the.com/star anise
a tiny wooden star that holds the molecule used to fight a global flu pandemic
means A star-shaped dried fruit from an evergreen tree, used as a warm, licorice-flavored spice in cooking and as a source of shikimic acid in medicine.
from The name is pure description stitched onto an old word: "anise" comes through Latin anisum from Greek anison, the name for the seed-spice the plant tastes like — though star anise (from the tree Illicium verum) is unrelated to true anise and only shares its sweet, licorice note. The "star" is the eye's honest report of the fruit's eight-pointed shape. The tree itself is native to southern China and Vietnam, where the spice has flavored food and medicine for centuries; Europeans met it via trade routes and named it for the flavor they recognized and the form they could see.
- tamiflu source
- shikimic acid for the antiviral comes from it
- not anise
- unrelated to anise, shares the flavor compound anethole
- five-spice anchor
- the dominant note in Chinese five-spice
- toxic cousin
- Japanese star anise is poisonous and looks identical
- magnolia kin
- botanically related to magnolias, not seeds at all
anethole from star anise — the essential oil compound (88% of star anise oil) that gives it licorice flavor, used in pastis and absinthe production