Anise Seed Pimpinella anisum
The original liquorice flavour, and the one star anise is usually confused with. Different plant, different family, same compound.
Ingredient reference image: AI-generated. Recipe photography is my own.
In the kitchen
It belongs in baking
Anise seed runs through Mediterranean and Latin American baking — biscotti, pizzelle, springerle, pan de muerto, rosca. In most of those it is added whole to the dough and survives the bake intact.
Toast it lightly
Thirty seconds in a dry pan lifts the aroma noticeably. It is small and burns quickly, so keep the pan moving and stop the moment you can smell it.
Know which anise the recipe means
A recipe saying anise could mean this seed or star anise, and they are not interchangeable by volume. If it calls for stars, it means star anise; if it calls for a teaspoon, it almost certainly means this.
Beyond the kitchen
THE ANISE SPIRITS
Ouzo, raki, arak, sambuca, anisette, pastis and absinthe are all built on anise or its relatives, forming a near-continuous band of anise drinking around the Mediterranean from Spain to the Levant.
THE LOUCHE
Anethole dissolves in alcohol but not water, so adding water to ouzo or pastis drops it out of solution as a fine emulsion. That sudden cloudy white is called the louche, and it is straightforward physical chemistry.
ROMAN WEDDING CAKE
Pliny describes an anise-spiced cake, the mustaceum, served at the end of Roman wedding feasts to settle rich eating. It is frequently cited as an ancestor of the wedding cake tradition.
NOT LIQUORICE
Liquorice comes from the root of Glycyrrhiza glabra and gets its sweetness from glycyrrhizin, a different compound entirely. Most sweets sold as liquorice flavour are actually flavoured with anise or star anise.
A longer history
Pimpinella anisum is native to the eastern Mediterranean and Southwest Asia and was cultivated in Egypt, Greece and Rome. Egyptian records mention it, Greek writers describe it, and Roman cooking used it in both sweet and savoury dishes — Pliny's account of the anise-spiced wedding mustaceum is among the best-known references.
Arab traders and Roman cultivation spread it around the Mediterranean and into Europe, where it entered monastic gardens and medieval baking. Its most enduring legacy is in distilling: the band of anise-flavoured spirits running from Spanish anís through French pastis, Italian sambuca, Greek ouzo, Turkish raki and Levantine arak.
Spanish and Portuguese colonists carried it to the Americas, where it embedded in Mexican and South American baking. Production today is centred on Turkey, Egypt, Spain, Syria and Iran, and a large share of the crop goes to distilling rather than to kitchens.