Dropwater ("licorice water") is a homemade Dutch drink made by dissolving licorice in water. It was mainly a children's drink, remembered by older generations as something you made yourself rather than bought, and it also had a reputation as a mild home remedy for coughs.
How it was made
Accounts collected by Dutch drugstores and local-history writers describe a simple method:
- Put a handful of laurierdrop (small, hard licorice discs or sticks), sometimes with a piece of licorice root (zoethout) and a little sugar or rock sugar (kandij), into a small bottle.
- Fill the bottle with water, close it and shake it hard.
- Leave it in a dark, cool place (a cupboard or the cellar) for a day or more, shaking it now and then, until the drop has dissolved.
The result is a dark brown, slightly sticky liquid that foams when shaken. Drugstores also sold ready-made mixes for dropwater, so that buyers only needed to add water.
"Schuimke trekken"
In Brabant, shaking the bottle and sucking off the black foam was known as schuimke trekken ("pulling the foam"); in Limburg the same pastime went by many local names, such as sjuumke trekke. The point was to make it last: you could shake and sip the foam many times before drinking the liquid itself. It is often described as a custom of families who could not afford to buy sweets regularly: a few cents' worth of laurierdrop went a long way once dissolved.
Dropwater today
Dropwater has largely disappeared as an everyday drink, though some licorice shops and drugstores still sell laurierdrop for the purpose, and commercial licorice syrups and drinks exist. If you try it, remember that dropwater is concentrated licorice: a bottle made from a large handful of drop contains as much glycyrrhizin as eating the drop itself. People with high blood pressure, and pregnant women, should be careful with large amounts (see licorice and health).