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In the pantheon of "acquired tastes" - natto, Scotch, chitlins, bitter melon - salty licorice definitely deserves a throne. This northern and western European favorite, also known as salmiak, doesn't really taste like anything else I associate with the word "food." That's not to say it's bad - after years of licorice-eating, I've come around to its acrid, ammonia-laced punch. But I've only recently learned what makes it taste the way it does.
It's not salt. Well, it's not NaCl - sodium chloride - the stuff that's in our salt shakers. Despite the name "salty licorice" and the definite saline flavor, the "salt" in salmiak comes from ammonium chloride, also known as sal ammoniac, a mildly acidic salt of ammonia. It's pungent, peppery stuff - a bag of strong salmiak smells like something wafting out of test tube in Chem 101.
Popular type of salty licorice include diamond-shaped Dutch double salt disks, Dutch cat-shaped drops, soft Finnish salmiak bars, and hard Swedish "Turkish pepper" pastilles.
