Aniseed
Aniseed is the fruit derived from the flowering plant anise (Pimpinella anisum), which is native to the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean. Anise is an annual plant that grows to around 90cm in height.
It is mainly used as a sweet and aromatic spice, but also in confections, alcoholic drinks and as a medicine. The 1550 BCE Egyptian ‘Ebers Papyrus’ lists anise among its herbs and medicines. Herodotus observed that, on the death of a Scythian king, they cleaned out the inside of the belly and ‘fill the cavity with a preparation of chopped cypress, frankincense, parsley-seed, and anise-seed, after which they sew up the opening, enclose the body in wax, and, placing it on a wagon, carry it about through all the different tribes’. This was the start of an elaborate and brutal death ritual, which ends up with one of the king’s concubines and his servants being killed and placed around the grave.20Anise was listed among the aromatic plants in the scroll of the great library at Nineveh, Assyria (now better known as part of Mosul in Iraq), established by King Ashurbanipal (668–663 BCE). Theophrastus hailed the fragrance of anise.21 Pliny discussed the medicinal value of anise at length – he claimed the best anise came from Crete and, after that, Egypt.22 Remedies address a bewildering list of disorders, but at the end of this long list he adds the caveat, ‘however, it is injurious to the stomach, except when suffering from flatulency’.
Pliny also referred to its culinary value:
Both green and dried, it is held in high repute, as an ingredient in all seasonings and sauces, and we find it placed beneath the under-crust of bread. Put with bitter-almonds into the cloth strainers for filtering wine, it imparts an agreeable flavour to the wine: it has the effect, also, of sweetening the breath, and removing all bad odours from the mouth, if chewed in the morning with smyrnion [a herb] and a little honey, the mouth being then rinsed with wine.
Dioscorides noted that as well as sweetening the breath it had numerous medicinal qualities, including countering the poison of venomous animals, stopping intestinal discharges and promoting sexual union.23 The Romans used spiced anise cakes at the end of a ceremonial meal (e.g. weddings) to aid digestion – they were called mustaceoe.24 Apicius, the possible first-century CE gourmet author of the De Re Coquinaria collection of recipes (though they may have originated from as late as the fifth century CE), included it in recipes for laser sauce, in the stuffing of a pig’s paunch, and in pig and eel sauces.25 The Romans probably introduced anise to Britain.26
Oribasius, a fourth-century Greek physician, and compiler of the Medical Collections, included a recipe for anise wine.27 In seventh-century Greece a little anise was popular as an additive to bread, along with fennel seed and mastic (a resin from the mastic tree), and these are still in favour with many Aegean bakers.28 Charlemagne, in the ninth century, ordered anise to be grown on the Imperial farms.29
Anise appears in a small number of recipes in The Forme of Cury (1390).30 It wasn’t very common in late medieval recipes, occurring in less than 1 per cent of 1,377 recipes in a 2012 study, with a similar frequency for anise in confit.31 However, royalty was an exception – 28lb of aniseed (at a cost of 9s 4d) were used in the preparation of Richard III’s 1483 lavish coronation banquet.
Anise and cumin steeped in wine then dried and powdered were considered a cure for ‘wind that is the cause of colic’.32 Syr Thomas Elyot observed that ‘anyseede maketh swete breathe’.33 Andrew Boorde preferred aniseed comfits to peaches and medlars or other raw fruit at the end of meals.34 In Gerard’s Herball of 1597, aniseed, together with monks rhubarb, red madder, liquorice, senna, scabious and agrimony, steeped in 4 gallons of strong ale, makes a drink that ‘purifieth the bloud and makes yong wenches look faire and cherry-like’.35
Aniseed has long been a popular flavouring in sweet dishes.
It appears in recipes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries mainly for breads, biscuits, cordials, sweets and medicine.36 In the seventeenth century, chocolate became a popular drink in Europe and in early recipes aniseed and chili were included.37In 1727, Eliza Smith used aniseed in cordial recipes; similarly, twenty years later Hannah Glasse referred to it in distilled fruit and herb cordials such as black cherry water and ‘surfeit water’.38 Today, anise is also an ingredient in numerous spirits and alcoholic drinks around the world, including pastis and absinthe (France), arak (Middle East), ouzo (Greece), sambuca (Italy), raki (Turkey), chinchon (Spain) and several others.
Anise is one of the ingredients of the Chinese Five Spice mix. The main production today is from southern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan, China, Chile, Mexico and the United States.