FACTORALY - E5 CONFECTION

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

Caution. This episode is full of sugar. Those with Type 2 may wish to listen in short bursts. Simon gets his rock off and Bruce luxuriates in chocolates. If you've ever had even the faintest of sweet tooths, you're going to enjoy this episode Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Fact Orally. Hello Simon. Hello Bruce, how are you today? I'm feeling very sweet, thank you very much. How are you? Equally candalicious. Is that because today we're talking about confection? No, no, that's just my general state of mind. It's pure coincidence that we're going to be talking about confection. Because confection means all sorts of things, but today I guess we're going to be talking about the stuff you eat rather than the confections

that one makes. Yeah, so there's a connection. There's a confection connection in the word. Confection comes from the old Latin word. We'd like to start this show with a little bit of etymology. Etymology is always good. Why do people sometimes say entymology, which is about insects? That's the study of insects, isn't it? Totally different.

Unless you were studying the etymology of entomology, in which case it would be valid. It would. There's a Gilbert and Sullivan song in there somewhere. So yes, the Latin word is confissere, which literally means to put together. That came through Old French into Old English to confect, to mix together. So in sweet terms, in candy terms, that is mixing together the ingredients to make a confection. But also the other sense of the word, the confections you make,

sort of has that common link. It's to string together or to create something. Right. Yeah. you make sort of has that common link it's to string together or to create right something right yeah um so what interesting things have you found out about confection well you talked about the the origin of the word confection the origin of confection is is quite i mean confection as such sweets candy as such has been around for a long time since sort of the egyptians sort of like three three or four thousand years it's been around. Starting mostly with honey. Yes.

There's a lot of honey-based sweets and honey and nuts mixed together. That kind of sweet rather than the sort of sweets that we know today. I actually found on the honey front, I found evidence of some old cave paintings of drawings of people dipping their hand into a beehive and putting the honey in their mouth. So there's evidence of people actually eating sweet

food in that sense since caveman times. Yes, that's a bit like the Tate and Lyle golden syrup thing, isn't it? From strength came sweetness. Nice. People don't look at the front of the tin of that, which has a swarm of bees swarming out of a dead lion's stomach. Does it really? Yes. And that's why it says, from strength came sweetness. Awesome. And that's a biblical thing, isn't it?

Yes. Someone was posing a riddle to someone or the other, and the answer was a dead lion filled with bees. As it would be. Why wouldn't it be? So next time you're in the supermarket have a look at a tin of uh golden syrup and you will see that on the front i've got some in my cupboard i'll have a look later so yeah so so so uh honey um but then um

i guess bringing it more up to date in the sort of 1800s sweets were kind of medicine or they're sort of combined with medicine. So if you had horrible tasting medicine, you would either encase it or serve it with something sweet. Yes. Okay. Okay. And that still stands true today, doesn't it? You take an ibuprofen capsule or something like that, it does taste vaguely sweet. As I believe Poppins said, a spoonful of sugar does indeed help the medicine go down. Yeah, absolutely. One of the oldest ones that's still in existence

that was technically a medicine was licorice. Right, OK. So licorice was invented as a medicine, as a sort of for your chest. Ah. And you can still buy all sorts of different licorice now. Yeah. So we all think of licorice as being the sort of the black,

chewy, gummy, Bassett's all sorts type thing. Yes. But in its rawest form, it's just liquid that you extract from a root, isn't it? It is, yeah. It's similar to an anise effectively. It's like a pastis

that you have in France or all sorts of ouzo. Star anise in Indian cooking. Lots of people have it and make it into alcohol which generally tastes great while you're on holiday. Okay. And then you bring it home and you go, why on earth did I buy this?

That was so spare of the moment. So what is your favourite Bassett's Allsort? If indeed you have one. You might hate licorice. I don't hate licorice. I actually really love raspberry or strawberry licorice. Oh, okay. I have a very sweet tooth. Do you?

So I have to be a bit careful. I really like the pink coconut circles. Oh, you do? That's very divisive. There are people who like those and people who absolutely hate them. Yes,

that's true. I'm on the like side. It's a bit like eating a Kit Kat where you kind of like strip off the chocolate from the sides. I quite like eating the ones where there's layers of sort of sweetness and then licorice and kind of like just trying to peel off the sandwiches. Yeah, nice. Fancy some licorice now. I have some.

Do you? I'll pass it over. Through the airwaves. But the gumminess of licorice is nice. And gummy sort of sweets have been around for a while. And my favourite gummy sweets, as are the favourite gummy sweets of most of the Doctors Who, are jelly babies. Can I interest you in a jelly baby?

Exactly. Just as a side note, I appreciate the fact that you said Doctors Who rather than Doctor Whos. Well, thank you very much. I love that. Of course, yes. One would.

Coles de sac, not cul-de-sacs, etc. Yes, one has to. Because it's correct. Yes. They actually appeared in lots of the Doctors in Doctor Who. Did they? And I think Terry Pratchett's used them. All sorts of people have used jelly babies.

They were invented a while ago because they were originally sold in about 1850. Oh, were they? 1853. By Bassetts of Sheffield. Yes. And they were originally called unclaimed babies.

At a time where there were quite a few orphans. Oh, my goodness. An Austrian guy working at Friars of Lancashire. Right. Originally marketed them as unclaimed babies. And then immediately after the First World War, the name was changed to Peace Babies. Oh.

I'm not sure which one of those I would feel worse about eating. Unclaimed or peace. And then they were peace babies until the Second World War, and then production was suspended because they didn't have any sugar or anything. Had to focus on more important things. Well, exactly. And then when they came back in 1953, they thought, well, we can't call them peace babies. We certainly can't call them

unclaimed babies. So they were called jelly babies. Fantastic. And the thing that, my research on jelly babies went far too far. And I discovered that all the jelly babies have names. No, what, the different colours of them? Yep. So the red one, the different colours of them? Yep. So the red one, the strawberry one, is called Brilliant. The yellow lemony one is called Bubbles.

The pink raspberry one is called Baby Bonnie. The green and lime one, the sort of limish one, is called Boofles. Thank you, pardon? Boofles. Boofles. Wow. And Big Heart is the purple, black-coloured one.

Okay. And Bumper is the orange one. I don't get that. I don't get any of them, frankly. Are we trying to look for meaning where there is none? Yes. And the different shapes and names was an innovation in the late 1980s. Wait, are you telling me the jelly babies are all different shapes and names was an innovation in the late 1980s. Wait, are you telling me the jelly babies are all different shapes?

Yes, they are. I clearly haven't eaten a jelly baby in a long time. Really? Apparently. They're in different poses. Yeah, absolutely. This is nothing to do with confection, but it is to do with what you've just been mentioning.

I found out last week that McDonald's chicken nuggets come in four different shapes. Really? Previously, I'd only ever been able to identify two, and they're both quite distinct. There's sort of a circular one and one that looks vaguely like Italy in shape okay but apparently there are four distinct shapes and they all have names as well

and those names are the bell the bow tie the ball and the boot now obviously this isn't really in public knowledge. This is just tickling the funny bones of someone who works in the higher echelons of McDonald's going, I'm a bit bored, let's give our chicken nuggets names. I think this would be the subject of a thesis by one of the professors at the University of Hamburgerology. Hamburgerology? Which is the McDonald's University that actually exists. Really? Yes. I love that.

I want to study there. I want a diploma. Yes, and the McNugget is probably part of that. Great. Well, there you go. That's for free, folks. You tuned in to hear us talk about confection, and you've ended up learning about the University of Burgerology. I don't know that much more about sweets.

I kind of concentrated a bit more on my downfall, which is chocolate. Yes. Did you learn much more about sweets? So I did a few. It's quite difficult these days to separate sweets from chocolate, isn't it? You know, chocolate is such a domineering element of the market. I don't really like sweets that much. I love chocolate. I don't really like the gummy things.

I don't like jelly babies. My son loves really sour, fizzy, chewy things, which just make me cringe and make me worry about how much I'm going to have to spend at the dentist. There's a Scottish sweet I mean the Scots are mad about boiled sweets absolutely insane about them and there's one called

sour plums sour plums but I just think I get all sorts of images in my head when I think of sour plums. But sour plums is just great. Before we embark on chocolate, which I think obviously we must, the other type of sweet, I guess, if we're talking about boiled sweets, that I did look at was a stick of rock.

Ah. An American friend of mine has recently moved to the country, and he said that he had heard of this thing called rock, but had never experienced it, and could I tell him what it was all about? And I thought, well, actually, I don't really know that much about it, so I did this research purely for him. But a stick of rock, to anyone who isn't familiar it's a cylindrical hard-boiled candy for want of a better word uh with lots of different colors often in stripes

it often has writing through the middle of it to tell you where you bought it um and it comes wrapped in cellophane you usually buy it at tourist uh tourist places you know the seaside is quite prevalent also apparently in um windsor which i discovered a little while ago there was a there's a shop that sells windsor rock um and uh this originated in the the 19th century usually sold at fairgrounds and it was called fair rock uh it wasn't colorful it was just a plain stick of of boiled sweet didn't have the writing in it um and as many of these things do there are vastly varying theories as to who sort of first came up with the idea of putting letters and colors into it um there are two victorian names that have have come up one was called i mean they've got to be false just because of their names one chap was called

ben bullock who was an ex-minor from burnley uh the burnley bullocks the burnley bullocks so ben bullock from burnley was on holiday in blackpool and he's he found some of this are there any more b's involved in this story not in this one no we'll come on to the d's in a minute um and he found this fair rock at a fairground in Blackpool and he thought, wouldn't it be fun to put lettering into this? The other alternative is a fellow called Dynamite

Dick from Morecambe who came up with much the same idea around the same time. Who knows who to believe? But anyway, the way you make rock, you sort of make lots of sheets of sugary colorful yuckiness um which are still sort of quite soft and squidgy and you layer the sheets one upon the other upon the other you insert an elongated letter uh in in sort of like a stick form uh you lay it all out onto this sheet, and then you roll the sheet,

and roll it, and roll it, and roll it, until it becomes sort of an inch or so in diameter, and that's how you get rock. Personally, I can't stand the stuff, but I bought a stick of it for my American friend, and he was chuffed. Do you know it starts out as a very, very big roll, almost like a tree trunk?

It's massive, isn't it, when you first begin? It's huge. Because they make so much of it and it's fresh and hot. But then what they do is whilst it's hot, they extrude it so that this huge log's width of sweet basically is extruded through a thing and it comes out as like a one inch diameter thing or even smaller. And the lettering shrinks, obviously as it's extruded, the lettering shrinks. There was a TV thing on, I think it might have been on Netflix recently, about a girl who wanted to be a comedian and she wants to be Lucille Ball in England.

Right. And she's from the North. And she actually, her dad works in a rock factory. Okay. Hence the link between this massive TV series, which is hugely successful, which I can't remember the name. It wasn't called Brighton Rock, was it? No, it wasn't. Brighton Rock, was it? No, it wasn't.

Brighton Rock's a whole other thing. But so is Edinburgh Rock. Edinburgh Rock is a whole other thing as well. Edinburgh Rock is a soft version of that hard rock. You can buy boxes of Edinburgh Rock, which is very similar, but it's actually quite crumbly. Do you know what?

This suddenly makes sense to me because I mentioned going to Windsor and finding a stick of rock there of all places. I bought it in the Edinburgh woollen mill and it was soft and I didn't know whether it had gone off because I was sure, I remembered as a child, rock being so hard that it could almost break your teeth,

and there was this stock of minty squidgeness. But that's the Edinburgh woolen mill. That's the Edinburgh style Edinburgh rock. See, even I'm learning things in this podcast. So that's bald sweets. You're obviously into your squidgy gummy sweets. Well, yes, but ultimately I think what we're both into is the morally difficult chocolate. Even the word sounds tasty, doesn't it?

I'm just going to lean into my microphone. Chocolate. It just sounds, oh. Or even in French, chocolat. Yeah, chocolat. There's a very, very good hot chocolate shop in Paris. Is there? Really good. You would really hope there would be. yeah chocolat there's a very very good hot chocolate shop in paris is there really good

you would really hope there would be um now speaking of hot chocolate so we can we can go all the way back to the aztecs uh living in in what is now mexico uh they extracted cocoa beans to make a a hot but bitter drink it wouldn't really have resembled what we would think of as cocoa or hot chocolate or anything like that nowadays. It was quite bitter. It wasn't until a good 1,500 years later that someone decided to mix it with sugar and turn it into a sweet drink.

So it was essentially a bitter drink for a really, really long time. They used to use it as part... There's a Mexican dish which is like turkey with chocolate. Really? Yeah, which is delicious. But it doesn't taste anything like chocolate. No, I can't...

I've never had anything that sort of is anything like the original bitter drink. You know, I think of hot chocolate and I usually think of cabri's you know powdered stuff which has yes gallons and gallons of sugar in it i'm sure um but tastes very nice it does yeah i have a i was given for christmas a hotel chocolat um hot chocolate making machine oh lucky you lucky you. Which is very good. You just sort of fill it up with chocolate. You open a sachet of the Hotel Chocolat various different flavours of chocolate and pour it in there and then press a button.

And it heats the milk and stirs it at the same time. So it's always perfect. Oh, nice. But my favourite drinking chocolate, hot chocolate, is made by a company called Charbonnel & Walker who have lots of royal warrants on the tin. Okay. favourite drinking chocolate, hot chocolate, is made by a company called Charbonnel and Walker, who have lots of royal warrants on the tin. OK.

And they are... That is almost as good as the chocolate in Paris. Really? As the hot chocolate, yeah. It's delicious. I discovered something called drinking fudge a couple of years ago. Ah. It's exactly what you would imagine it to be. If hot chocolate is the liquid form of chocolate,

hot fudge, drinking fudge, is the liquid form of fudge. I've never tasted anything so sickly. I shan't be rushing back for more. It came in a very, very small, sort of like an espresso-sized cup, and you really wouldn't want more than that. So it was a drink for a long time there wasn't it hot chocolate well chocolate when you said should we go for chocolate you meant shall we go for a drink of chocolate yes absolutely yes it didn't it didn't sort of

become a a solidified bar uh for a very long time afterwards did it i think it was um you mentioned fries earlier on didn't you so in in 1853 uh fries launched a chocolate cream stick ah later known as a bar rather than a stick and he he launched this this name chocolate cream bars in 1866 and that's kind of where it all began. And then a handful of years later, John Cadbury from Birmingham had opened up a tea and coffee and drinking chocolate shop in 1824. And then he sort of caught on to this idea of solidified chocolate and created the Cadbury's Dairy Milk Bar in 1905. Yes. Which I have to say is just one of my favourite things to consume ever. It's dirty chocolate. It's street chocolate. It doesn't cost that much to get a real good sugar hit.

Yes, yes. It's like the fast food of the chocolate world, isn't it? I suppose it depends who you talk to. You know, again, a couple of American friends who sort of first came to England, they don't have Cadbury's, or at least they didn't at the time have Cadbury's over there. They had Hershey's. And they were just gobsmacked at the quality of this chocolate

in this purple wrapper. What incredibly good quality it was, how sweet it was, how creamy it was. So it's all relative, I guess. Well, I mean, Hershey came up with his own formula for a bar that tastes like urine, as far as I'm concerned. I do have a link between Hershey and Cadbury which is a personal link which is that I have been to both Cadbury World and Hershey World

Have you? Hershey World in Pennsylvania is a fun fair based around Hershey and there is actually a water slide which is filled with a watery chocolate Oh, how Willy Wonka. That's fantastic.

It is very Wonka. Wow. I've been to the Cadbury world near Birmingham, and that is splendid. Well, I mean, both sort of in similar ways, because they were Quakers. Well, actually, the Cadburys were Quakers. The Hershey's were uh a different sect and um so the cadbury's wanted to build a place they were

looking at the garden suburb where people were sort of like they were building new towns uh which were based around a garden yeah and and thebury said, well, if you can build residential around a garden, why can't you build a factory around a garden? And so they bought a whole load of land just outside Birmingham, called it Bourneville. Yes. And built this whole community which supported the factory so that the community effectively worked for the factory.

Yeah. But they got doctors. They got, you know, at a time when there was no NHS, they got free medication, free schooling. The whole thing was based around being nice to your workers. I imagine that as an ethos. and then that's what gave rise to the Bourneville chocolate bar um I don't know if the story is true but I've heard it said that the workers were so enamored with this place Bourneville and and you know their employers generosity and and and looking after their welfare, that they decided to mock up a plain chocolate bar in honour of this place and called it Bourneville and sort of presented it to Mr Cadbury as a thank you.

Yes. Generally speaking, the workers in chocolate factories when they first started were very well taken care of. I mean, Hershey's does a, I think they have an industrial school in America. It's quite well known, the Hershey Industrial School. And also both of them give millions and millions and millions of pounds to charity every year. Yes, yes. I think some of it is to make up for the, shall we say,

the source of the sugar and the cocoa was not always entirely ethical. Absolutely, no. Well, let's have a chat about sugar itself. Because we've talked about bitter chocolate, we've talked about honey. entirely ethical absolutely no well let's let's have a chat about sugar itself so because of you know we've talked about bitter chocolate we've talked about honey um but uh obviously sugar is is the basis of all of this stuff we wouldn't have modern day chocolate we wouldn't have rock we wouldn't have licorice we wouldn't have all of these things without sugar um so sugar cane juice was being produced all the way back in 4000 BC in India and Southeast Asia. And it wasn't until the first century AD that they started granulating this sugary liquid and sort of using it in the form that we would see today.

It was crystals we would say today as crystals yeah but as you've alluded to there's obviously a much darker side to to sugar production i'm not going to go too much into it on a fun podcast but uh you know wherever you hear of the word there were cocoa plantations and there were sugar plantations and whenever you hear the word plantation, it brings up an image of slavery. And the workforce involved in the production of both cocoa and sugar were generally slave labor. And in fact, what happened, I think it was with Cadbury's, was that there was a court case because they were actually still employing slave labor to produce sugar after slavery had been abolished. No way. And the court, they claimed that they had no idea that slave labor was being used in the production of their product.

Yeah. And the court believed them. The court looked at everything else that they were doing and said, yeah, we think that's probably true. You probably didn't understand or know what was going on. Right, OK, OK. But I was fascinated by the fact that, on the plantations anyway, cocoa grows on the trunks of trees.

It doesn't grow off the tree. The cocoa pods actually grow out of the bark. Really? Yes. I'd always sort of imagine them hanging from palm-like leaves, you know, like a banana or a coconut, but they actually grow out of the bark? They grow out of the bark.

How interesting. And then there's a huge process to actually... I mean, who was the first person who thought, you see that thing that looks like a rugby ball, I wonder what's inside it. Getting inside it, seeing this little white pulpy mush with a few seeds in it, and going, I wonder what would happen if we dried that out

and then roasted it and then ground it up and then... You can only assume it's gone through an awful lot of trial and error, can't you? One of them fell on the floor and it broke open and someone scooped out the contents and ate it and went, yuck. That's really bitter and horrible. I wonder if we can do anything to make it less yuck. Rather than just going, do you know what, that's yuck.

I think we'll classify that yuck and leave it alone. Yes. Yes, well done them for having the determination to make something good out of it. And white chocolate is based on cocoa butter. And generally speaking, most cocoa butter isn't used in chocolate. It's put a bit in just to sort of soften it up a bit. But in the 1930s, there was a problem with people being very skinny, obviously, because there'd been a lot of poverty and famine. And they realized that this cocoa butter was quite fattening.

Right. And that it would be good to feed it to children to fatten them up. OK. But they didn't want to just give them cocoa butter which was horrible and sort of like smacks of milk and nasty so they made it into a medicine called uh nestrovit right and nestrovit uh the bars of nestrovit which i think you can still buy nestrovit on the continent right so that was renamed in the 1930s as Milky Bar. Is that so? And we all remember the famous advertising,

the Milky Bars are on me, with the Milky Bar kid. Yes, there have been several Milky Bar kids. I haven't actually researched it, but I know there's been at least seven. Right, OK. Yeah, well, they do have a tendency to carry on being quite young, don't they? Even though the adverts have been going on for 40-odd years. Yes, yes. The British side of chocolate is slightly different to the American side of chocolate. The interesting one is Forrest Mars, I guess.

Yes, yes. And the Mars bar. But the Mars bar was actually invented by his dad. Yes, whose name was Frank C. Mars. Yes, and they had a bit of a falling out. Yeah. There was a Mars bar that has the extra nuts in it, which was called Snickers.

Originally called Snickers. And then called Marathon and now called Snickers again. Oh, really? It started off as Snickers? Yes. And Snickers, the reason it was called Snickers because Snickers was Forrest Mars' racehorse. So he named

the bar after his racehorse. Now that's interesting. So I grew up calling them Marathon Bars and was slightly outraged when they changed their name to Snickers but actually Marathon was the interloper then. Exactly. There are some sweets which are still around but they're not in their original format.

Okay. So for example, when I was younger, you could buy a Duncan's Walnut Whip and the Duncan's Walnut Whip had not only half a walnut on the top, it had half a walnut on the bottom underneath the white stuff. So a whole walnut in total?

A whole walnut. Wow. Based around a whip. And obviously with smaller hands, it was enormously much bigger. Yes, of course. There's a massive internet debate about the size of the wagon wheel, isn't there? Oh, it's all over the place, isn't it? I can't make my mind up on these things.

I opened up a bag of Monster Munch. Do you remember Monster Munch crisps? And I'm convinced they're smaller than they used to be. And I was telling someone about this and they said, no, it's just that your hands are larger now. Yes. So I'm on the fence about that debate about the wagon wheels. We talked about Roundtree a little bit.

There's a fascinating story with Roundtrees, which I love. Again, they're another set of people who were very inclusive and wanted to help the general population. They noticed that there were a lot of people in poverty. Right. And so they produced products that helped and gave away a lot of charity. And they actually built a town of their own, which I'd never heard of, called Earswick. Oh, no, I've never heard of that.

Earswick, outside Sheffield, is actually a Roundtree's town. Oh, OK. And again, provided free health care, free schooling, free housing, all sorts of things to help people. Yes. And the lovely story that I love about Roundtree's is that one day the Roundtree family was sitting around minding their own business making Roundtree's chocolate. And this French guy walked in with

a bag and he said, would you like to try my pastilles? And at that time, pastilles were only made in France. And so the Roundtree family said, well, let's try a few of your pastilles. And they liked them. And the guy said, so would you like to buy my pastilles? Then they said, no, but we'll buy you. We will employ you to help us to make pastilles here in Sheffield. And so they employed him, gave him a research facility. And two years later, he made about a ton of them.

Yeah. And gave the samples to the family and said, so what do you think? Would you mind throwing them in the river because they're horrible? Oh, what a shame. We know you can do better than this. Go back and try again. Yes. So he tried again.

They tried them and they went, we think you can do better. So he grumbled away off and came back with the third lot. And they said, yep, these are perfect. And those were the ones that became Round Trees Pastels. Wow. And then he carried on for another year or so and came up with fruit gums. Right. Okay.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. No. When you first started talking about Roundtree's chocolate, I thought I had no idea Roundtree ever made chocolate. Yes. Roundtree's used to make chocolate.

They used to make boxes of chocolates, in fact. Okay. And early boxes of chocolates were so expensive that a box of chocolates would cost you the equivalent of the working man's monthly rent. Monthly rent? A month's rent for a box of chocolates. Wow.

Which is why I think they still had that hangover when I was younger, which was like if you give somebody a box of chocolates, it's like, wow, you're giving me a box of chocolates. That's really something. There's actually a link between the invention of the cinema and chocolate, which is that the chocolate companies thought, well, people are taking chocolates into the cinema. We need to get boxes of chocolates into the cinema because we can make more money off a box of chocolates than we do off a bar.

Right, yes. People weren't that wild about it because they would probably bite into like a ginger and go, that's horrible, I don't fancy that, and put it back in the box or just throw it away or spit it out. So that's why they started to make them in different shapes so that you could actually feel the box of chocolates in the dark and know which was which.

Oh, my word. Almost like a braille for chocolate. Braille chocolate. That's brilliant. Now, in our various musings over different forms of sweets, I came across M&M's, and it has never crossed my mind as to why they're called M&M's. But they are named after the two people who invented them, which is Mars and Murray. So they were created by Forrest Mars, who was the son of Mr Mars Sr., who came up with the company,

and Bruce Murray, who was the son of the president of Hershey at the time. So these two fellas got together, and they were inspired by seeing British troops eating Smarties in the Second World War, and thought, well, that's nice. We'll Americanise that slightly. We'll put our initials on the shell. We'll stuff some of them with peanuts and away you go. And that's how M&M's came into being.

So at the same time as Joseph Fry was coming up with the bar of chocolate, there was a Swiss guy called Lindt and a Swiss guy called Sprungli who were also making chocolate drinks. And by the way, their hot chocolate is amazing. I would imagine. But what they came up with was a way of kneading the chocolate using a clamshell. So it was pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. And when you knead that chocolate paste, what happens is all of the vinegars and the acids in it evaporate.

Right. So what you end up with is a much smoother, sweeter chocolate than was available at the time normally. So this clamshell way of kneading the chocolate led to that specific taste of Swiss chocolate. Well, I think that's pretty much exhausted our topic of confection for this week. I'm really hungry now. Yes. So let's go and have a snack.

Thank you once again for joining us and listening to our absolute twaddle. We hope you've enjoyed it as much as we've enjoyed doing it. It's been fun. And if you like this kind of thing, please come back again for more next week. Do all of the things you're supposed

to do with podcasts. Like, subscribe. Tell your friends about us. Comment. And please join us again next time on Fact or Really. Thank you very much for joining us. See you soon. Bye-bye.