Читать книгу Christmas Dodos: Festive Things on the Verge of Extinction - Steve Stack - Страница 18

There are many foodstuffs associated with the festive season. Some of these are obvious and the same for everyone: Christmas pudding (the clue is in the name), mince pies, brandy butter, and so on. Some are fairly common all year round, but increase in popularity as Christmas nears; how many of us have a bowl of nuts in the living room in any month other than December?

But others are particular brands or products that will mean nothing to many, but cause an overwhelming sense of nostalgia for certain people.

Sugared almonds do it for me. I only ever saw them at Christmas and even then only if we visited my grandparents’ house. My grandparents kept sugared almonds in a little ceramic dish in their ‘best room’ and we would be allowed to take one if we’d been particularly well behaved.

Newberry Fruit Jellies, it seems, do it for many others, at least if the 21st Century Dodos Facebook page is anything to go by. When compiling entries for this book I received many suggestions from readers, but this one got the most people salivating at the memory.

Newberry Fruits were sugar-coated luxury jelly sweets, that came in different fruit flavours – raspberry, lemon, orange, blackcurrant, lime and strawberry – all presented in a tray not unlike a box of chocolates. The sugar coating would form a hard crust and the jellies would unleash a liquid centre when bitten into, much to the delight of the eater.

Manufactured by Meltis in humble Bedford for decades, production moved to Germany in the 90s after which Newberry Fruits vanished from the UK market completely. They have staged a mini-comeback in the past decade but, according to many reports in online forums, they are not quite the same as they used to be.

But then again, what is?

Suggested by Paul Burden

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