You may have already read my initial post on how much Dutch people love drop (licorice) but I have recently discovered that Dutch people have yet another licorice-related love: forcing drop onto unsuspecting foreigners.
I can only assume it is some sort of Dutch person taste-bud-superiority-test –“look at how we can devour this in-edible stuff with a smile on our face”. It is certainly safe to say that Dutch people get a serious kick out of watching non-Dutch people suffer while sucking drop.
While surfing the internets I recently came across an even more disturbing trend: Dutch people feeding Drop to non-Dutch people and recording it. Their victims span the globe (America, UK, Japan, France, etc.) and they are relentless in pursuit of their torturous crimes. Below are a few startling examples, and trust me, there are many many more to be found. The next time a smiling Dutch person offers you “a candy”, remember: you have been forewarned!
Oh, and if you have a minute, take our fun quiz! 😉 www.HowDutchAreYou.com
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My brothers and I love drop, my wife can’t stand it and won’t kiss me after I eat some (her loss). Anyway my story has to do with my brother Fred and his brother-in-law Paul. We were at our Mom’s home when Paul and his wife came over to help move. We were enjoying a little break and Mom brought out the drop she bought in Holland a few weeks earlier. Of course it was double zout. Paul asked what we were snaking on and I said “oh it’s the most delicious licorice in the world called drop”. he said “I love licorice, I’d like to try it (LMAO). So I gave him a piece and told him that careful it’s pretty salty and most Americans just can’t take it. He said no problem I can handle it. I told him this is like gold to us so if you don’t like it you still have to eat it and no spitting it out. He said Ok.
Well he took the piece of drop in his mouth and I thought his eyes were going to pop out. He said this is terrible how the heck can you eat this? I said ok so drink some water and it will get sweeter (LMAO), he gets a huge glass of ice water drinks it down and yells “Darn it, this is not getting any sweeter…” to which we all busted out laughing. To his credit, he did not spit it out and to this day we still remind him that if he drinks water with his drop, it will get sweeter. HA HA HA HA HA
I’m an 86 year old American and I like Drops, especially the dubblezout. It reminds me of the real licorice we used to be able to buy when I was a kid.
WE <3 DROP!
Hahahaha! The first time I was offered drop by my Dutch colleagues here in Aus, I accepted politely, believing it to be the same as the American, twisty, chewy, yummy variety of Licorice but smaller……. WRONG!!!!!
I havent touched the stuff since… and every colleague in the office has a packet in their drawer!
Feeding drop to people is a great way of finding out if people are strangers. If they like drop, they are dutch. If they don’t like it, they are not. During the second world war they checked for German spies having them say “Scheveningen” and giving them drop.
i knew about scheveningen but not about drop, haha briljant 😀
Hahahha all funny
I am Dutch. and admitting I hate it.
I do not understand how ppl can eat it either
how ever I bought and send it to my canadian friend. She didn’t like it either, but her father did
hahha too cool this site.
I f’ing hate drop! And I hate haring, too. Yet I’m dutch.
This post reminds me of another (I think) typical dutch thing: having foreigners try to pronounce dutch words (“Can you say drop? Say drop! Drop!”)
I do this! Sorry, but it’s just too hilarious :-))
G#dd*mmit, now I’ve been stuck on this GREAT site for the last hour, I should be in bed, and now you’ve made me think of drop! I have NONE in the house, I just double checked: NONE! Bugger!
Thanks…NOT!
I read the comments and am sitting here, without drop, but I can just taste it. That’s what I like about drop, if you take the first one you can already taste it before it enters the mouth and you already feel your jaws contracting in preparation of receiving this….it’s like an angel pooping on your tongue!
O and what you failed to mention, if you eat a lot of it (I can easily swallow a bag of 150 grams in a few minutes, yep drop is as addictive as cocaine but only for Dutch people though) your shit turns pitch black, like you’re shitting asphalt!
LMAO! Dropjes and our quaint little (Finnish) delicacy “salmiakki” are somewhat alike – and cause similar reactions on unsuspecting foreigners. Love the stuff.
As an Englishman living in Amsterdam, the only way to get your own back is with Marmite. I tell them it’s like appelstroop and have them dip a finger in. Vengeance is mine! hahahahahaha
We love marmite, especially on a cheese sandwich!
Lol, Marmite certainly can get you revenge. When i was young we had it in the kitchen and i thought it was stroop. WOW, that stuff is really nasty. It beats year old fermented fish. #yuk
My mother, Dutch living in New Zealand, used to call Marmite “poep”. She did like it. She’d say “I’ll have a cracker with poep”. But her mean thing to try out on foreigners was to get them to eat sambal, telling them it was jam! Now that is much worse than drop.
I like your mom!
Dam u its 2.30am you keep me up with your srotys and now you make me think of exstra salty drop i got to walk all the way downstairs to find somthing salt but i ate the last exstra salt a few days ago so now i need to take sweet drop or somthing else salt So i take the exstra sweet and mt mom comes down saying what are you doing up go brush ur teeh and im still hungry :'(
Just watching the videos makes my saliva glands hyper active. I love dubbelzoute drop.
My way of relaxing is a good book and half a kilo of drop near the chair …
I have to shamefully admit that I did this not too long ago! I LOVE salty liquorice and had my mum bring some over for me when she came to visit me (I live in England). The next day, I brought a pack into work and had all of my colleagues try some and I wish I had a camera to record the faces they pulled! It had me in stitches for hours! I guess I’m a stereotypical Dutch person when it comes to this 😉
This is just the funniest! (but I suspect only for Dutch people). More videos please!
I love the stuff and have some shipped over from Holland every couple of months.
When I was little I remember giving some DZ to our cocker spaniel. He loved it, but he was chewing for 20 minutes or so. Didn’t have a camera back then…. pity, and the dog passed away a long time ago (of old age, not a drop-related injury!)
I accidentally did this to a colleague – I had brought in my husband’s drop since the colleague claimed to like licorice. I *forgot* about the salty drop. We were in the middle of a very big meeting when my poor colleague got up and ran for the trashcan to spit out the salty drop!
I probably am one of the few dutch people who does not like drop…
It’s one of my favorite pasttimes! I give my friends molasses-salt balls all the time just to get some giggles!
And then there are salmiak-ballen en wiebertjes (tiny and highly concentrated diamond shaped dropjes) and the absolute worst thing ever invented: laurierdrop.
But at least we don`t feed colourful little peppers to our guests.
LOL OMG I remember this too! I learn dutch at a taalcentrum in my country and mijn lerares gave the whole class the drop. She told us that she got us gift from NL and we chew that together. While we chewing we just like looking at each other, feeling the ‘awfulness’ and then our teacher asked “Is that good? Lekker toch?” Too bad she didn’t record us 😛
I remember when I got to the Netherlands (I’m Brazilian) the first thing I was offered was “a sandwich” – and it came with hagelslag. It was very funny when my colleages finally decided to give me drop, the next day. I could see their expectation in their faces, they were just waiting for me to spit it… But I really like it! Now a days I’m a drop-addicted, living in a country where I cant find any =(
I actually didn’t have any strong impression about salty licorice when I tried it (admittedly, I purchased it, so it wasn’t unexpected). It was the salty chewy type, and I eventually concluded it was okay, and would probably grow on me if I was exposed to it often, which I am not. Then I offered it to my Grandma. She’d never had it before, but she *loves* the stuff. I should honestly probably get more next time I see some, because it’s the only candy I’ve seen her go after with such interest.
I am not dutch, yet I came across some Haringdrop in a Russian Grocer here in the US, and liking normal licorice a lot, I had no idea what it was, figuring it was just normal licorice. I was wrong, but not to my dismay, I love the stuff. I buy pounds of various styles of drop from importers whenever I run out now.
I knew they do this on purpose
This wouldn´t work with germans, I guess. I´m german and I love the zoute drop and also know a lot of germans who do (although I have to admit that I didn´t try the dubbelzoute variety..)
Too bad it causes the same health problems as lead paint. But hey – brain damage in kids! Fun!
I’m not Dutch and I love drop.
I am Dutch and I love drop. But I prefer the sweat drop, not the salt or double salt. If no other drop is available, that will do though 🙂
Currently binging on a bag of “Brussels manneke”-drop, by the way (just google it if you don’t know it, it’s delicious).
I’m not Dutch but I have loved double salt licorice from the first drop!
why are they all such a pussy about it, i love Drop! Doei.
I don’t mind drop. Kinda grew up with it, didn’t have much of a choice really. It is salty, that’s all. I guess what gets most people is that they are expecting it to be sweet. It’s no different that salted chips or salted sunflower seeds. Droppies (or droptjes) aren’t that bad.
From a Chinese family I was offered salted dried plums as a candy. It was horrible.
I grew up in rural Australia in the 1950s with several families of Dutch neighbours. And I love “drop” – we knew it then as “Dutch liquorice”! I guess it depends on the age at which one acquires the taste for things – my brother and I were clearly at the right stage! In Australia there is a black-looking spread we put on bread – or more usually on toast and bitter – called “Vegemite”. In recent years it has been bought by the US giant food company, Kraft. It’s a yeast by-product – very salty (affinities with “drop”) – and as Dutch love testing “outsiders” so Australians of a certain twisted mentality love to test others, too. Here, they say, try this spread! And the black spread – looking like some kind of chocolate sauce spread – gets the victim’s taste buds prepared for something super sweet – and to their dawning horror – it’s totally the opposite! Aaargh! They yell – gagging and spitting and washing out their mouths! What on Earth is THAT STUFF! How can you eat it! They cry. There is another approach – if the intention is that the victim should like with the “drop” or the “Vegemite”. Let them know what is in store for them. This is very salty – but we have been introduced to the taste/flavour from when we were babies/toddlers. Just give it a try! Dutch folk would probably easily like “Vegemite” – but so, too, do Japanese. It’s not unlike Japanese “miso” – also a fermenting process by-product – and salty! It’s all about the seriousness of introducing something new – finding the connections – or being flippant, determined to trick the other! As in real life! Its about bringing us together or pushing us away – ha!ha!ha! Not good, the latter! For most citizens of the US – though – such salty tastes go against the national taste grain which is definitely pitched towards the sweet and sugary!
The funniest YouTube video about dubbel zout I found is by TheCandyGuy. Really priceless.
You may think this perverse form of “game” is unique to (some) Dutch but (some) Australians love to do the same kind of thing – by thickly applying a chocolate sauce to bread or toast and passing it to foreigners visiting their land whose taste buds already at work prepared to savour this sweet offering are shocked into another reality entirely when their mouth is invaded by the saltiest of yeast extracts – Vegemite. (Some) Japanese do likewise with “natto” – a fermented soy-bean “healthy” food stuff – though they cannot disguise its smell – none-the-less it is a test! And how can anyone get past the vomitous smell of durian fruit in south-east Asia? But if you can you are eating heaven!
So.. Forcing drop to foreigners.
I like that one. And I did experience that once. I have to say I didn’t force it!
A couple of years ago I worked for Nissan Sunderland. Being one of the few Dutchies there I obviously brought some cultural enrichment in to the world of British manufacturing.
First of all you were not allowed to eat on the shop floor. Being Dutch (Also a person who dislike ridiculous rules while working lol) I had to find a way to indulge in my drop addiction and other sweet addictions like cinnamon sticks etc.
I had a little jar with sweets and it didn’t take long before others find it and even the team leaders and supervisor came by to “nick” some sweeties. Actually I managed to get my mates to buy once in a while some bags with precious little time fillers at work.
How ever, there were some nasty dudes as well. Passing by a couple of times to find the right time and moment to steel sweeties without being seen. I knew that… I am Dutch. So I knew exactly how much sweeties there were.
At one day I received some old fashioned rock hard double salted drop 🙂
I gave it to some of my mates and the response was hilarious and epic. Some thought I peed on it, and some thought I manufactured something myself using all sorts of chemicals.
But the best one was a stranger from another department.
he saw the jar! he couldn’t resist and walked around the “pot” a couple of times.
He insured himself nobody saw him. And he went for the “Quick Response Attack”. Nearly flying by, grabbed a handful of double salted ones, and while stepping away fast, filling his mouth with Dutch Delight.
It took 5 seconds before his taste buts started to work. But after 5 seconds he stopped, His face changed in a grimace. Horror and disgust while his legs made weird movements like he was dancing a new sort of horlepiep.
He tried to remove the drop with his fingers in his mouth while trying to spit it out at the same time. The drop was out, but the taste was still there. He vomited. And I was nearly peeing my pants. My mates laughed for the next 2 hours. And it was the event of the year in the plant.
Double salted drop! or God punishes immediately!
American here! I requested my Dutchie BFF to send me some varieties of Dutch licorice, and a couple of the names I remember was the vrolijke and trekdrop licorice. I must be one odd one out as I actually liked both of them. Yes the saltiness was surprising, but not enough to be off-putting…