There's fennel for you

Sometimes I feel like half of the things I write are just inside jokes that nobody but me is in on. That is not, as the sages say, a good way to rock and roll.

"There's fennel for you, and columbines: there's rue for you; and here's some for me: we may call it herb o' grace o' Sundays..." Ophelia, Hamlet IV:V

Fennel is an anomaly, at least thus far in my education - it is a a plant which we use as an herb, a spice, and a vegetable. Unlike coriander - whose herbal elements are so different from its spice...al.... elements that we call them by different names - fennel is just fennel. The leaves and the seeds don't have identical tastes, but they're variations on a theme rather than different flavor; you can substitute fennel seeds for fennel leaf in the exact same way you cannot substitute coriander for cilantro.

This week, I'm going to be focusing on fennel seeds. To be perfectly honest, my spice store doesn't sell the herbal form of fennel, and I couldn't find any at my local grocery store. I'm going to try to hit Whole Foods this week, and see if they've got it, but I'm not hopeful - I can't even find a place online that sells it. ("Outside of France, it is hard to get the dried fennel greens...") I just placed an order for a whole damn fennel plant - I'm somewhat dubious about what the odds of a plant surviving a trip through the USPS are, but what the hell. 

I'm not going to bother with the vegetable form, fennel bulb, because it's, well, a vegetable, not a spice. There is one more form you can get fennel in, as well - fennel pollen, which as far as I can tell is basically a super-potent form of the ground seed, which makes sense. It's pretty expensive - about ten times as expensive as the seed - which also makes sense. And, I don't see any real reason to bother with it, which is the third thing in a row which makes sense. Seriously, what's with things making sense all of a sudden.

Speaking of things making sense, Fennel has an extensive mythological history. Prometheus used the stalk of the fennel plant to carry stolen fire down from Mount Olympus. Why fennel? Well, giant fennel - not the kind we eat - is kind of a natural tiki torch. Its stalks can grow as large as fifteen feet tall, and it burns slowly. In other words, it was something that the ancient Greeks who wrote the myths actually used as torches. Way to spoil the magic, guys.

Dionysos had a staff which was a long, thick fennel stalk tipped with a pine cone. Hur, hur. Subtle, Dion. Grow up.

In Greek, fennel is called "marathon", and the city, the battle, and the subsequent type of foot-race all derive from this plant which used to grown in that area of Greece.

The ancient Egyptians considered fennel to be an aphrodisiac, which probably wasn't too far from the mark. Fennel has a fresh, licorice-like smell and taste; in modern India, people crunch fennel seeds after meals as breath freshener. And anyone will tell you that you're much more likely to get some action with fresh breath than without. Also in modern times, the Hippies use fennel in their toothpastes, but that just goes to show.

In the middle ages, fennel was hung over the door to ward off the devil, and fennel seeds placed in keyholes to keep ghosts from coming through them. Those people were, to be frank, idiots. Honestly, while the ghost thing makes sense - fennel smells really good, and any decent ghost would probably just sit in the keyhole, sniffing the fennel - how is fennel going to keep the devil out? Is he really likely to just take the fennel and go home and cook? Greece is really close to hell - back in those days, Greek heroes came and went all the time - so the devil has a ready source of high-quality fennel. Anyway, everyone knows the devil cooks almost exclusively with various hot sauces of his own infernal devising, and if you want to keep him away, you've got to hang wild garlic, which he can't really get down in hell.


I already mentioned that fennel has a very licorice-y taste. I actually don't like licorice at all, which spins my taste buds into confusion when I taste fennel. I'm pretty sure I really like it, but the fact that it tastes like licorice means that when I'm tasting it, I'm being reminded of something that I don't like. My working theory is that there are parts of the taste I identify as licorice that I like - but those parts are overwhelmingly strong. (Liquorice root itself contains a natural sugar fifty times sweeter than sucrose.) Fennel includes those tastes that I enjoy, but without the cloying taste of liquorice itself. (Or, in the case of twizzlers, the always-wonderful flavors of potassium sorbate and partially hydrogenated soybean oil.)

I've read fennel described as "anise-like" several times in the last few hours, but that's just dumb to me. Anise is a less-used spice than fennel, and a less common taste (at least among people I've met) than licorice... so unless the purpose is pure snobbery, why would you describe it using a term that people are less likely to be familiar with?

Fennel, Liquorice, and Anise - A Taster's Guide

Liquorice, the plant, is most commonly tasted in licorice, the candy - at least the variant we call "black licorice". Which is funny, because red licorice is simply a twisted candy rope, usually with cherry or strawberry flavor, made to look like licorice candy. But it's not actually flavored with any licorice, nor is it supposed to be. So "black licorice" is really just "licorice". And now the word "licorice" has lost all meaning, and I can't even tell if I'm spelling it right any more. I hate that.

Anise is the spice that gives its flavor to Sambuca, as well as Anis/Anisette, Ouzo, Raki, and a whole variety of other horrible, horrible liquors, depending on what country you're currently in. Star anise is an unrelated herb that tastes a lot like anise but is much cheaper, and so is often substituted. (It also has really cool star-shaped pods.)

Fennel is most commonly tasted as the primary spice in sweet Italian sausage.

None of these plants have any particularly close botanical relationship. What they do have in common is the organic compound para methoxy phenyl propene, or anethole, which is the common flavor that links all of them. Anethole is also extremely sweet - thirteen times as sweet as sugar - though not nearly as sweet as glycyrrhizin, the super-sweet sugar in liquorice. Anethole interacts with water oddly; it creates something called a microemulsion. Without making myself sound like an idiot by trying to explain chemistry I don't understand at all, I'll say it the easy way. When you pour a drink containing anethole into water, it clouds up. This is called the "ouzo effect", after the drink that it's most commonly seen in. However, it is also a characteristic of the anise liquors' sexy older cousin, absinthe. Absinthe is primarily flavored with three herbs - wormwood, which everyone knows, but also anise and fennel.

It's been a really long time since I've had absinthe, and I have to say, my reaction to it was pretty much the same as my reaction to sambuca, ouzo, and raki - disgust. However, since it's got fennel in it, I am willing - for your sake, dear reader - to see if my wonderful local liquor store has any of the new breed of absinthes that have been distilled since US law deregulated it a few years ago.


I want to go back to my music metaphor, because I've had one thought in my head the whole time I've been cooking with fennel. I've been comparing spices to instruments, to their roles in a band, but fennel is a person. Specifically, Clyde Stubblefield. I feel like I don't really know enough about either music or spices to make that claim, but there it is. Clyde Stubblefield was James Brown's drummer, and - no disrespect meant to the Godfather of Soul - probably is the hardest working man in show business. You've heard Stubblefield's drums a thousand times, even if you've never actually listened to James Brown, because his beat are considered the epitome of funky drumming (for a good example, see "The Funky Drummer") and he's been sampled more than anyone else on Earth.


Fennel makes me feel like I'm a young DJ, making my first record. I'm a kid, I'm just starting out, and I just heard this awesome drum beat on a CD my older brother gave me. I want to use it in everything - it's just so good, so fresh and unique. I want to share it with everyone - I want to be known as the guy who first understood how awesome this thing is, who first shared it with the world.

Hoo, boy, am I in for some disillusionment. Still, here's the thing about something that good - my record may not be as original or unique as I think, but it's still going to be good. As MC Frontalot says, you can always wring another single out of old Clyde Stubblefield. And over the next few days, I'm going to show you - with breathless excitement - a few recipes that really highlight the flavor and uniqueness of this spice.

Try not to laugh, okay?