Licorice extract substitutes

The flavouring that most people actually mean when they say something tastes of licorice.

Best for

licorice candy, Scandinavian and Dutch baking, cookies, ice cream, frostings

This is the practical answer, and the reason it works is that most black licorice sweets in Europe are flavoured with anise oil rather than licorice root in the first place. Anise nails the aroma people identify as licorice, and it is stronger, so use less. What it lacks is body: licorice root is sweet and earthy with a slightly tannic finish, while anise is bright and thin, so a bake made with anise tastes more like an Italian anise biscuit and less like a Nordic licorice one. A teaspoon of dark molasses or black treacle per batch closes most of that gap.

The same plant in a different form, sold in health food shops and herbal suppliers.

Best for

syrups, custards and ice cream bases, poaching liquids, licorice candy

Flavour-wise this is the closest thing there is, because it is literally the source of the extract. Two practical differences. It does not dissolve in cold liquid, so steep it in a couple of tablespoons of very hot water for ten minutes first. And it is fibrous, so anything you want smooth needs straining through a fine sieve or a coffee filter, and a custard made without straining ends up faintly gritty and slightly cloudy.

A whole spice that gives a fuller, warmer version of the anise note.

Best for

syrups and glazes, poached fruit, custards and panna cotta, braises and mulled drinks

Rounder and warmer than anise extract, with a faint clove and cinnamon warmth behind the licorice character, and it fills out the middle of the flavour in a way extract cannot. It only works where there is liquid to steep in, so it is no help in a cookie dough. Take the pods out after ten minutes: left in, star anise turns bitter and starts tasting like a savoury braise.

The pantry option, in the same aromatic family but softer and greener.

Best for

cookies and shortbread, sweet breads, spice blends, poached fruit

Fennel sits in the same anethole family as anise and licorice, so it reads as related, but it is sweeter, greener and grassier and carries a savoury association from sausage and Italian bread. In a shortbread or a sweet bread it is genuinely lovely. In something meant to taste like licorice candy it is clearly the wrong thing, and no amount of it will get you there.

A liquid stand-in that also brings sugar and alcohol.

Best for

syrups, cake soaks, ganache and ice cream, adult desserts

Sambuca is the closest of the three because it is sweet and includes actual licorice-adjacent botanicals, while ouzo is drier and Pernod is more aggressively anise. The alcohol mostly cooks off in a baked good but does not in an uncooked frosting or mousse, where you will taste it clearly. Because a tablespoon is a meaningful amount of liquid, reduce another liquid in the recipe by the same amount.

The honest answer for salty licorice.

Best for

salmiakki, salty licorice candy, Nordic licorice ice cream

Salmiakki does not taste the way it does because of licorice. It tastes that way because of ammonium chloride, sal ammoniac, which delivers a sharp saline sting that nothing else in a kitchen reproduces. You can build the licorice half of the flavour with anise extract and licorice powder, and without sal ammoniac what you make is a dark licorice sweet, not salmiakki. Sal ammoniac is sold by Nordic and specialist candy suppliers, and it is worth ordering if that flavour is the point.