Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists have just caught up with something that Scandinavians have suspected strongly for over a century: Ammonium chloride (NH₄Cl) may be a basic taste, joining sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami.

Denizens of Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands gobble up the compound in “salmiak,” a salt licorice candy. But don’t be fooled by the “candy” label. As Andrew Richdale wrote for Saveur back in 2017, salmiak tastes nothing like any other candy you have ever tried.

“The first time I sampled salmiak… I spit it out on a Copenhagen street corner. It wasn’t that this powerful little pastille was bad. It’s just that my taste buds had never quite been lit up that way: smacked with a layer of sharp and sour salt dust, then soothed by something bitter and caramel-sweet. It felt simultaneously fascinating and… abusive? Or at least odd, like a knocked funny bone.”