Hartlepool is famous for allegedly executing a monkey during the Napoleonic Wars. According to legend, fishermen from Hartlepool watched a French warship founder off the coast, and the only survivor was a monkey, which was dressed in French military uniform, presumably to amuse the officers on the ship. The unsophisticated fishermen assumed that this must be what Frenchmen looked like, and after a brief trial, summarily executed the monkey. (ref: Wikipedia)I'm more a chocolate sauce and chopped nuts kinda girl myself, but I remember the days of being sent out into the street, with a Tupperware bowl and 50p, to buy the family's pudding from Mr Softee. Sometimes my dad would tell me to ask for a squirt of 'beetle's blood' . Given that I had ( and still have) an aversion to all things anthropodic and haematologic, this ensured that he got my share of the ice-cream. He used to use a similar trick on my gullible young cousin, telling her that the raisins in McVities Shorties, were in fact dead flies. Oh, and the old 'Butterscotch Angel Delight contains curry powder' line was always a favourite. No wonder I was a faddy eater.
Anyway, back to the red sauce. To call it raspberry would, I feel, breach the Misrepresentation Act. That sticky stream of chemicals has probably never seen a soft fruit. Crushed up beetle bits is closer to the mark. Or so I thought until today................
Cochineal, the red food additive, is derived from insects although not from the shiny black beetles I had imagined:
the stuff we call cochineal is a chemical extract of carminic acid from the bodies of squished female scale insects.The fact that they are 'scales' and therefore legless creatures, makes them slightly more palatable However, as the blood isn't technically from beetles, we are now left with one less name for the nation's favourite ice-cream topping.
Any suggestions?
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