[Vwoolf] Chocolate Cream

Fri Apr 7 13:02:17 EDT 2017

To stretch the relevance of chocolate creams a bit longer, this recently
from the LRB:

FROM THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS WEBSITELRB · James Meek · Somerdale to
SkarbimierzFrom Vol. 39 No. 8 · 20 April 2017

Cheryl L Hindrichs thought you would be interested in this article:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n08/james-meek/somerdale-to-skarbimierz

On Fri, Apr 7, 2017 at 4:23 AM, Jeremy Hawthorn <jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no>
wrote:

> 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> 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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