People are divided into those who love sweets and those who hates them. However, it happens that fans become haters and on the contrary.
Many people can not even look on lakrin sweets for a long time, once they have casually got mixed with weighed out sugar candies – they become pleasant! Then you cannot live without them for some months…
Now in Finland sweets and so-called salmiakki are sold. So “lakrik sweets” are made of natural liquorice, and samliakki– from artificial… There is no difference in price, but in different shops their exists different price for various weights. Usually a 200gm bag costs less than 2 euros.
Lakrik sweets happen to be the most freakish form – even in the form of a motorcycle with stuffings of different colors, it may be even both salty and sweet but all of them always with the same smack of children’s mixture. Several factories in Finland produce these sweets already for a long time becoming one of country symbols.
Many people think that this kind of sweets are purely Finnish “invention”. However, it has appeared that their history began very long time ago and far from Finland. The lakrik root was everywhere widespread delicacy in territory of China, before the time while this place was occupied with chocolate.
So, this products have extended on coast of Mediterranean sea, in the Near East and in Asia. Originally a liquorice was used as a medicine, internal and external. In Russia, by the way, it was also often used, for example, for cough. In 1200th years in the south to Europe they have started to cook an extract from a liquorice root… Transformation of a liquorice into a delicacy happened in England, in the end of 1700th years when they learnt to mix the sweet and the extract with a sugar syrup and flour. The most part of lakrik weights, nevertheless, went on manufacturing of tobacco products, instead of sweets. In tobacco products a syrup added for giving it a special taste.
These Finnish sweets had the same form for hundred years, were prepared constantly under the same recipe without change. The improved version delicacies were born in England; sweets began to be made with fillers.
Liquorice and lakric sweets came to Finland in 1920th years and at once have won national love as an inexpensive and useful natural delicacy. Finns have thought up even lacric vodka and liquor which weren’t estimated in the beginning, and returned to sale only in 1995. Liquor Salmiakki costs now from 5 euros to 0,5 l.
