Hot Cocoa

(14th March 2021)

* opening music*

Liz

Hello and welcome to Bread and Thread, a podcast about food and domestic history, I’m Liz

Hazel

And I’m Hazel. We’re two friends who studied archaeology together and love food and history, and normally I say that the other way ‘round

L

Getting whacky

H

* laughs* Normally we start by talking about what we’ve been making and/or baking, so what have you been up to?

L

I have mostly just been working on existing projects, because I almost exclusively make large things

H

Same

L

But I did buy some graph paper

H

Ooh

L

To make my own mosaic crochet ideas

H

That is fantastic

L

I’m gonna try and send you the one that I have been working on. Unfortunately we record over Discord, and Discord decides any decent quality picture is too high quality

H

Ooh that’s cool!

L

I’m pretty pleased with how the design came out. I tried to do like a celtic knot one, but it turns out that’s really hard

H

Yeah designing repeating patterns is a lot harder than it looks, right?

L

Yeah especially with mosaic crochet ‘cause you kind of want stripes on at least two sides just ‘cause it makes it a lot easier with having to switch the colours every couple of rows. Like, I don’t think I did a terrible job, and I will probably make the pattern that I made

H

That is pretty impressive

L

But one day I’m gonna figure out how to do a celtic knot mosaic crochet, and then I will be unstoppable

H

An unstoppable monolith of design

L

People on the patreon server will have seen this design, and I’m very proud of it. So what have you been up to?

H

I have had some adventures in learning to dye with plants. So I...did I tell you about my daffodil experiment?

L

I don’t think you mentioned daffodils

H

Ok so I have recently got interested in learning how to use plant dyes and...I usually say plant dyes rather than natural dyes because natural dyes often includes like insects and stuff, and I’m not going to go out and collect a bunch of bugs and then crush them up so…

L

I mean I think at least in the case of cochineal you would probably have to travel to like Mexico or the southern States to do that

H

Yeah I mean I would also have to like...or buy imported insects I guess, so, so I’m sticking to the plants that I can get around here, so I bought a bunch of daffodils and it turns out you can use those to dye with, which I did not realise. So just as they’re wilting you can take them off the plants, soak them in water for a bit, and then heat them to make a dye. So I tried that one out on a skein of yarn

L

You didn’t say which part of the plant, is it the petals?

H

Sorry, yeah, the flower heads, and it makes a kind of dark yellow colour, so I tried that. I overdyed a skein of yarn I had that was kind of a light beige and this went this kind of really hard to pin down like dark mustard-y type colour

L

Oh nice

H

Which is quite cool so had another go a couple of days ago with ivy, which is one of the things, the few things that is around this time of year, in the winter, that you can use to dye with, and that produces like shades of yellow-green, so yeah it came out a bit, I’ll post my efforts on twitter when this goes out, it went kind of a paler colour than I was going for, but I kind of like it, it’s quite subtle, it’s like a kind of light yellow-green colour which is really nice, and I think my mordanting worked as well. So for a lot of plant dyes you have to use a chemical that’ll fix the dye so that it won’t fade or wash out

L

I’m guessing you’re not using the traditional urine

H

I am not, although the book that I have on plant dying does tell you how to do that, if you wanted to

L

Well it’s good to know it’s an option

H

Yeah, so I’m not doing that. Right now I, to be honest I might do it one day, just for the curiosity, is that weird?

L

No I mean it’s, it’s fun to experiment

H

Yeah, definitely. I mean people have definitely done much smellier things in the name of experimentation. I mean it could be worse, I could be a parasitologist intentionally infecting myself with things to get them past customs

L

True

H

Anyway, I’ve managed to produce a couple of different shades, my mordanting seems to have worked, so I’m pretty happy with that, I’m excited to move on to, I’ve got a bunch of apple prunings soaking in water that are ready for dying, so

L

Ooh

H

Yeah

L

You’ll have to keep me posted

H

I will do yeah, apparently apple bark creates orange, so I’m excited for that one. So, what is today’s topic?

L

Well, since this and the next episode’ll be coming out in March, which is between Valentine’s Day and Easter, this is the first of a two-part on chocolate

H

Yeah, so...

L

That sounded a lot like I was springing this two-part on Hazel, don’t worry, we did discuss it in advance

H

It does, doesn’t it. I was trying to do a fun, you know, presenting thing like “so what’s today’s topic?”

L

Well I was going to tell you that I discovered how to make a drink that tastes of maltesers and then go from there

H

I’ll take that. Please tell me how

L

What you do is you make a cup of ovaltine, but then you dissolve into it just like a teaspoon of instant hot chocolate

H

Oooh

L

And then it tastes like a malteser

H

That’s fantastic, I might have to do that. What is the difference between ovaltine and hot chocolate? Ovaltine’s not cocoa is it?

L

It has cocoa in it as like a flavouring, but it’s mostly malt, is like it’s primary thing is malted barley

H

Ok that makes more sense

L

And in most places, though not the UK, it contains eggs

H

Huh!

L

Yeah, I learned about the history of ovaltine while researching today’s episode, which is drinking chocolate, because I thought it was a cocoa thing, but it just has cocoa in it

H

Yeah I thought it was. Ovaltine has always, the smell of ovaltine is quite comforting to me because my grandad used to drink it a lot

L

Oh yeah it’s very much seen as like an old people drink in the UK

H

Yeah, yeah. I guess kind of along with cocoa, ‘cause more people tend to drink hot chocolate than cocoa, I feel

L

I mean, the terms are kind of interchangeable I think

H

Yeah I’m not, now that you mention it I don’t really know what the difference, I guess hot chocolate often includes milk powder, doesn’t it

L

They are basically the same thing. It’s basically hot chocolate traditionally is made from melting chocolate into milk

H

Ah, ok. Ok I’m gonna shut up and let you tell me the full history before I start asking questions out of order

L

It’s fine. Ok so I think most people probably know that the first people to drink chocolate were South and Central American civilisations, particularly the Maya

H

I have heard that one yeah

L

So they had a drink called chocolatl, which is cocoa, spices, sometimes vanilla, and also sometimes cornmeal which acts as a thickener, which I had never heard about cornmeal being in it before but I guess it makes sense ‘cause it’s nicer when it’s thick

H

Yeah, no, definitely. And like cornstarch is a thing. That sounds delicious

L

So that’s, so that was, y’know, all levels of society there’s evidence that they drank it, some people even being buried with the spouted vessels - which I’m not going to try to pronounce the name of because I couldn’t find a pronunciation guide - which you would pour it between these two spouted vessels, which is vaguely like if you made a teapot out of a gourd kind of looking thing

H

Okay

L

In order to mix it and get it frothy, and you could drink that hot or cold which, I mean I have tried it, at the chocolate museum in York they give you like a little shot of it

H

Oh wow

L

It’s quite nice, it’s very bitter

H

Ok

L

Like it in no way tastes like hot chocolate

H

Oh, ok, actually that makes sense if there’s no sugar in it

L

It is nice, but I say that as someone that really likes dark chocolate. So then you get the Aztec taking over, and Montezuma the second started actually taking cocoa from conquered nations as a kind of...from conquered nations as a kind of tribute, and that’s when it became this kind of upper class drink

H

Ok

L

Although interestingly apparently they had like pressed blocks of ground cocoa beans as a part of soldiers’ rations because it was that important

H

Wow

L

So you could make hot cocoa on the go

H

* laughs* I mean to be honest that does sound pretty necessary if you’re camping out in some uncomfortable situations, like at least you’ve got your hot cocoa

L

Well yeah like apparently people have just been camping out with hot cocoa since, yeah about 700 Common Era, and there’s...some people think that it was also used as an aphrodisiac which, I will get into chocolate as an aphrodisiac (inaudible)

H

Ok, I hadn’t

L

That could have been a smear thing like “oh they’re so horny and we civilised Europeans need to stop them being so horny all the time”

H

Yeah I have heard about chocolate being an aphrodisiac but it seems like around that kind of time almost everything was an aphrodisiac

L

That is a thing that we’ve learned during this show isn’t it

H

Yeah like especially if it’s something that has recently been quote-unquote “discovered” from foreign parts, and everyone’s like “it’s an aphrodisiac because it’s exotic”

L

Oh yeah like there’s, I was going to get into it later but...so there’s an order of Carmelite nuns based in, initially in Mexico City and then elsewhere, who from 1616 to 1949 as a part of their vows swore off chocolate

H

* gasps* Oh my gosh

L

“I vow not to drink chocolate, nor to be the cause of another one drinking it”

H

* laughs* So you could legitimately get thrown out of this order of nuns for like, persuading your friend to have a bit of chocolate

L

Apparently

H

Man

L

But that’s like the level of taboo around it

H

I think that, think that’s the vow that I couldn’t handle. The others maybe but not the chocolate

L

Like poverty, chastity, probably ok

H

Might be able to deal with that, I can’t handle never again having chocolate

L

Yeah I feel like considering this started being their vow in 1616, like it wasn’t as appealing at that point. So Cortez takes drinking chocolate to Spain in 1528 and it takes a while to take off, because it’s this bitter spicy foreign drink. And then they solve both of the flavour problems at once by replacing the chili with sugar, which of course keeps it as an elite thing this side of the Atlantic, but also makes it much more palatable to Europeans, to the point that it ended up being seen as this great medicinal thing. Like there’s an entry from Samuel Pepys’s diary from the 24th of April 1661 where he mentions hot chocolate as a hangover cure, and there are also people using it for jaundice, and stomach ache, and just basically anything in your core they’d just be like “have you tried chocolate?”

H

I mean to be fair, hot chocolate does often make you feel better

L

I mean it does, that’s probably more of like a dopamine thing

H

* laughing* yeah

L

‘Cause chocolate does contain thing that, yeah, phenylethylamine, which is a chemical that makes you feel good, it makes you feel happy and just generally a sense of - I hate the word - but a sense of wellness, which is why chocolate is so nice

H

Aww, it has the happy chemical in

L

It has happy chemicals! Apparently also contains tryptophan which is needed for making serotonin, so just all around happy happy juice, is hot chocolate. Although apparently in Pepys’s time it also potentially contained egg

H

Ok

L

Which, I mean I guess that we’ve established that ovaltine has egg in it, so maybe not as weird as it first sounds?

H

Don’t know how I feel about that

L

But there is a reference in the 1750s to one aristocrat having hot chocolate “infused with fresh jasmine flowers, amber, musk, vanilla, and ambergris”

H

Amber?!

L

I mean I don’t know what that would taste like but it’s certainly expensive

H

Yeah I mean I suppose that’s the point but like I didn’t know amber had a taste

L

I mean people eat gold, I suspect it’s a conspicuous consumption thing more than anything else

H

That’s true, but I feel like maybe you shouldn’t eat the 1000-year-old tree sap

L

I like how you’re objecting to the amber but not the ambergris

H

That’s because I don’t know exactly what ambergris is, just know it’s fancy

L

So, something gets lodged in a whale’s digestive tract and irritates it

H

Ok…

L

And then the whale produces this substance that kind of coats it, and then the whale throws it up

H

Oh no...oh no!

L

Like, the closest equivalent would probably be like a gallstone or something. We’re absolutely doing an episode on ambergris because I have found out Things about that stuff

H

So it’s like a whale hairball

L

Yeah

H

And people, what, wear it?

L

Yeah, like, it’s, it was a primary ingredient in perfume for a long time

H

Ok! Okay!

L

Yeah

H

You learn things on this podcast

L

I have learned many terrible things about ambergris, it’s so disgusting, I’m going to do an episode on it at some point

H

Why?! Why are we like this? Humanity!

L

Humans will just look at any weird thing and go “is anyone gonna eat that?”, and that’s why we’re the only species that has invented cooking

H

(losing it)

L

But yeah, so by the late 1700s there’s about 700 cocoa houses in just London

H

Wow. So it catches on pretty quickly?

L

Yeah, and I think we briefly touched on cocoa houses in the temperance episode, but they were very much touted as an alternative to pubs; they were this social space where there isn’t alcohol - ‘cause by this point there is people starting to go “hey drinking too much is really bad, it’s like a social problem and we need to deal with it”, which is why Quakers get involved in the cocoa business, which I’m sure will come up more when we do your episode with chocolate bars

H

I...yes indeed and I will absolutely be mentioning it in my local larder today actually

L

Ooh

H

Yeah, so a lot of the bright minds of the Enlightenment age of London were known for meeting in coffee houses, in cocoa houses, right?

L

Yeah it was...yeah so it basically...just the place where you go if you’re not dirt poor is to a coffee house or a cocoa house

H

Hear the news

L

Mmm. Maybe take in an informative lecture, even

H

Huh

L

Well ‘cause like I say this...cocoa houses were central to this movement away from people going to the pub all the time, which I mean we can debate how successful that was ‘til the cows come home, but yeah, a lot, especially the ones run by Quakers and Methodists were places for improving oneself, and there’d be y’know lectures, sing-songs, obviously some religious lectures

H

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I remember some of this I think because they were basically like “ok well if we want people to come here and not the pub, we have to make it fun”

L

Yep. So yeah at this point you have, back in Spain, who were obviously the first Europeans to get hold of it, experimenting with putting things like cinnamon, black pepper, anise, and sesame into hot cocoa to try and replicate that original flavour

H

Ok

L

Because importing spices from the East Indies was I guess cheaper than the West Indies for a while, so I guess it was easier to get spices from the East Indies than the West Indies because there was an established trade route rather than having to sail all the way there and back with a shipment

H

Yeah

L

But I do find it interesting that there was this attempt to recreate the flavours after the flavours had changed

H

Yeah I mean you would have thought that people would be wanting to put all the fancy spices in it from the start I guess

L

Yeah I think it’s an interesting thing about how tastes really change over time. ‘Cause I mean…’cause we’re talking sort of late 17, early 1800s at this point, where we’re starting to get people in Europe actually putting spicy things in their food as opposed to just a little bit of a spice, and looking at, sort of, curries and things like that, so I wonder if it’s kind of tastes as a whole moving slightly more towards spice

H

I guess that makes sense with it like becoming more available, like more variety of different spices

L

Saying about the West Indies though, so in the early 1800s, that’s when people in Britain start putting milk in their cocoa, I guess starting to make that transition from hot cocoa to hot chocolate

H

Ok

L

Which was an idea introduced from the West Indies by a missionary who’d been there. I couldn’t find any information on who actually started doing, statistically it was probably someone’s enslaved cook, let’s be honest

H

Often is

L

But you combine that adding milk into it with in 1828 Coenraad Johannes Van Houten in the Netherlands inventing cocoa powder, which means it’s easier to dissolve into milk, it’s easier to store, and to transport, all of that stuff, you get this sort of boom in people having hot cocoa/hot chocolate in their homes, and it becomes a really popular post-dinner drink

H

Oh

L

Like kind of the way that you might have a coffee after a meal now, it was equally likely, if you could afford it, you’d have a hot chocolate

H

I mean that sounds great, especially as I don’t like coffee, so…

L

Yeah this winter I have been doing that just by coincidence, having quite a lot of evening hot chocolate, and it’s just been really nice

H

Mmmm…

L

Interestingly though, starting to put milk in it you kind of get, almost going back to the beginning and getting it frothy, because obviously when you heat milk it gets frothy, and now you have - it’s called velvetising

H

Okay

L

Which is what they do in like Starbucks when they make it with frothed milk that they put the steam into

H

Right, yeah, with the steam thing. Yeah, frothy hot chocolate is amazing

L

But the combo...but you’ve got that, sort of bringing back frothy hot chocolate, and also chili chocolate as a thing in the last couple of decades becoming really popular

H

Oh, yes I’m so

L

So it’s almost gone full circle back to having this...

H

I’m so glad that that’s…

L

Spicy frothy cocoa

H

Chili and chocolate is delicious, I will fight anyone who says otherwise

L

Oh it is, I had...when I lived in Warrington there was this ice-cream place we used to go to, and they had the thickest - like proper gelato - chili chocolate ice-cream

H

Mmmmmmm...whole episode is just making me want chocolate

L

Yeah...so yeah, that is a brief history of hot cocoa/hot chocolate, and now I want some hot chocolate

H

Yeah it is interesting that now it, like, has totally come back ‘round and now a lot of chocolate is marketed on the whole like “tastes like the original chocolate” kind of thing

L

Oh yeah I think there is an actual chocolate brand called Montezuma

H

Yeah

L

Which like, I’m not sure how he would have felt about that, but I mean colonialism is a whole trip. Which I feel is one of the central theses of this show

H

Pretty much, it...I guess that it turns out that a lot of food history is also related to the history of people and their movements around the world

L

So, before we get onto local larder, which I believe is also chocolatey, in keeping with the theme

H

Oh yes

L

If you want to say hi or to suggest an episode you can email breadandthreadpodcast@gmail.com

H

You can also find us on twitter @breadandthread where you can find teasers for upcoming episodes, and occasional things that we’re doing or pictures that are related to the episodes

L

And if you want to support us, maybe help us get some of that fancy Montezuma chocolate, we do have a patreon, it’s just patreon.com/breadandthread. We have a patreon exclusive discord server, patreon exclusive recipes, and if you subscribe at the $10 a month or above level we will make a bonus episode just for you

(ad for The Probably Bad Podcast)

H

Maybe we should do a chocolate review podcast, and get people to send us chocolate, like get, you know...

L

We should set up a PO box, where people can send us chocolate from around the world

H

Yeah! Send us free chocolate, we’ll review your company

L

But in the meantime, what are you teaching us about Hazel?

H

So speaking of, I’m gonna talk about the chocolate orange, which I’m sure is a familiar object to many people around the world

L

That’s what Christmas tastes like

H

Hoo yeah boy, I was one of the apparently 1/10 of people in Britain that - was it? Yeah I think it was like 9/10 - I cannot remember that fact but I will go back to it, because I have it written down somewhere, but apparently a lot, A Lot of people were having a chocolate orange in their christmas stocking at one point. And one of them was me

L

Nice

H

So, this...also this is gonna involve a lot of talking about Terry’s because they are the makers of the chocolate orange, this is not SponCon, I just wanna talk about chocolate oranges

L

It’s not Terry’s it’s mine

H

(laughs) pretty much! So…

L

That was just a joke for the brits

H

I might mention the adverts, actually, because that’s one of the main reasons that the chocolate orange is still so popular. So the chocolate orange, that delicious orangey tasting chocolate that comes in the orange foil wrapper and inside it’s shaped like an orange with different segments that you have to like, well not peel off but you have to try to get them apart, and normally you like bash it on something or someone in order to get the segments to come out

L

I’ve never done it one someone

H

(laughs) Oh yeah that was a family Christmas, it wasn’t Christmas unless someone got whacked on the head by a chocolate orange

L

Maybe the problem is having a sister so much younger, I would have got in trouble if I’d whacked her with it

H

(laughs) maybe you can make up for lost time on Emma

L

I did discover though once when I got one just for me, ‘cause I was sad, that if you just bite it like an apple the pieces do separate that way

H

Oh my gosh

(both laugh)

H

New chocolate orange lore. So the makers of the chocolate orange are Terry’s of York. Now Liz and I both studied in the city of York - that’s York, Yorkshire, England and not New York I’m talking about

L

The OG York

H

Old York, yep, which is considerably smaller than New York. It’s a very beautiful city, lots of old buildings, and also well known for its chocolate heritage because a lot of, originally the UKs and then as they started exporting more famous brands around the world, were made in York, up until the early 20th century. And in fact there is a Nestlé factory which is still there today, that used to be a Rowntree factory but Rowntrees is now owned by Nestlé, and there’s a lot of things that I could say about Nestlé but I’m not going to go too much into it in this podcast because then it would

L

Because we don’t swear

H

Yeah. And then it really will become entirely politics and no food, so...but anyway the point is York has a big history with chocolate and it was the biggest employer in the city during the late 9th...19th! And much of the 20th century, and Terry’s was one of these factories. In fact at one point, I believe, Terry’s and Rowntrees, the two biggest factories, employed half the working people, half the working population of York in the 1970s, so right up to then

L

Wow

H

So this was big business, and Terry’s started off as a small company, actually in the late 18th century, although the Terry name wasn’t involved with it then. In the 19th century, so in the 1820s Joseph Terry got involved with the business and started making more, like, chocolate based products, and that continued on into the early 20th century, they were one of the biggest chocolate manufacturers in Britain, and that’s when they started to...I was gonna say “embolden”, that’s not really the word...to expand their product line, after

L

They embiggened it

H

They did indeed embiggen it, with the building of their new factory in York. So the Terry’s factory in York is right next to the racecourse, where I used to work on the champagne bar

L

We both did

H

Yeah! Oh I forgot you worked there too. So on racedays…

L

I was normally on the Pimm’s bar

H

Oh gosh the Pimm’s bar

L

Yeah

H

Yeah. So basically we both worked selling incredibly overpriced drinks to people at the racecourse. So the Terry’s factory which is now no longer open, and at that point was kind of a little bit derelict, the clock was stopped at 6 o’clock, so I would be working and see this clock and be like “oh it’s 6 o’clock it’s nearly time to go home, awesome” and then realise that that clock has been stopped for like 20 years and it’s actually half past 2 and I’ve still got a lot of work to do. But the Terry’s factory is still this amazing building

L

I think it’s fancy flats now

H

It is yeah, it’s been redone as like housing which, I mean I guess it’s good that they didn’t just like tear the whole thing down. So the story of the chocolate orange actually begins in 1932, is when it was first produced, but did you know that the first Terry’s fruit-flavoured chocolate product, the forerunner to the chocolate orange, was in fact in 1926, the chocolate apple. Feel free to be amazed

L

Yeah! See the thing is, like, I did know this, because Nick and I went to the York Chocolate Museum, but it still boggles me that like, “oh let’s make this segmented, flavoured chocolate thing, what’s a strongly flavoured thing with segments? Apples!”

H

Yeah! I mean you would think that despite chocolate and orange being two flavours that have been used together for quite a long time, it apparently wasn’t the obvious choice, it was…

L

I guess the question is how much were they used together before the invention of the chocolate orange?

H

I mean I suppose, yeah, that would be an interesting thing to find out, but apparently the one that came to mind was apple, so the original product was apple-flavoured chocolate, that was in the shape of an apple, also in segments. So yeah the chocolate apple was actually not discontinued until 1954

L

Wow

H

So I’m gonna have to ask my grandparents if any of them had a chocolate apple, what it tasted like. It was actually discontinued in order to focus on production of the chocolate orange, which was the much more wildly popular product I wonder why

L

I mean I feel like that was the right call

H

Probably, yeah. In fact, due to the extreme success of the chocolate orange, they were inspired in 1979 to bring out the chocolate lemon, which was withdrawn three years later because apparently people were just like “nah I don’t like this one”

L

See lemon and chocolate, like lemon and white chocolate is really nice but I’m guessing it wasn’t white chocolate

H

No, it was just lemon-flavoured chocolate

L

Ok

H

Shaped like a lemon. Yeah, that one didn’t do too well apparently. I wonder if they’re collectables now, given they were only around for three years

L

I bet there’s one on ebay somewhere that’s all, like under the wrapper covered in all that white stuff

H

Mint condition chocolate lemon. If anyone’s got a chocolate lemon, please let us know. So the chocolate orange is probably Terry’s most famous product, I don’t...was wondering if it was a thing before Terry’s but it seems like they are the ones that created it and it’s...the Terry’s chocolate orange is the one that everybody knows, and that is because in the 1960s, when the business became, that was when the business was first acquired by another company, and they put a lot of money into advertising, and particularly into advertising the chocolate orange. So Terry’s hadn’t really done a lot of advertising before that, they just relied on the whole like reputation/word of mouth thing, and they were doing pretty well out of it, but the sales of chocolate orange did actually go massively up in the 1960s/70s due to this advertising so…

One of the most memorable adverts is, Dawn French was the face of Terry’s chocolate orange for quite a while

L

Yes

H

And yeah some of the adverts are fantastic. The slogan “don’t tap it, whack it” came from there, and also “it’s not Terry’s, it’s mine”, so the adverts would feature like Dawn French trying to get her chocolate orange back, or protect the chocolate orange from other people

L

I do recommend if you’re listening to this, watch some of those adverts, they’re very fun

H

Yeah definitely, would recommend. And it was these kind of fun adverts that, that kind of made it a household name really, ‘cause it was already popular, but it just, yeah it got to the point where, like, everyone and their mum had one in their christmas stocking, like around christmas time sales went up loads and loads. But, yeah, unfortunately Terry’s is no longer a family business. There was a Terry on the board of directors of whatever company it was owned by until the 1980s, and now it’s just owned by...it was owned by Kraft, the American

L

They bought Cadbury’s as well I think

H

Yeah, so they also bought Cadbury, but Kraft are the ones that moved production to continental Europe, so the chocolate orange is no longer produced in York. Terry’s factory was closed in 2005 which actually is still quite a long time for it to be going

L

Yeah that’s relatively recent in terms of like, British factories closing

H

Yeah, so the chocolate orange is now manufactured in France, I think, which it’s gonna be interesting to see how that unfolds with Brexit

L

Oh god, don’t, I hadn’t even thought about expensive chocolate orange!

H

Maybe the chocolate orange supply might be limited

L

There I was worried about free movement and workers’ rights, what about the chocolate orange!

H

Don’t worry about those, worry about the chocolate orange. I mean, everyone buys chocolate orange when it’s on sale for a pound, right, no-one ever pays full price

L

Oh, yeah, and then you make hot chocolate with it

H

Oh my gosh that’s genius

L

Have you not done that?

H

No

L

Do it, thank me later

H

Gonna. I will. Yeah, so, I have in fact, and this is a brag, seen the last ever Terry’s chocolate orange that was made in a factory in York

L

Is it in a museum?

H

Sort of, it’s in Goddard’s House, which is a National Trust property in York, that is the home of the Terry family from the 1930s

L

Huh

H

And it’s actually a really nice house, like it’s a nice good old National Trust day out

L

I like how you sound surprised that it’s a nice house. “These people that owned several factories and had an international business, they had a really nice house”

H

I mean yeah they were also like definitely making bank, so it’s a nice house, but it also contains the last chocolate orange made in York so y’know if you wanted to make a pilgrimage to the...to the spiritual home of the chocolate orange, there you go

L

Amazing

H

But now they’re manufactured in France, you can get them pretty much all over the world at this point I think, they’re distributed in a lot of other countries, not even in the international foods aisle, a lot of places just have them like, just there, so they’re still doing pretty well for themselves, although it is true there is less chocolate than there used to be in the chocolate orange

L

Yeah, there’s less chocolate than there used to be in everything

H

Yeah, but the way they did it with the chocolate orange is particularly insidious

L

Go on

H

So this, I believe this happened in the early 2000s, and now contains less chocolate, but is not smaller, ‘cause the way they did it was they increased the air gaps between the segments, so it looks the same size, but there’s like 20g less chocolate in it

L

Fiends!

H

(angry noise) I know right? One day I’ll get over it

L

Well as long as they keep making the dark chocolate one with the pop rocks in I’ll forgive them

H

Yeah the popping candy ones are great. So yeah that’s a potted history of chocolate orange, as it were. Oh there is one fantastic bit about the rivalry between Terry’s and Rowntrees which was the other big chocolate factory and like, confectionary company in York, and you might know the name Rowntree from the I believe it was 1901 survey - or was that Booth? Ok from one of the very early 19th century surveys of poverty and living conditions in the United Kingdom.

So there were two famous ones, Booth and Rowntree, Booth’s survey was in London, and Rowntrees was a survey of poverty and living conditions in the city of York, and these were kind of a big deal because - and I know everyone listening to this is going to go “well obviously” - but the findings of these surveys were that a lot of people were living below the poverty line and that it wasn’t their fault, and a lot of people at the time, in the early 19th century, read these surveys and went “oh my god, these people are living in poverty through no fault of their own, we must do something”

L

The deserving poor?

H

Yes! Which was kind of a big deal at the time because a lot of the attitude was that poor people had it coming, which unfortunately is still a prevalent attitude today, so again, won’t go into that too much because this will become a politics podcast. So, there was kind of a rivalry between Terry’s and Rowntrees factory, and in the 1920s the Terry’s factory was not in its present site near the racecourse, it was closer to the city itself, and Joseph...not Joseph Rowntree, the Rowntree of the time bought a piece of land next to the Terry’s factory, and graciously gifted it to the city of York as a public park, and that is Rowntree Park in York, which is a very nice park

L

Oh I remember that park. That’s a great park

H

It is a great park, it’s really really nice. If you’re ever visiting York, go to Rowntree Park, it’s awesome

L

That’s where the ice-cream boat goes

H

Yeah, there is an ice-cream boat. And so there’s this beautiful park, called Rowntree Park, that was next to the old Terry’s factory, and in the 1920s Terry’s had to build this other factory in a different place, because someone had bought the land next to their factory and they were unable to expand

L

(laughs) Genius

H

So, yeah there you go, some 1920s one-upmanship, it’s all hotting up in the confectionary fandom. So yeah next time you get a chocolate orange, just think of those short-lived predecessors, the chocolate apple and the chocolate lemon

L

So thank you for listening, as we said we do have a patreon, just breadandthread, buy us some chocolate oranges

H

Chocolate lemons, we would be really impressed by that

L

Yeah. I’m not sure I’d eat it, but it’d be cool to see it

H

I would. Would definitely eat it

L

So thank you for listening and we will be back in a couple of weeks for solid chocolate

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