Aniseed balls are a comfit type of hard round

sweet Sweetness is a basic taste most commonly perceived when eating foods rich in sugars. Sweet tastes are generally regarded as pleasurable. In addition to sugars like sucrose, many other chemical compounds are sweet, including aldehydes, ketones, ...

sold in the United Kingdom, Ireland,

Malta Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The two ...

, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. They are shiny and dark reddish brown, and hard like

gobstopper A gobstopper, also known as a jawbreaker in Canada and the United States, is a type of hard candy, boiled sweet. It is usually round, and usually ranges from across; though gobstoppers billed as having a diameter as large as have been marketed ...

s, but generally only across. They are flavoured by aniseed oil, with a strong aniseed flavour, and last for a long time in the mouth before dissolving. In the centre of the ball is normally a whole

rapeseed Rapeseed (''Brassica napus'' subsp. ''napus''), also known as rape and oilseed rape and canola, is a bright-yellow flowering member of the family Brassicaceae (mustard or cabbage family), cultivated mainly for its oil-rich seed, which naturall ...

, which is used for forming layers of sugar around, although other nuclei such as sugar crystals are sometimes used.

Use as a timing device

In the spring of 1939, a magnetically attached

limpet mine A limpet mine is a type of naval mine attached to a target by magnets. It is so named because of its superficial similarity to the shape of the limpet, a type of sea snail that clings tightly to rocks or other hard surfaces. A swimmer or diver m ...

was constructed in Britain for underwater

sabotage Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, government, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, demoralization (warfare), demoralization, destabilization, divide and rule, division, social disruption, disrupti ...

actions in the upcoming war. The mines exploded when a cocked spring hit a detonator. Between the striker and the detonator an aniseed ball was placed, as each had precisely the same spherical shape and consistently dissolved in water after 35 minutes, leaving the saboteur time to escape. The first of these mines was sent to

Yugoslavia , common_name = Yugoslavia , life_span = 1918–19921941–1945: World War II in Yugoslavia#Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Axis occupation , p1 = Kingdom of SerbiaSerbia , flag_p ...

and

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

in the autumn of 1939.

References

* * * British confectionery Candy Anise {{confection-stub