[Vwoolf] Chocolate Cream
Jeremy Hawthorn
jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no
Fri Apr 7 06:23:29 EDT 2017
I agree that the 5 boys connection is a red herring. Unless my battered
memory is misleading me, you could still buy 5 boys chocolate bars in
the 1950s, and they were of solid rather than filled chocolate. As for
the mint taste, there were certainly bars of creme-filled chocolate with
a mint taste, but were they not called chocolate mints or chocolate mint
creams? There were also boxes of mint-creme individual chocolate but I
cannot remember what they were called. "Peppermint cremes" perhaps?
Incidentally, is the odd "creme" spelling just a marketing affectation?
Jeremy H
On 05.04.2017 17.24, Graham Borland wrote:
> 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 <mailto: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
> <mailto:vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu>> on behalf of Stuart N.
> Clarke <stuart.n.clarke at btinternet.com
> <mailto: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 <http://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
> <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. 58We'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. 17This 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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