{{unreferenced, date=April 2012
Sugarelly, or Liquorice water, is a traditional British
soft drink
A soft drink (see ยง Terminology for other names) is a drink that usually contains water (often carbonated), a sweetener, and a natural and/or artificial flavoring. The sweetener may be a sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice, a su ...
made with
liquorice
Liquorice (British English) or licorice (American English) ( ; also ) is the common name of ''Glycyrrhiza glabra'', a flowering plant of the bean family Fabaceae, from the root of which a sweet, aromatic flavouring can be extracted.
The liqu ...
that was popular in the early to mid-20th century.
It could not usually be bought as such, but instead was prepared by leaving several strands of liquorice to diffuse in water for a period of time before drinking. This tradition seems to have been well known throughout Britain. It is mentioned in many of Richmal Crompton's "
William
William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...
" series, Pip makes it in his room in ''
Great Expectations
''Great Expectations'' is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (Great Expectations), Pip (the book is a ''bildungsroman''; a coming-of-age story). It ...
'' and the Scottish cartoon "
Oor Wullie
''Oor Wullie'' ( en, Our Willie) is a Scottish comic strip published in the D.C. Thomson newspaper ''The Sunday Post''. It features a character called Wullie; Wullie is the familiar Scots nickname for boys named William, equivalent to Willie. ...
" also makes mention of it.
Traditionally, this drink was made with "chemist's liquorice", a hard, black liquorice stick cut into sections and dropped into a bottle of cold water. This was left in a cool, dark place for a week or so. Once infused, the liquorice water could be enjoyed by shaking the bottle and sucking the brown foam from its neck.
The world's most renowned connoisseurs of sugarelly are Evelyn and Mary McNeil of Nairn, who created such wonderful concontions of the drink as children in wartime Britain in their hometown of Nairn, Highland, Scotland that became the stuff of legend.