Few lollies divide a room quite like liquorice. You either adore it or you politely leave it at the bottom of the bag — there doesn't seem to be much middle ground. But whichever camp you're in, it's hard to deny that liquorice has one of the longest, strangest and most well-travelled histories of any sweet on the shelf. It's been dug out of an Egyptian pharaoh's tomb, prescribed by ancient physicians, stamped with a castle seal by Yorkshire apothecaries, and, eventually, turned into the chewy black lolly Australians can't seem to get enough of.
So let's follow the root all the way from ancient medicine cabinets to the modern lolly jar.
An ancient sweet root
Liquorice comes from the root of Glycyrrhiza glabra, a flowering member of the bean family whose name literally means "sweet root" — from the Ancient Greek glykys (sweet) and rhiza (root), according to Britannica. And people have been digging it up for a very long time. Liquorice root has a documented history of use across ancient Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, Arab, Chinese, Tibetan and Indian cultures, primarily for medicinal purposes rather than as a treat.
One of the more famous pieces of evidence for its ancient popularity comes from Egypt. When Howard Carter's team opened the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, they found liquorice root among the treasures buried with the young pharaoh some 3,000 years earlier — historians have suggested it may have been intended as a sweet drink for the afterlife, though its exact purpose in the tomb isn't fully certain. In Chinese herbal medicine, meanwhile, a related species known as gancao ("sweet grass") has long been used as a harmonising ingredient in traditional formulas.
Medicine before confectionery
For most of its long history, liquorice wasn't eaten for fun at all — it was medicine. Traditional healers across multiple continents used it for coughs, sore throats, digestive complaints and respiratory conditions long before anyone thought to add sugar. The U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health notes that liquorice root's use for these purposes stretches back millennia, and modern research has confirmed the root really does contain active compounds — most notably glycyrrhizin, a substance up to 30 to 50 times sweeter than sugar.
That same compound is also why liquorice comes with a modern health warning: eating a lot of it, over a long period, can affect blood pressure and potassium levels, which is why health authorities recommend moderation, especially for people with heart conditions or high blood pressure, and particularly during pregnancy. A good reminder that even the sweetest treats have a history rooted in something a lot more serious.
Monks, castles and the birth of the Pontefract cake
So how did a medicinal root become a lolly? For that, we head to Pontefract, a market town in Yorkshire, England, that has been linked to liquorice for centuries. The exact origin story is a little hazy — some accounts credit the de Lacy family, who built Pontefract Castle, with bringing liquorice back from the Crusades, while others point to Dominican monks cultivating it in monastery gardens as early as the 1200s. What's better documented is that liquorice was being grown commercially in the area by the 1500s, and that by the 1600s and 1700s Pontefract's alluvial, limestone-rich soil had made it one of England's key liquorice-growing regions.
For a long time, this Pontefract liquorice stayed firmly medicinal — it was pressed into lozenges and dissolved in water to make "liquorice water", a folk remedy for coughs and colds. As early as 1612–1614, local landowner Sir George Savile began stamping liquorice paste discs with an image of Pontefract Castle, marking their origin and quality — the ancestor of the branded sweet stamp still used today.
The turning point came in 1760, when Pontefract apothecary George Dunhill reportedly had the idea to add sugar to the medicinal liquorice paste he sold. The result was a genuinely tasty sweet rather than a medicine you tolerated — and the Pontefract cake, that small, round, chewy liquorice lozenge, was born. Other confectioners followed: Firth's joined the liquorice trade in 1810, and by the late 19th century a dozen firms were producing liquorice sweets in the town, importing extra liquorice root from as far afield as Turkey to keep up with demand.
A liquorice timeline
- Ancient era: Liquorice root used medicinally across Egypt, Assyria, Greece, China, Tibet and India.
- c. 1200s–1500s: Liquorice cultivation established in England, likely via monastery gardens, with Pontefract becoming a key growing region.
- 1612–1614: Sir George Savile begins stamping liquorice lozenges with the Pontefract Castle seal.
- 1760: George Dunhill adds sugar to medicinal liquorice paste, creating the modern Pontefract cake.
- 1800s: Liquorice confectionery industry flourishes in Yorkshire and spreads with British migration around the world.
- 1957: Australian confectioner Darrell Lea reportedly creates soft-eating black liquorice by accident, after a batch didn't set the way it was supposed to.
Liquorice conquers the world
From Yorkshire, liquorice confectionery spread widely, and different countries made it their own. The Netherlands developed an enormous liquorice culture of its own, producing drop — liquorice sweets often mixed with mint, aniseed or, in the famous salty Dutch style, ammonium chloride. In the Middle East, dried liquorice root is used to make erq sous, a traditional liquorice drink. Liquorice extract has even been used well beyond confectionery, as a flavouring and moistening agent in some tobacco blends.
Australia's liquorice love affair
Which brings us to Australia, a country famously fond of a good liquorice lolly. British and European settlers arrived with an established taste for liquorice sweets, and local manufacturers ran with it. By the late 1950s, Allen's had become the majority shareholder of the Australian Licorice Company and reportedly held around 85 percent of the Australian liquorice market at one point. Meanwhile, in 1957, Sydney confectioner Darrell Lea is said to have stumbled onto something special: a batch of liquorice that didn't set into the usual firm, chewy texture. Rather than toss it out, the company gave it away — and customers loved the softer, melt-in-the-mouth result so much that soft-eating liquorice became a signature Australian style, one that's now sold well beyond our shores.
From root to lolly bag
It's a genuinely remarkable journey for one unassuming root — from ancient Egyptian tombs and Chinese medicine cabinets, through Yorkshire monastery gardens and apothecary shops, to the soft, chewy liquorice lollies Australians pile into their shopping baskets today. Next time you reach for a liquorice bullet, a strap or a good old-fashioned Pontefract cake, you're tasting a flavour with a genuinely ancient pedigree — even if these days it comes with a lot more sugar, and a lot less medicinal intent.
References
- Wikipedia. Liquorice.
- Wikipedia. Pontefract Cake.
- Wakefield Council, Museums and Castles. Liquorice Farming at Pontefract Castle.
- The Yorkshire Society. Pontefract Cakes — The Liquorice Lozenge and Its Yorkshire Heritage.
- U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Licorice Root: Usefulness and Safety.
- Licorice.com. The History of Licorice in Australia.
- Licorice.com. Did You Know That King Tut Loved Licorice?.