A flavoring produced from dissolving the oil of anise seeds into alcohol. The extract has a sweet licorice taste and is used as a flavoring for cooking. Extracts may be labeled as pure, natural, imitation or artificial. Pure and natural extracts are governed by laws in many countries that require compliance with procedures that take the extract ingredients directly from the named flavor, such as extracting oils directly from the vanilla bean to make pure or natural vanilla extract. Artificial or imitation extracts are flavors that do not necessarily use any ingredients directly from a source named for the extract but instead used combinations of ingredients to arrive at a flavor representative of the named food extract, such as imitation lemon extract.