🍬 Trying 170 Year Old British Sweets | Are they still good?? 🍬
I sat down to try a selection of Joseph Dobson sweets without reading the flavour descriptions first. Mark had very kindly sent them to my Patreon PO box, and there were plenty to get through. I was excited, but also nervous. I really didn’t like black liquorice, and several of the sweets were black. By the end, some of the biggest surprises were the pear drops and the treacle toffees.
A spicy start, followed by mint
The first black sweet filled me with dread, and tasting it didn’t improve things. It was spicy. I couldn’t describe much about the flavour beyond that. Once I read the name, I found out it was a voice tablet. The description I looked at called it a unique herbal flavour. I gave it minus one out of six and wondered why this was a sweet at all. No thank you.
Cola cubes were much better. I hadn’t guessed cola; they tasted a bit fruity to me. Once I knew what they were, I thought they were really good, though the size and shape made them uncomfortable to keep in my mouth while talking. My score was four out of six. The taste worked for me more than the practical business of eating a cube on camera.
The white mint imperials looked as though they might be mint, and that guess was right. They were hard sweets with a lovely minty flavour. Then I tried the black-and-white striped mint humbugs. I’d been worried about another black sweet, but these were delicious. I almost felt I liked them more than the imperials, even though I couldn’t explain what made them different. Later, the mint cake was good too, but its flaky texture meant I preferred the other mint sweets.
Familiar flavours that didn’t work for me
Sherbet lemons had a nice lemon flavour, but they reminded me of the lemon-and-honey throat lozenges I’d had when I was ill. If I could stop thinking about that, I liked them. I gave them seven out of eight, while apologising for associating somebody’s favourite sweet with being sick. It was the memory attached to the taste that got in the way.
The aniseed sweet was a much firmer no. The description I checked said it had a chewy liquorice centre, but I wasn’t going to keep it in my mouth long enough to enjoy that. It reminded me of the black liquorice in my grandma’s glass dish of treats, stuck at the bottom because I never chose it. I liked red liquorice. This wasn’t the version I wanted.
Rhubarb and custard surprised me in the opposite direction. The pink-and-yellow sweet tasted intensely custardy, with something fruity that I first thought might be strawberry or raspberry. Once I read the name, rhubarb seemed obvious. There was plenty of flavour, but I realised I didn’t like it. Somehow I was saying no to rhubarb and custard and yes to black treacle. What was happening to me?
The ones I hadn’t seen coming
Sarsaparilla was another name I wouldn’t have guessed. The red, tube-shaped sweet first tasted like raspberry or strawberry to me. I found it wonderful, even though I struggled to explain the flavour. At that point I thought it might be my favourite. The pear drops later caught me out too: I’d wondered about milk or cream with something like rhubarb or strawberry. Pear would never have been my guess, but I loved them. Seven out of seven surprising pears.
The bonfire toffee tasted strongly of caramel or toffee, and I was intrigued. I couldn’t quite decide whether I disliked it or really liked it. I thought I loved it. That sort of uncertainty was one of my favourite things about a taste test. The treacle toffee at the end had a similar buttery, caramelly taste, with stronger treacle to me. Both were really good, and I couldn’t tell which I preferred.
Yorkshire Mixtures gave me an assortment to keep guessing through.
I tried an orangey square that tasted straight-up orange, and it was delicious. I appreciated how strong the flavours were across this whole selection, whether I liked a particular one or not. The voice tablets and liquorice hadn’t won me over, but there were plenty of sweets I’d enjoyed. Thank you, Mark, for sending such a wonderfully varied lot.
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