November 19, 2008	Wednesday	Ziqa'ad 20, 1429

JIRNSUM (Netherlands): A black, chewy and often salty candy that turns most foreigners’ stomachs is savoured in near daily handfuls by the Dutch, who hardly leave home soil without it.

The average Dutchman eats about two kilograms of the sweet, referred to as “drop,” every year.

Despite health warnings about over-indulgence, 32,000 tonnes of drop were bought by 16 million citizens in 2007 costing some 155 million euros.

“When they try it, foreigners think we are crazy,” laughed managing director Jurgen van Krevel of drop manufacturer Concorp.

“Every country has its own tastes. In Holland, we are raised with drop, like chocolate in Belgium,” he said in an interview.

“Eighty per cent of Dutch people take drop with them on holiday, and it’s one of the things expats miss the most.”

Vaguely similar to liquorice but much more pungent, Dutch drop is a concoction of sugar, water, glucose syrup, gelatin, Arabica gum, starch and most importantly a powder made from the roots of the liquorice plant.

There are hundreds of types of drop in the Netherlands, ranging from aniseed, menthol, eucalyptus and honey flavours on the sweeter side of the spectrum to salty and even extra salty – a variant also enjoyed in the Scandinavian countries.

It comes in the form of coins, ropes, logs, honeycombs, cars or animals, and can be bought from more than 80,000 vending points countrywide, including druggists, tobacco shops and movie theatres.

Drop accounts for a fifth of all confectionery sales in the Netherlands.

At the Concorp factory in Jirnsum in the Netherlands’ northern Friesland province, Van Krevel hands out samples almost apologetically. “Let me get you some water,” he anticipates while recounting earlier horrified reactions.

Han van der Horst, a historian and author on Dutch culture, says he is a fan of the double-salt variety.

“I always take some drop when I travel abroad, for myself but also because it opens doors when you visit Dutch people.”

Even nowadays, “when you are three years old, you get your first taste of drop”.

The delicacy also creates opportunity for amusement, chuckles the author, who enjoys offering drop to unsuspecting foreigners to see their faces contort in disgust.

Information provided by drop maker Venco cites the long history of liquorice root, originally hailed for its supposed medicinal properties.

Samples were discovered in the grave of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, dating back to the mid 1300s BC, and reference is made to liquorice in Babylonian-Assyrian cuneiform writings from 650 BC.

The earliest Dutch reference to the plant is found in 13th-century medical literature, and French military leader Napoleon is alleged to have given it to his troops against thirst.

Many Dutch still swear by a drop lozenge for a sore throat.

But experts have recently warned that the ingredient which gives drop its acquired taste, glycyrrhizin, may be dangerous if taken in large doses.

The substance, which is 50 times sweeter than cane sugar, can raise blood pressure.

At the Jirnsum factory, a syrup with a tar-like colour and consistency is poured from massive canisters into moulds to make thousands of drop candies a day. Staff are allowed to eat as much as they want, said Van Krevel, yet never say they get tired of it.

“Even though I have to eat it every day, I still keep a box for snacking after lunch,” said Concorp’s professional drop taster Klaas Kingma.—AFP