In the New York Times this morning, a curious statement heads the top of a page on Dining and Wine. The line makes the assertion that the world’s best candy bars come from England.
While this statement may seem counterintuitive at first, given that there are volumes of jokes from any world traveler disparaging all that is English food, it seems that the English know how to make really wonderful candy with chocolate. The quality has been known by others for decades, but was apparently something our forefathers forgot when making the trek over from the British Isles.
The item further describes just one of the reasons why the chocolate we know and, for lack of better knowledge, love, pales when compared to the ‘proper British stuff’. A case in point is the Cadbury Dairy Milk bars, which many assume is truly a British import. A quick perusal of the label indicates that, not only is the bar not an English export, it doesn’t have the same composition as the original.
The label of the Cadbury Dairy Milk bar shows its origins to be Pennsylvanian, being whipped up by the Hershey Chocolate Company. It doesn’t, however, become apparent, until a genuine English bar is available for comparison, the greatest difference. The British cousin contains, as its first ingredient listed, milk, while the American pretender contains lactose and soy emulsifiers, not in the first position. Another thing listed at the end of the American bars contents is ‘natural and artificial flavorings’. These are nowhere found on the genuine English Cadbury bar.
The story tells of the differences of other English candies, differing sometimes completely from the American product of the same name. There are also tales of shops in New York and New Jersey, where those who know the difference come to obtain the genuine items, so they can partake of the unadulterated goodness of the British candy industry.
Elsewhere in the story, is a tale of a man who has been treated to Canadian chocolate, closely resembling the English variety, and his low regard for the American offerings. He compares the Hershey bar, the joy of almost every American child, to ear wax.
It makes the idea of American superiority in manufacture just a little less probable than last time we checked.
[tags] chocolate, Cadbury-Schweppes, Hershey, genuine article, emulsifiers, British Kit Kat, Curly Wurly, The Cadbury Flake, Cadbury Dairy Milk, Mars [/tags]