[Vwoolf] Chocolate Cream

Wed Apr 5 11:24:59 EDT 2017

While we're on the subject, there is, I believe another important point to
clarify: is there a slight mint flavour to the fondant in Fry's Chocolate
Cream, or is it just my imagination?

Also, it may be worth noting that Fry's merged with Cadbury's in 1919;
though I can't seem to find any information as to when Cadbury's
discontinued their own version of the bar in favour of the Fry's brand and
recipe (presumably to the bitter disappointment of Leonard Woolf).

Graham

On Wed 5 Apr 2017 at 4:07 p.m., Byrne, Anne (Soc & Pol) <
anne.byrne at nuigalway.ie> wrote:

> Many thanks Stuart - my confidence in the meaning of 'chocolate
> creams' was also shaken but I too am going with the 'bar' variety. I have
> looked at many images of chocolate cream bars and sweets in the past few
> days (and eaten it also for the purposes of research). I am indebted to
> all who have replied to this thread and to Leonard who started and ended
> his autobiography, *Beginning Again*, with a description of the
> sensory experience of missing and finding his favorite treat. Fixing on
> chocolate creams to begin and end an autobiography, an analysis of one's
> own life and psyche, may or may not have been deliberate but from such
> fragments art can be made.
>
>
> Kind regards
>
> Anne
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu> on behalf of Stuart N.
> Clarke <stuart.n.clarke at btinternet.com>
> *Sent:* 05 April 2017 15:36
> *To:* 'Woolf List'
> *Subject:* [Vwoolf] Chocolate Creams
>
> I have returned to my earlier confidence about this topic, and agree
> firmly with the OED:
> *“An item or type of chocolate confectionery with a fondant centre. Freq.
> attrib., esp. in chocolate-cream bar.”*
>
> The reason for my previous unease is because I assumed that the “5 Boys”
> range corresponded with choc. creams, *because* the bar split into 5, as
> here:
>
> https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=kMoSNCeH&id=CC9B8A5AFC6A91A8446911BA8AD3297C3065A6A2&q=fry%27s+5+centre+chocolate+creams&simid=608021384606843632&selectedIndex=6&ajaxhist=0
>
> <https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=kMoSNCeH&id=CC9B8A5AFC6A91A8446911BA8AD3297C3065A6A2&q=fry%27s+5+centre+chocolate+creams&simid=608021384606843632&selectedIndex=6&ajaxhist=0>
> fry's 5 centre chocolate creams - Bing
> <https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=kMoSNCeH&id=CC9B8A5AFC6A91A8446911BA8AD3297C3065A6A2&q=fry%27s+5+centre+chocolate+creams&simid=608021384606843632&selectedIndex=6&ajaxhist=0>
> www.bing.com
> Bing is a search engine that brings together the best of search and people
> in your social networks to help you spend less time searching and more time
> doing.
>
> yet all the examples below featuring 5 Boys have nothing to do with choc.
> creams.  By the way, the “Five Boys Bars came out in 1902.”
>
> So, back to Leonard Woolf.  Surely, writing in 1964, he would not use the
> expression “chocolate creams” in an anachronistic 1902-22 way (in other
> words, if choc. creams meant something different in 1902-22 from 1964, he
> would have explained).  And this is what he wrote:
>
>
> On the first page of this book I recorded that the one thing which I
> remember in my return from Ceylon after seven years is the chocolate creams
> in Marseille. It is a strange fact—I have no doubt, discreditable to me,
> some unsavoury juggling between my scruffy ego and sluttish id—that one of
> the chief things which I remember as connected with the return from those
> terrible four years of war to peace is chocolate creams. A good many
> Belgian refugees in the first year of the war settled in Richmond and a
> large florid Belgian woman opened a kind of delicatessen shop (as they were
> called in those days) and tea-shop some way up the hill near Richmond
> Bridge. As the war went on
>
> 256
>
>
>
> THE 1914 WAR
>
> delicatessen became very thin on the ground and chocolate creams vanished.
> Some months after armistice day, Virginia and I, walking up Richmond Hill,
> looked into the shop and there upon the counter were slabs of chocolate
> cream bars. When I was a child, you could buy large fat bars of chocolate
> cream which cost, I think, a halfpenny the bar. Some were made by Cadbury
> and some by Fry, and if you were an addict of Cadbury, you regarded the Fry
> eater as a drinker of Musigny Vieilles Vignes regards the drinker of
> Australian Burgundy. I belonged to the Cadbury school and have remained an
> addict of chocolate cream in bars ever since (though I have not seen any
> for years). The Belgian chocolate cream bars were un-English, being thin
> and continental, but when we saw them, the world seemed to change just a
> little and we dashed into the shop and each bought three bars which was the
> maximum that Madame X allowed each customer to buy. We carried them back to
> Hogarth House and ate them silently, almost reverently. The Great War was
> at last over.
>
> 257
>
>
>
> *Beginning Again*
>
> Stuart
>
>
> *From:* Mark Hussey
> *Sent:* Friday, March 31, 2017 2:30 PM
> *To:* 'Stuart N. Clarke' ; 'Woolf List'
> *Subject:* RE: [Vwoolf] Chocolate Creams?
>
>
> Right, well Stuart’s post reminds me of Vanessa’s “Notes on Virginia’s
> Childhood” which ends with a scene of the sisters buying *Tit Bits*
> “together with 3d worth of Fry’s Chocolate, taking both to Kensington
> Gardens to read and eat together, lying in the grass under the trees on
> summer afternoons.”
>
>
>
> Looking forward to that edition of *JR*…
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Vwoolf [mailto:vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu] *On Behalf Of *Stuart
> N. Clarke
> *Sent:* Friday, March 31, 2017 7:15 AM
> *To:* Woolf List
> *Subject:* Re: [Vwoolf] Chocolate Creams?
>
>
>
>
>
> VW’s mother-in-law had a ‘passion for chocolate creams’ (*L*4 241). This
> passion was shared by VW (*L*2 62) and LW (L. Woolf “Beginning Again”
> 1964: 15), and in 1918 they bought three bars from a shop near Richmond
> Bridge run by a Belgian refugee: ‘The Great War was at last over’ (L. Woolf
> 1964: 257).
>
>
>
> I didn’t realise that this was a problem!  As far as I’m concerned, I
> think of choc. creams as a small dark chocolate with inside a creamy white
> filling.  The OED gives:
> *2.* An item or type of chocolate confectionery with a fondant centre.
> Freq. *attrib.*, esp. in chocolate-cream bar.
>
> 1851  *Daily National Intelligencer* 18 Dec. (*advt.*)    The subscriber
> begs leave to state that he has received a great variety of imported and
> domestic Confectionary, viz. Fancy Boxes, Chocolate Cream, Gum Drops of
> superior flavors, [etc.].
>
> 1860  *N.Y. Times* 10 Apr. 3/4 (*advt.*)    Maillard's Chocolate... Chocolate
> Creams, Chocolate Caramels, [etc.].
>
> 1861  *Illustr. London News* 9 Feb. 124/2 (*advt.*)    Frys' Chocolate
> Creams.
>
> 1879  C. M. Yonge *Magnum Bonum* I. iv. 58   We'd got nothing to eat but chocolate
> creams.
>
> 1893  *Proc. Ackworth Old Scholars' Assoc.* *12* 34   To one unaccustomed
> to boys and their ways, a jam tart, a bar of chocolate cream, a cocoanut,
> and a mixture known as turkish delight..would seem to break the elementary
> laws of health.
>
> 1906  *Daily Chron.* 25 July 6/4   A shop-worn chocolate-cream bar.
>
> 1917  *McClure's Mag.* Mar. 48/1   In the Lowney factories most chocolate
> cream centers are fashioned in molds.
>
> 1992  M. Baren *How it all Began* 25/1   The increased demand was at
> least partly due to the introduction of the now famous chocolate cream bar
> in 1866.
>
> 2012  *Weekend Austral.* (Nexis) 21 Apr. 17   This is a romantic comedy,
> after all—as sweet as a box of soft-centred chocolate creams.
>
> 1851—2012
>
>
>
> However, on the TV yesterday on an antiques programme, an enamel advert
> from what I took to be 1910-26 of the famous Fry’s 5 boys made me look at
> the boy on the R more closely, and he seems to have a *bar* of chocolate in
> his mouth rather than a choc. with a fondant centre. This here is not the
> ad. I saw, but similar of course (it was clearer on the one I saw):
>
> https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00158N5FI?psc=1
>
>
>
> You can find lots of them here:
>
>
> https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=expectation+fry%27s+five+boys&FORM=HDRSC2
>
>
>
> This is the one I saw, but it was clearer on TV (& sold for at least £2000
> at auction!):
>
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fry%27s_Chocolate_Cream#/media/File:Fry%27s_Chocolate_advertisement.JPG
>
>
>
> I thought that Fry’s choc. creams were always like this:
>
> https://www.cadbury.ie/products/Chocolate-Cream-2454?p=2454
>
>
>
> I think I may be wrong: look at “Beginning Again” p. 257 more carefully.
> In summary, I think chocolate cream bars were either as described by the
> OED or were the equivalent of bars of milk chocolate (similar to what we
> get today).
>
>
>
> If anyone gets any further with this, I should be pleased to hear -- to
> help me with “Jacob’s Room, of course.
>
>
>
> Stuart
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Byrne, Anne (Soc & Pol)
>
> *Sent:* Friday, March 31, 2017 11:29 AM
>
> *To:* Woolf List
>
> *Subject:* [Vwoolf] Chocolate Creams?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Morning All- I have a research quest which you might be able to help me
> with? I am looking for an explanation of what 'chocolate creams' meant in
> post WW1 Britain. Why? I need an image of chocolate creams as recognised by
> Leonard and Virginia but as I don't know what the term means I am somewhat
> at a standstill. Are 'chocolate creams'  hand made (or not) confectionary
> (sweets in a box), biscuits (perhaps like bourbons or oreos today) or are
> they a chocolate bar (think Fry's) or some sort of desert made of chocolate
> and cream? My mind is frazzled by the puzzle  and I have to say looking at
> the pictures of chocolate does make me chocolate hungry. The plural seems
> to be important - any ideas?
>
>
>
> The context as you probably can guess is that Virginia and Leonard
> celebrated the end of the war together, sitting by the fire,
> 'sacramentally' eating 'chocolate creams', purchased from a Belgian
> confectioner on Richmond Hill (see Glendinning). The Bloomsbury Cookbook by
> Jans Ondaatje Rolls gives a recipe for same but according to a Guardian
> review this is more like a Swiss roll (Regretfully I don't have a copy of
> the book to check). Florinda in *Jacob's Room* is partial to chocolate
> creams and so might I if I knew what they were!
>
>
>
> Margaret Cole sends 'chocolate creams' to Leonard in 1967 after reading *Beginning
> Again *(Glendinning) and other readers reputedly wished they could.
>
>
>
> It's frivolous I know but sometimes....Looking forward to another great
> conference in Reading.
>
>
>
> Warm wishes
>
> Anne Byrne
> ------------------------------
>
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-- 
 Graham Borland

               ؟
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