Vikram Doctor, ET Bureau Aug 3, 2012, 12.15AM IST
Reading American comics like Archie and Dennis the Menace as a kid
required an ability to isolate
items that seemed to make no sense. These
American kids played cricket with a thick stick — OK, whatever.?!
And they ate peanut butter with jelly — how did they get the quivering
dessert which was what I knew as jelly to stick onto a slice of bread,
and did the peanut butter really help? But, fine, it was their taste.
And they washed this down with root beer — huh?! American kids drank beer? Made from roots?
I finally got to try it when I visited the US and it was a surprise. I
had learned by then that, sadly, commercially made root beer no longer
contained alcohol, but
this dark fizzy liquid looked like a cola. It
was, in fact, one of a number of drinks first concocted in 19th century
USA for medicinal purposes, which, with the addition of soda
water and much sugar, found even more popularity under names like Coca
Cola (which originally contained cocaine and cola nut extract)
and Pepsi
Cola (meant, as the name indicates, to help with dyspepsia).
Root beer was based on two very different plants which shared a similar herby sweetness —
the sassafras tree and the sarsaparilla
creeper. Both were used by Native Americans as medicinal herbs, and
were enthusiastically taken up by Europeans who presumably felt that
something so strong tasting must have benefits. They were both used as
medicines in their own right, and to flavour other, more bitter tasting
medicines, which is probably why they became less popular over time.
When the association of a taste is with something strongly medicinal,
you're likely to take against it (Coke and Pepsi avoided sarsaparilla
flavours for more citrusy ones, which is why they don't seem medicinal).
India too has sarsaparilla flavours in its herbarium. There are again
two herbs
with similar tastes and both were known to ayurveda before the British
discovered them and, confusingly, named them both Indian sarsaparilla
for their similarity to the American herb.
One is a
forest creeper called
Crytolepis buchanani,
but the more common one is Hemidesmus indicus, a shrub with slender
leaves that grows across much of India, and which is known by names like
anantamulor nannari. Dominik Wujastyk's The Roots of Ayurveda, a
selection of famous ayurvedic texts, lists both types of Indian
sarsaparilla as being the ingredients used at the start of making a
preparation known as the Great Good Luck Ghee.
As seems to be common to such
traditional medicines,
these herbs are credited with a bewildering range of benefits. One text
I found online described Indian sarsaparilla as being "aphrodisiac,
antipyretic, alexiteric, antidiarrhoeal, astringent..." and that's only
the As. I am no expert on the validity of any of this (though I didn't
notice anything in particular relating to the first term),
but the one
thing I can say for sure is that Indian sarsaparilla also tastes pretty
good.
In fact, it
tastes rather better than American
sarsaparilla, which has a certain bitter intensity that presumably
American kids have got used to while drinking root beer, but which can
come as a surprise to first time tasters. Indian sarsaparilla (meaning
Hemidesmus indicus) takes the basic herby sweetness of sarsaparilla, but
eliminates the bitter notes and adds on a wonderful aroma, part woody,
part vanilla.
When you try it you first get the intense herbal taste,
but after a couple of seconds a secondary aroma unfurls across your
palate and up your nose.
It is like smelling vanilla cookies, rum cakes and gingerbread being
baked in an old bakery with a wood burning stove. There is a parallel
here with the class of perfumes known as gourmand aromas for their
spicysweet food smells, of which Thierry Mugler's Angel is the best
known. They are fiercely polarising perfumes with some people adoring
them and other people unable to understand why anyone would want to
smell like a bakery. If you're in the first category, then Indian
sarsaparilla is for you.
As an ayurvedic herb Indian sarsaparilla
is known across the country, but as a beverage, known as nannari syrup,
it only seems to be popular in South India. Even here it is something
of a vanishing taste, with people remembering it from their childhood,
but rarely having tried it recently.
It does take getting used to
-the woody note, in particular, is almost too weird, but it is also
intriguing, so you keep trying it again and again to figure out if you
really like it, and before you know it you are hooked.
Nannari syrup is one of those things which you aren't entirely sure you like, and then before you know it you've finished most of the bottle.
To find it you have to go to places like
Matunga in Mumbai where South
Indian stores stock items you will get nowhere else in the city. (In
Chennai itself I couldn't it find it in most regular stores, until I
went to
Triplicane
in the old part of the city). A few stores may stock the syrup, but if
you want the roots you will have to go to Kannara Stores, a shop that
has a distinctly witchy air, with its boxes of dried roots, berries and
barks. The syrup is easiest to use, but I find is often made too sweet,
so it's not a bad idea to buy some roots and try making a more balanced
syrup yourself.
Nannari syrup is great to drink when it's hot, since
its woody notes are cooling. If you add it to soda you have root beer
better than any American kind, and I've also made a great cocktail by
adding a shot to sparkling white wine. But I also find it is good to
drink warm — brewing the roots into tea or adding the syrup to warm
milk. The warm, spicy vanilla smells are wonderfully soothing, good to
drink when even a monsoon as meagre as this one leaves its full
complement of colds and chills. Perhaps all those multiple health claims
for Indian sarsaparilla might be true, and this is the one medicine
that is really as good to drink as it is good for you.
Indian Sarsaparilla (Hemidesmus indicus)
The
plant Indian Sarsaparilla is grown for it's root. The extract taken
from the roots are the natural coolant and has a lot of medicinal
qualities.
This medicinal plant is native to South Asia. The
plant is a slender, laticiferous, twining shrub. The leaves are
opposite, short-petioled, elliptic-oblong to linear-lanceolate. The
roots are woody and aromatic. The inner part of the roots are white in
color and the outer part is brown in color. The root has a pleasant
odour with astringent taste.
Indian Sarsaparilla roots are mainly
used to make beverages. An extract is prepared from its roots by means
of steam distillation. It is then mixed with sugar or (
palm sugar),
water and citric acid proportionately to evolve a concentrate drink.
Sugar is added, since to remove the astringent taste from it. These
mixture acts as diaphoretic and also used as demulcent to relieve body
pain. It keeps the body cool. Besides, Indian Sarsaparilla root is
diuretic, as it tones up the urinary system and helps in preventing
stone formation. It also controls tonsillitis.
It is also a
component of several medicinal preparations in Ayurveda and administered
in the form of powder, infusion or decoction as syrup.
local name: nannari
[image: the roots of Indian Sarsaparilla plant]
