… neutral. For some reason, I expected to be horrified and to run screaming into the woods. But it’s not at all scary.
I wouldn’t go out of my way to have it again, either.
I feel almost cheated.
I’ve only had the hard candy and only rarely can find it locally. Love the stuff.
What I have is a bag of the Claeys candy. That the stuff you like?
This is pretty much the same reaction I have. My dad, on the other hand, loves this stuff. I think I just have trouble parsing horehound as candy. It seems uncandylike somehow. I’m talking about the Claeys stuff. I don’t know if there might be some other kind of horehound.
I like it, but it gives me heart palpitations. At first, I didn’t know what was causing them. My cardiologist had me wear a portable monitor. Near the end of the monitoring period, I ran out of horehound, and the palpitations stopped.
It was the Claey’s horehound drops. Anybody else have that reaction?
Horehound, pffft. Try gentian, goldenseal or wormwood and get back to me. (BLECH!) 
**
Fear Itself**, I’m both surprised and not. Horehound has been shown to effective in *stopping *heart palpitations. But just as with many pharmaceuticals, often the cure can cause the symptom in a small proportion of people who try it. Weird, huh?
That’s the one.
I like but don’t love it. It’s medicinal tasting, and reminds me a bit of an earthy, rooty licorice, which I do love.
I buy it whenever I can find it.
I would describe the flavor as a cross between licorice and anise.
Damn. Now I want some.
It has a tea-like aftertaste as well. I like it, although admittedly I wanted to taste it first just because of the name.
What exactly is the difference in taste between licorice and anise anyway? Can’t say I’ve had both side-by-side to compare.
I find it to be rootbeer-esque.
I had no idea that horehound had an effect on the heart. I had an ablation done on my heart 2 years ago to stop an arrhythmia and now wonder if I should avoid the candy!
I love horehound but don’t think it tastes much like licorice or root beer. I loathe those flavors. But I usually eat Hammond’s and don’t particularly care for the Claeys. Thinking about it, part of the reason I like it so much may be that I only had it as a child at my Grandmother’s house. Kinda reminds me of cheerier days.
I like it. Tastes like tea to me.
If you haven’t been having problems, I wouldn’t worry about it. The dose of horehound in candy is far smaller than a therapeutic dose we’d use medicinally. General advice is that herbs at “culinary levels” are fine, even if they’re contraindicated at medicinal levels. So if you’re taking garlic at therapeutic levels, we want you to stop that 2 weeks before surgery to decrease bleeding risks, but you can certainly continue cooking with it or go out for a nice Italian meal the night before your surgery if you like.
Haven’t heard of that in years.
It IS made from the root of a plant, of course. Whenever I’ve heard “horehound” I think about McKinley Kantor’s novel, Andersonville, about the infamous Civil War prisoner camp for Union soldiers.
In the novel there’s a character named the widow Slatterly, a poor woman with a passel of poorly cared-for children who, to make ends meet (heh) provides her services to the troops.
One day one of the children has the rare occasion to go to town and is lucky enough to be given a piece of horehound candy. He is distracted by it’s name and associates it with his mother.
And that’s about all I’ve got to say about horehound candy. . .
Heh. When I was in herb school, my mnemonic to remember the Latin name for horehound: You marry a bum, you get vulgare! (Marrubium vulgare)
(No, “vulgare” isn’t a real STD, but doesn’t it sound like it should be something you’d catch from a whore?)
Vulgare, oh!
But I remember horehound root beer from when I was a kid ( 60s ) and it made me want to run into the nearest forest and disappear for a while.
I always find it funky and a little bit off-putting when I put it in my mouth, and then 5 minutes later I’m thinking “this is the best stuff on Earth!”
Isn’t that what the widow Slatterly said?