture flavour kicks-in – rather like Benylin or Nyquil – with a dash of gasoline and artificial sweetener, all of which riding just below the all-pervading flood of no-sodium salt flavour. Perhaps a touch of garlic-like acridity is in there, too.
These things would probably be quite good for you if you are an oral masochist with hypertension. With regard to its taste-appeal, possibly the same effect is at play here as with American salt water taffy, but Salmiak Liquorice is the very antithesis of salt water taffy – a dark, introverted, miserable Ingmar-Bermanesque plague victim to the American product’s blue-eyed farm boy.
Eventually, sadly, the liquorice softens and melts away; your tongue is left moderately darker. Your breath smells faintly like floor wax, and you feel like something is missing from your life.
…and then you want another one.
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