Old-school wintergreen adds nostalgia to holiday treats

By Bob Batz Jr. / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

I was skimming a typical holiday pitch for "artisan" candy canes and was about to hit the delete button when I stopped on one word:

Wintergreen.

I hadn't read that word in who knows how long, but in an instant, I could taste it and see it, cool and biting and green.

Wintergreen!

Then I realized that I didn't really know what wintergreen is.

And so I did a little research.

It's not some melange of mints, but rather, its own plant: Gaultheria procumbens. It's not a mint at all, but a member of the heath family, explains Squirrel Hill native Gary Lincoff in his recently published "The Joy of Foraging" (Quarry, 2012, $24.99). He describes it as a "small easily overlooked plant of Eastern North American forests" that "has leaves and berries with a noticeably familiar flavor largely because the oil of wintergreen is used to flavor candy and chewing gum. The [red] berries are a tasty nibble in the woods, and the leaves are brewed into a tea," though he cautions that foragers should remove leaves with scissors and not pull up the plants.
Foraging and brewing tea are really old-school, in a Native American and early settlers way, but the charm of wintergreen is how old-fashioned it sounds.

According to the American Botanical Council, the plant's medicinal powers come from its anti-inflammatory methyl salicylate (which is mostly synthetic these days, though you can still buy dried wintergreen leaves and berries). It is toxic in large doses.

Used in small amounts, wintergreen still is a relatively common flavor in commercial products including chewing gum (remember Clark's Teaberry gum, which first was made by D.L. Clark Co. on the North Side?) and mints. Sewickley's Village Candy carries Canada Mints Wintergreen Lozenges and Wintergreen Puffs as well as wintergreen Altoids, and owner Doug Alpern says it's his favorite mint flavor. "Who you calling old? Hah!" he emailed, noting, "Actually, I've found that a lot of people seem to still like wintergreen."

And have you ever heard the one about "sparks" being visible when chewing wintergreen candy, such as Wint O Green Lifesavers, in the dark, since real oil of wintergreen emits light?

You easily can see wintergreen in everything from toothpaste to snuff to insect repellent, but it seems rare these days in actual edibles. I couldn't find a reference to it in all the cookbooks piled around my desk.

The wintergreen extract I think I remember my mom using isn't easy to find either, though I did find some online, such as the supposedly-Punxsutawney-made Old Hickory wintergreen extract -- for candy, specialty dishes, baked goods and other desserts -- that sells for $5.49 for a 2-ounce bottle at Yoder's Amish Market (yodersmart.com).
The candy company whose pitch put wintergreen in my mind is Stowe, Vt.'s, Laughing Moon Chocolates, which makes hand-twisted candy canes in wintergreen as well as peppermint, spearmint, cinnamon and maple flavors ($4.50 per 6-inch cane or a half dozen for $25; laughingmoonchocolates.com/index.cfm/Handmade-Candy-Canes). Owner Leigh Williams says that while wintergreen is the smallest seller, "We do have quite a following" among customers around the country. "There aren't that many people that make wintergreen," and they use food-grade wintergreen oil. "I think it's the prettiest candy cane we make," she adds, "because it has both a green and red stripe."

Wintergreen also is among the flavors of Laughing Moon Homemade Butter Creams ($16 for a half pound box).

Locally, at the Fort Pitt Candy Co. at least, you'll see more wintergreen candy than usual this time of year, says manager Judy Falcon. She says she doesn't get a lot of requests for wintergreen, but, "Right now, I have wintergreen Lifesavers (individually wrapped), and the Lifesavers rolls, wintergreen Starlite Mints, and wintergreen mint puffs."

What else can you do with wintergreen? Well, it is a common flavoring in root beers (and the dominant flavor, says Mr. Alpern, in birch beer, since birch also contains methyl salicylate). Wintergreen also figures into Root, the liqueur made by Philadelphia's Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, to simulate the taste of sassafras, a botanical that was banned in food.

And it is a flavor that you might detect in, say, actual beer, as The New York Times' Eric Asimov and three friends did while reviewing hefeweizens this past summer. They gave Penn Brewery's Weizen two and a half stars, describing it as, "Breezy and bracing with aromas of clove, wintergreen and vanilla."

Penn brewer Andrew Rich says that was a first and it "baffled" him, but "people pick up so many flavors in our wheat beer. Clove, banana, bubble gum ..."

I get a minty flavor from certain beers, including this year's seasonal offering from Redhook, Winterhook. Or maybe I just have wintergreen on the brain?

Redhook Assistant Brand Manager Mary Beth Carulli relayed my query to brewer Jenn Tally, who explained that this year Redhook started dry-hopping Winterhook -- slowly recirculating the hops through the beer, post fermentation. Ms. Carulli said, "This enhances both the hop flavor and aroma and she believes that is what you are describing as a 'minty' taste."

Not everyone likes the minty taste of wintergreen. I shared some luscious Laughing Moon Butter Creams with my PG colleagues, one of whom quipped, "Toothpaste comes to mind."
Another colleague came up to greet Kitchen Mailbox columnist Arlene Burnett, who was visiting at my desk, where she'd just eaten and enjoyed one of the candies. Her greeter hugged her and said, "You smell like Christmas cookies!"