SALMIAKKI FROM A DESIGNER
WHO STRUGGLES TO EAT IT
“Strong salmiakki” pastille box, Image / Museum of Lappeenranta
Two hours after landing in Helsinki, my new chosen home for the next two years of my life, I made my way to Kaivopuisto park to meet some of my new classmates at a picnic organised for new students of Aalto. In true Finnish nature, I was offered many different snacks spread out on the picnic blanket, among them a mix of colourful candies. A selection of gummies in classic red, yellow, green...and black? How odd.
In an adventurous mindset (an urge to experience this new country in the most authentic way) I popped one into my mouth. Before even starting to chew, this tiny piece of rubbery candy filled my mouth with a stringent, metallic, herbal and, most surprisingly, very salty flavour. I tried to hide the pain in my face, with no luck, as a new Finnish classmate had already discovered my agony and laughed. It was my first piece of Salmiakki, and I did not enjoy it.
As the weeks went by, this flavour kept appearing: a professor bringing us Salmiakki-popsicles the first day of class, a new friend making me try the diamond-shaped pastil (“The mildest kind, I promise...” What a lie!). The stacked up aisle of Salmiakki products at my nearest K-Market. I found pastries with Salmiakki-crumble in a hip bakery in Kallio and saw a group of girls ordering Salmiakki-liquor shots on a night out. As Finnish as sauna, sisu, double apartment doors and Moomins (all of which I could get behind of), I had never been faced with a flavour as divisive, particular and, at the same time, as mainstream across a population.
Salmiakki is a form of salty liquorice, which is not only consumed in Finland, but does arguably have its most extensive fanbase here. There is salty liquorice in most of the Northern European countries, the Netherlands and Northern Germany, however in Finland it plays a bigger role in the population’s identity than I have experienced anywhere else. It is extraordinarily culturally specific: boxed up nostalgia based on childhood and site-specific memories and, in turn, it has become a part of national identity as it is shared among a big chunk of the population, no matter what age.
The salt in this particular kind of “sweet” is not your common table salt but ammonium chloride, a much more punchy kind of saltiness, which is regulated by the EU. Liquorice is excluded from this regulation: the result of a Finnish delegate explaining its importance in Brussels (Binelli, 2018). This is why you can choose from different grades of salt (mild, slightly salty, salty, extra salty, super salty, extremely salty...). It is not clear who is responsible for this pairing of liquorice and salt in history. Liquorice sweet-wood roots, glycyrrhiza glabra, were already used for medicinal purposes since ancient times (Furseth,2021). George Dunhill, an English apothecary, mixed it with sugar and created the first treat around 1760 (Binelli,2018). Pairing it with ammonium chloride could also be because of medical purposes such as a remedy for sore throats or the overall traditional use of salt in nordic cuisine, to preserve foods throughout the long and harsh winter.
“ Zebra Salmiakki”, Image / Turku City Museum
llustration by Carla Rotenberg
Salmiakki is often described as something you have to learn to like. It’s an “acquired taste”, a flavour most people are prone to dislike at first, and only grow to like through repeated exposure and/or because they are culturally significant in their environment. Many of these foods can often be described as “difficult” at first. Examples can be bitter, spicy, very salty or present textures, preparations and flavour combinations that can strike as very novel. If you remember the first time you tried a sip of wine, beer or coffee as a child and felt disgust: those three are considered acquired tastes as well. Interestingly, many of the acquired-taste foods, can also represent a sense of class and cultivation, for the people who like to consume them. If you consider examples such as wine tastings, caviar or sashimis, this might become clearer. While the taste of Salmiakki doesn’t necessarily divide between social classes (with exception of some gourmet versions), it can divide between Finns and not-Finns, insiders and outsiders.
Philosopher Carolyn Korsmeyer has been exploring the connection of literal taste and aesthetic taste in her writing. The parallel of art or design and food is very interesting in this case: just as you can train your eye to appreciate a wider sense of art, you can train your “gustatory palette” (Korsmeyer, 2018). In this sense, acquiring taste is not only aesthetic training, but a way of learning how to participate. It requires the person to sit with the emotions the art or the food arises, and this is key for people who are not just hungry to be satiated but to be stimulated. The un-pleasurable can become pleasurable, such as horror movies or roller coasters. A certain level of discomfort can make for richer experiences and engagement.
Simultaneously surpassing an initial disgust can lead to a wider world for fun exploration: specialty coffee roasters, or craft beer tastings, are both very much enjoyed by their connoisseurs. This is highlighted by the moment of consumption of these foods. Acquired taste-kinds of foods are many times consumed for the sake of a refined kind of pleasure, not for mere survival, meaning, the bodily need for calories. Eating some Salmiakki is usually a happy experience: there are no parents frustrated at their children for not finishing their bag of salty liquorice candy, as they would be at an untouched plate of broccoli. And if it’s not for happiness or joy, it's for play, challenge or a shared ritual. As someone encountering Salmiakki as an adult and from the outside, it makes me aware that what is being nourished is not taste alone, but a sense of continuity, something difficult to translate, but easy to feel when shared.
Then, there are those who take this moment of salty bliss to another level of collective care. Finland, the country of associations, has of course an association of Salmiakki: Suomen Salmiakkiyhdistys. On their website they write: “The Finnish Salty Liquorice Association is a non-profit consumer organisation, founded 1997 in Helsinki. Annually, we give the Salmiakki Finlandia Award for the best salty liquorice sweet of the year.” Their yearly gala counts with a liquorice buffet and locally designed trophy for the winning product.
A piece of Salmiakki flavoured candy does not exist in a vacuum. If it was, it’s “difficult taste” and need for exposure to become acquired, would make it less appealing. Instead, it is sustained by a surrounding culture that frames and repeats a flavour. In this sense Salmiakki can illustrate what design theorist Guy Julier describes as design culture: not only something produced by designers, but something that exists all around us, embedded in everyday systems and habits. No object is an island, and neither is food.
In this sense Salmiakki relies a great deal on design and it’s surrounding culture. Its status in Finnish society, even more so than other foods, is definitely a product of design. Design related to food, shapes how ingredients are sourced, transformed, consumed, and understood (Zampollo, 2023). Salmiakki exists in countless designed product formats: diamond-shaped candies, powders, pastilles, lollipops, ice creams, liquors, chocolates, sodas, barbecue sauces and even sauna fragrances. Designers are creating all the manufacturing tools: moulds, mixers, extruders, etc., needed for the production of any Salmiakki flavoured food. Visual designers work on packagings, mascots and patterns (such as Fazer’s iconic black&white diamond packaging with the red accents*), while retail designers curate the supermarket shelf to specialty store window displays. The candy is further extended through experiences and merchandise, from Fazer factory visits to knit-your-own Salmiakki socks, allowing this food to become something wearable and collectible.
Food, perhaps more than any other designed piece, has the ability to travel across borders and reach people far beyond its place of origin. And so it is no surprise that Finns abroad could bring it with them to recall a flavour from home, a culinary “business card”. As a foreigner living in Finland for the first time, it has become a metaphor for my experience here: at first glance somewhat serious and shy on the surface, much like the candy’s first appearance. But then when you bite into this candy: a very unexpected and fun extroversion, similar to when you enter a karaoke bar on a Friday night in downtown Helsinki.
So, have I acquired the taste of this treat? I’m afraid not yet. However I appreciate it more and more each time. Especially in Juuka Annala’s words (the Salty Liquorice Association President) “the “drama of the candy”(Binelli, 2018), has become part of my personal experience of the country. Since I have acquired an aesthetic and emotional taste for Finland, it is maybe only a question of time.
*) In 2015 the Finnish ministry even released a set of national emojis, including a woman eagerly eating Salmiakki diamonds holding them in both hands at once (Binelli, 2018). She seems to be having a great time.
Bibliography
Binelli, M. (2018, October 24). The saltier the licorice, the happier the country. Just look at Finland. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/24/magazine/candy-salty-licorice-finland-happiness.html
Furseth, J. (2021, August 24). Everything you always wanted to know about licorice. Eater. https://www.eater.com/22630998/what-is-licorice-salmiakki-how-to-use-cooking-recipes
Suomen Salmiakkiyhdistys.(n.d.) Info in English. https://salmiakki.fi/?page_id=186
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Julier, G. (2014) The Culture of Design, 3rd edition. London: Sage.
Korsmeyer, C. (2018). Taste and other senses: Reconsidering the foundations of aesthetics. The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, 26(54). https://doi.org/10.7146/nja.v26i54.103078
Teittinen, K. (2013, August 27). Specialising in fierce Finnish liquorice. thisisFINLAND. https://finland.fi/life-society/specialising-in-fierce-finnish-liquorice/
Wikimedia Foundation. (2024, October 25). Acquired taste.
Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquired_taste
Zampollo, Dr. F. (2023, August). What is food design? A description of the 14 food design sub-disciplines and how these intersect.