Too Much Anise? How to Fix Over-Anised Sauces, Cookies and Breads

Cookies that taste of nothing but licorice? Too much anise seed does that to biscotti, bread and sauces alike. The fix is dilution, and if the dough isn’t baked yet, a second batch without anise will do it. Don’t reach for fennel or star anise to round it out, since they carry the same licorice note, and don’t simmer it longer hoping it cooks off. If your recipe called for the star-shaped pods, you want star anise instead, a different plant with its own fixes.

Quick answer

Why anise takes over

Anise gets its flavor from one dominant compound, anethole, the same one behind the licorice character of fennel seed and star anise.¹ With one compound doing most of the work, an overdose doesn’t taste more complex, as far as we can tell. It just tastes like more licorice.

It’s also easy to overdo in the first place. Anise is close in flavor to its relative fennel but stronger, so use it more sparingly.²

Sauces, soups, braises and syrups: dilute

Anise is common in meat and vegetable dishes around the Mediterranean and in Asia. In any wet dish, the fix is the same:

Add more of everything except the anise. More tomatoes or stock in a sauce, more liquid and vegetables in a braise, more sugar and water in a syrup. It’s the only fix that lowers the amount in each bite. If the pot won’t hold more, cook a second batch without anise and combine the two, the trick Tasting Table gives for too much garlic.³ Two equal batches halve the anise per serving.

Strain whole seeds. You can pour a broth, poaching liquid or syrup through a fine sieve to catch whole seeds. They stop adding flavor once they’re out, but whatever they’ve already released stays.

Cookies, biscotti and breads

Baked goods are where anise matters most. Aniseed is widely used to flavor pastries, and it’s the signature ingredient of the German bread Anisbrot. In ATK’s tests, tasters easily picked out the difference when fennel or anise was swapped in a biscotti recipe,¹ a sign that in a plain cookie the anise note stands almost alone.

Dough not yet baked. Make a second batch of dough without anise and knead or mix the two together. That’s dilution, same as a pot of sauce, and you get double the batch. It works for cookie dough and biscotti logs. For a yeast bread, both doughs need to be at a similar stage.

Already baked. You can’t take the anise out. Serve the cookies or bread with something plain alongside, like unflavored whipped cream, butter or plain yogurt, or use them in a dish where other ingredients spread the flavor out.

Check for a second anise source. ATK’s anise biscotti uses anise-flavored liqueur as well as seeds,⁴ and anise oil flavors liqueurs such as anisette and Pernod. If a recipe calls for both, cut back on both next time.

Bitter or harsh edge

If the dish tastes harsh or bitter as well as licorice-heavy, salt and sweetness are your best bets. In controlled taste tests with pure solutions, both sugar and sodium salts suppressed bitterness, and citric acid was the weakest.⁵ That was a lab study, not a test on anise. No source we found says anise seed itself tastes bitter.

Fixes that don’t hold up

Adding fennel or star anise to “round it out.” Both carry the same compound that gives anise its licorice note.¹ Adding either piles on more of what you’re trying to cut.

Simmering it longer to cook it off. We found no source that tests whether long cooking reduces anise flavor. Boiling a sauce or syrup down leaves the same anise in less liquid, which concentrates it.

A potato in the pot. The raw-potato trick comes from oversalted soup, and even there a Tasting Table writer who uses it calls it “more of an aid than a final answer.”⁶ Sara Moulton reports that potatoes in salty water soaked up some of the salty water instead of pulling out just the salt.⁷ We found no test of a potato against anise.

Safety: anise is not star anise

Too much anise seed is a flavor problem, and we found no regulator figure for an unsafe amount in cooking. The well-known safety warning in this family belongs to star anise. PROSEA warns not to confuse anise with the Chinese star anise tree, Illicium verum.⁸ In 2003 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration linked teas brewed from star anise to illnesses in about 40 people and said that Japanese star anise “has long been recognized as toxic in many countries.”⁹ That concern is about star anise products, not anise seed. More on the star anise vs. anise seed page.

Preventing it next time

Use a recipe amount as a yardstick. ATK’s Anise Biscotti uses 1 1/2 teaspoons of anise seeds, plus 1 1/2 teaspoons of anise-flavored liqueur, for 30 cookies.⁴ For ground anise in a dish with no recipe to follow, LSU AgCenter’s general advice is to start with 1/4 teaspoon of most ground spices and adjust.¹⁰

Cut back when anise replaces fennel. The Spice House says to start with half to three quarters of the fennel amount and adjust to taste.² If star anise is what you’ve got, The Spice House treats 1/2 teaspoon of anise seed as equal to one whole star.¹¹

Expect a fresh jar to be stronger. Anise is hard to store because its flavor oil drops off quickly.⁸ By our reading, that means a new jar may be noticeably stronger than the one it replaced, so taste before adding the full amount.

Related

• Anise seed and anise seed substitutes
• Star anise vs. anise seed, fennel seed vs. anise seed
• Star anise, fennel seed
• Too much dill, too much cumin