1860s Period Foods - Including Good Down Home Eatin'

[Jim Page]

Thanks, Betty, for starting this thread! It should be a doozy!

MaddieM wrote in a post in another thread:
>>Perhaps the Hershey's they sell over here is not the same...

I read a history of chocolate and it mentioned speculation that the original Hershey's chocolate was made with outdated milk to save money, which gave it a distinctive flavor. According to this unproven legend, making Hershey's chocolate with outdated milk has continued into our era, as that's the taste Americans expect from their chocolate.

Whether that is true is not for me to say. I like Hershey's milk chocolate. Like Rob W, I'm no fan of dark chocolate, which tastes bitter to me. I also detest Tootsie Rolls.

I love See's chocolate, which I believe is from San Francisco. There was another brand of chocolate I love that I stopped eating when I heard that Jeffrey Dahmer had worked in their mixing plant.

Happily, I later learned that he had worked in another, strictly local, brand's factory and that poor company had to go out of the candy business when word of his employment there caused sales to absolutely plummet!

As for Necco wafers, we used to use those when target plinking when I was a much younger guy and one could shoot firearms in the woods. They didn't leave a mess like bullet-riddled cans and shattered bottles did, and were more of a challenge to hit.

--Jim