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Sweets... | 0:00:02 | 0:00:03 | |
they're our guilty pleasure. | 0:00:03 | 0:00:05 | |
Today, British confectionery is a £6 billion industry. | 0:00:07 | 0:00:11 | |
But where did it all begin? | 0:00:13 | 0:00:14 | |
We've asked four modern confectioners to go back in time... | 0:00:16 | 0:00:20 | |
to work their way through three eras that revolutionised their trade. | 0:00:20 | 0:00:25 | |
From the birth of their profession four centuries ago, | 0:00:27 | 0:00:29 | |
where they'll craft luxuries for Tudor aristocrats... | 0:00:29 | 0:00:33 | |
SHE GASPS | 0:00:33 | 0:00:34 | |
It's cracking, Cynth. It's getting worse, look. | 0:00:34 | 0:00:37 | |
..to Georgian entrepreneurs storming the high street | 0:00:37 | 0:00:40 | |
and tempting the fashionable middle classes. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:42 | |
-Moulds. -Chocolate? | 0:00:44 | 0:00:45 | |
-Jelly? -Both? | 0:00:45 | 0:00:47 | |
And finally, they'll work on the production line | 0:00:47 | 0:00:49 | |
of the 20th century factory, making affordable goodies for the masses. | 0:00:49 | 0:00:54 | |
You're a cog in a wheel. | 0:00:54 | 0:00:55 | |
I'm a chocolate dipper. | 0:00:55 | 0:00:57 | |
Our 21st-century confectioners will be learning to make | 0:00:57 | 0:01:00 | |
the sweet treats of the past. | 0:01:00 | 0:01:02 | |
They'll be using the ingredients, recipes and equipment of the time. | 0:01:02 | 0:01:07 | |
It looks like a tape worm. | 0:01:07 | 0:01:09 | |
This is bum clenching stuff. | 0:01:09 | 0:01:11 | |
They'll experience first-hand the triumphs... | 0:01:11 | 0:01:13 | |
CHEERING | 0:01:13 | 0:01:15 | |
..and the trials of their profession. | 0:01:15 | 0:01:18 | |
-It's hot. -Hot, hot, hot! | 0:01:18 | 0:01:19 | |
And they'll be creating sugary masterpieces, | 0:01:21 | 0:01:24 | |
which haven't been tasted for hundreds of years. | 0:01:24 | 0:01:28 | |
Oh, my God, that is amazing! | 0:01:29 | 0:01:33 | |
But as well as making the treats of the past, | 0:01:33 | 0:01:35 | |
our confectioners will be exploring the bittersweet story of sugar - | 0:01:35 | 0:01:39 | |
an ingredient that transformed Britain, shaping our Empire, | 0:01:39 | 0:01:44 | |
bankrolling our cities, igniting our slave trade... | 0:01:44 | 0:01:48 | |
The cruelty's just terrible. | 0:01:48 | 0:01:51 | |
..and changing the way we eat forever. | 0:01:51 | 0:01:54 | |
CHEERING | 0:01:54 | 0:01:56 | |
They've already been high-status servants to the Tudor aristocracy, | 0:01:56 | 0:02:01 | |
and run their own luxurious shop, catering to the Georgians. | 0:02:01 | 0:02:05 | |
Now, in the Victorian era, | 0:02:05 | 0:02:07 | |
confectionery finally becomes available to all, | 0:02:07 | 0:02:10 | |
with the dawn of mass production. | 0:02:10 | 0:02:12 | |
It's 1875 and our confectioners Cynthia Stroud, Paul A Young, | 0:02:21 | 0:02:26 | |
Andy Baxendale and Diana Short are in Blists Hill in Shropshire. | 0:02:26 | 0:02:30 | |
By the middle of Queen Victoria's reign, | 0:02:33 | 0:02:35 | |
the Industrial Revolution had transformed manufacturing, | 0:02:35 | 0:02:38 | |
and, with it, the confectionery trade. | 0:02:38 | 0:02:40 | |
I'm Emma Dabiri, a social historian, | 0:02:42 | 0:02:44 | |
and together with food historian Dr Annie Gray, | 0:02:44 | 0:02:47 | |
I'll be introducing our team to the world of the Victorian confectioner. | 0:02:47 | 0:02:50 | |
-Well, look who's here. -Hi! | 0:02:53 | 0:02:55 | |
-Good to see you. -You too. | 0:02:55 | 0:02:57 | |
Welcome to 1875. | 0:02:57 | 0:02:58 | |
Lots of changes afoot. | 0:02:58 | 0:03:00 | |
Over half the population now live in towns, | 0:03:00 | 0:03:02 | |
so many, many people have swapped the rural existence for urban life. | 0:03:02 | 0:03:07 | |
Wages are going up, and the price of food is going down, | 0:03:07 | 0:03:11 | |
you'll be glad to hear. | 0:03:11 | 0:03:12 | |
Now normal people, everyday people have the opportunity | 0:03:12 | 0:03:15 | |
to spend some of their wages | 0:03:15 | 0:03:17 | |
on things just beyond the bare essentials. | 0:03:17 | 0:03:19 | |
Which is what you're taking advantage of, of course. | 0:03:19 | 0:03:23 | |
So now you can see sugar and nice things spreading out | 0:03:23 | 0:03:26 | |
to more than just the upper and indeed upper middle classes. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:29 | |
You are now sweet shop owners. | 0:03:29 | 0:03:32 | |
This is your confectioners. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:33 | |
Wow. Fantastic. | 0:03:33 | 0:03:35 | |
You need to stock your shop. | 0:03:35 | 0:03:37 | |
Some confectioners had workshops behind their shops, | 0:03:37 | 0:03:40 | |
but others took advantage of the fact | 0:03:40 | 0:03:42 | |
that there were perhaps more insalubrious areas | 0:03:42 | 0:03:44 | |
where rents were cheaper, and had bigger workshops elsewhere. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:47 | |
So you are going to be of this new breed of confectioners. | 0:03:47 | 0:03:50 | |
Let's go and have a look. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:52 | |
Now that everyone, rich and poor, has access to sweets, | 0:03:53 | 0:03:57 | |
the confectioners' success | 0:03:57 | 0:03:59 | |
depends on making as many products as possible | 0:03:59 | 0:04:01 | |
and selling them at the lowest price. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:04 | |
And these are no longer just treats for adults, | 0:04:04 | 0:04:07 | |
they have a brand-new market - children. | 0:04:07 | 0:04:09 | |
Look at all the equipment! Oh, it's very industrial, isn't it? | 0:04:17 | 0:04:19 | |
-It is. -Are we making motorbikes? | 0:04:19 | 0:04:22 | |
I was not expecting this at all. | 0:04:22 | 0:04:25 | |
This does not feel like a kitchen. | 0:04:25 | 0:04:27 | |
New mechanised equipment and technology | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
has transformed the confectioners' workplace and their craft. | 0:04:30 | 0:04:33 | |
We've got a thermometer! | 0:04:35 | 0:04:36 | |
-We don't need to put our fingers in any more. -No! | 0:04:36 | 0:04:40 | |
Victorian confectioners no longer had to be highly skilled artisans. | 0:04:40 | 0:04:44 | |
As little as £5, £500 in today's money, | 0:04:46 | 0:04:50 | |
would buy sweet makers enough sugar boiling equipment and ingredients | 0:04:50 | 0:04:54 | |
to set up shop. | 0:04:54 | 0:04:55 | |
-Ooh, colours. -Ooh, and flavours! | 0:04:58 | 0:05:01 | |
Look, it's just like what you'd get now. | 0:05:01 | 0:05:03 | |
They're lovely, aren't they? | 0:05:03 | 0:05:04 | |
I think this is the first time we've seen | 0:05:04 | 0:05:06 | |
artificial colours and flavours. | 0:05:06 | 0:05:08 | |
Oh, my God, that smells amazing. | 0:05:08 | 0:05:10 | |
I can't believe that's Victorian. | 0:05:10 | 0:05:12 | |
That is such a... That is such a modern essence. | 0:05:12 | 0:05:15 | |
-Absolutely. -Isn't it? | 0:05:15 | 0:05:17 | |
-Aniseed. -What flavours have we got? -Orange, strawberry. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:20 | |
Go on, let's have a sniff. | 0:05:20 | 0:05:22 | |
Ooh, that reminds me of my grandma. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:25 | |
I mean, I think this is definitely Andy's bag, all this stuff. | 0:05:29 | 0:05:32 | |
Absolutely. | 0:05:32 | 0:05:34 | |
As the only confectioner who works in boiled sweet factories, | 0:05:34 | 0:05:37 | |
Andy will find a lot of equipment that's familiar | 0:05:37 | 0:05:40 | |
in their Victorian workshop. | 0:05:40 | 0:05:42 | |
It looks like I'm in charge again. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:45 | |
First impressions? | 0:05:47 | 0:05:48 | |
-Amazing. -Fantastic. Oooh. | 0:05:48 | 0:05:51 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:05:51 | 0:05:52 | |
This is almost a factory. | 0:05:52 | 0:05:54 | |
It's not all singing, all dancing, | 0:05:54 | 0:05:56 | |
you haven't got steam pipes pumping out smoke and all the rest of it, | 0:05:56 | 0:05:59 | |
but you will be producing a lot of sweets. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:02 | |
And, as ever, you will be using a lot of this. | 0:06:02 | 0:06:06 | |
-Sugar. -Granular sugar. -Nice and white. | 0:06:08 | 0:06:10 | |
But it has a new origin, I'm sure you'll be relieved to hear. | 0:06:10 | 0:06:13 | |
-Oh. -Oh, my goodness! | 0:06:13 | 0:06:14 | |
Coming from this guy. | 0:06:14 | 0:06:16 | |
-Wow. -Oh, my gosh. -The sugar beet. -That's huge. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:18 | |
-That's huge. -Massive! | 0:06:18 | 0:06:19 | |
Sugar from beets tasted identical to cane sugar. | 0:06:20 | 0:06:23 | |
By the end of the 19th century, | 0:06:25 | 0:06:27 | |
it would make up two thirds of the British supply. | 0:06:27 | 0:06:29 | |
The Caribbean is still producing cane sugar, | 0:06:31 | 0:06:34 | |
but with the end of Britain's involvement in the slave trade, | 0:06:34 | 0:06:37 | |
it's not as accessible and it's not as cheaply available | 0:06:37 | 0:06:41 | |
to British suppliers. | 0:06:41 | 0:06:42 | |
So British suppliers now have a source that is far closer to home, | 0:06:42 | 0:06:46 | |
and these are the fields of France, Germany and Austria-Hungary, | 0:06:46 | 0:06:49 | |
where the sugar beet is grown. | 0:06:49 | 0:06:51 | |
Gorgeous. | 0:06:51 | 0:06:52 | |
The influx of this new crop, | 0:06:53 | 0:06:55 | |
combined with the end of import taxes, | 0:06:55 | 0:06:58 | |
saw its price drop by 50% between 1872-1884. | 0:06:58 | 0:07:04 | |
But there was still money to be made. | 0:07:04 | 0:07:06 | |
So vast was Henry Tate's fortune from his lucrative refineries | 0:07:06 | 0:07:09 | |
that he was able to fund what's now the Tate Britain Art Gallery - | 0:07:09 | 0:07:13 | |
a lasting testament to the sugar money that built Britain. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:17 | |
The first thing you're going to be producing, | 0:07:19 | 0:07:21 | |
which you may possibly have guessed, | 0:07:21 | 0:07:23 | |
is going to be that staple of the marketplace, boiled sweets. | 0:07:23 | 0:07:27 | |
-Ooh. -Yes! | 0:07:27 | 0:07:28 | |
Obviously some of your market will be youngsters, | 0:07:28 | 0:07:31 | |
and, like flies to treacle, | 0:07:31 | 0:07:33 | |
you want to bring them in with your brightly coloured, | 0:07:33 | 0:07:36 | |
beautiful confections. | 0:07:36 | 0:07:38 | |
A little bit of magic in their lives. | 0:07:38 | 0:07:40 | |
-Great. -But you have not yet met your guide for this week. | 0:07:40 | 0:07:43 | |
-OK. -So, meet Mr Skuse. | 0:07:43 | 0:07:46 | |
-A book. -A book. | 0:07:46 | 0:07:47 | |
This is one of the most important books published for confectionery, | 0:07:47 | 0:07:51 | |
really, ever. | 0:07:51 | 0:07:52 | |
It comes out in the late Victorian period | 0:07:52 | 0:07:55 | |
and is in print until 1957. | 0:07:55 | 0:07:57 | |
The book's particularly brilliant | 0:07:57 | 0:07:59 | |
because in amongst all of the advice on how to manage your colourings | 0:07:59 | 0:08:03 | |
and how to set up your business, | 0:08:03 | 0:08:04 | |
he also has lots and lots of recipes, | 0:08:04 | 0:08:07 | |
and illustrations of the latest machinery, so top-notch. | 0:08:07 | 0:08:10 | |
He does have some extra advice for you, in terms of quantity. | 0:08:11 | 0:08:14 | |
He suggests that you can make two hundredweights of sweets a day. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:17 | |
-Wow. -So, by the end of today, | 0:08:17 | 0:08:20 | |
we would have expected you to have filled | 0:08:20 | 0:08:22 | |
all 20 of those jars behind me. | 0:08:22 | 0:08:24 | |
-That's a lot. -A lot of sugar. | 0:08:24 | 0:08:26 | |
Three kilos a jar, you were saying, Andy? | 0:08:26 | 0:08:28 | |
So you've got to be very good to differentiate yourselves. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:30 | |
It's a competitive, cut-throat market out there. | 0:08:30 | 0:08:33 | |
The confectioners have never had to make this many sweets before. | 0:08:36 | 0:08:39 | |
But if they're going to have enough stock for their shop, | 0:08:40 | 0:08:43 | |
they need to hit Skuse's target for the day. | 0:08:43 | 0:08:46 | |
The biggest one of those two? | 0:08:46 | 0:08:47 | |
Yeah, yeah let's see how it looks in there. | 0:08:47 | 0:08:49 | |
OK. | 0:08:49 | 0:08:50 | |
Andy and Cynthia are starting | 0:08:50 | 0:08:52 | |
with an original Victorian boiled sweet recipe for Mint Drops. | 0:08:52 | 0:08:56 | |
So this is all a revelation to me | 0:08:56 | 0:08:57 | |
and I feel like I'm learning something completely new here. | 0:08:57 | 0:09:01 | |
And Diana and Paul are making Skuse's recipe for Rose Rock. | 0:09:01 | 0:09:06 | |
Sugar and water had always been the basis for boiled sweets... | 0:09:06 | 0:09:09 | |
-7 lb? -8 lb, wasn't it? | 0:09:09 | 0:09:11 | |
8 lb. | 0:09:11 | 0:09:13 | |
But by the late 19th century, | 0:09:13 | 0:09:14 | |
confectioners were adding a new substance... | 0:09:14 | 0:09:17 | |
Glucose... | 0:09:18 | 0:09:19 | |
Ooh, look at that. It does look beautiful, doesn't it? | 0:09:19 | 0:09:23 | |
..a flavourless starch syrup derived from plants. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:27 | |
Vital ingredient to our boiled sweets. | 0:09:27 | 0:09:29 | |
Look at it go. That's like Play-Doh. | 0:09:29 | 0:09:31 | |
It is like Play-Doh, but clearly spreads. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:35 | |
Stick your finger in it. | 0:09:35 | 0:09:37 | |
It's a cheap way for our confectioners | 0:09:37 | 0:09:39 | |
to bulk out their ingredients. | 0:09:39 | 0:09:42 | |
That's a lot of sweets. | 0:09:42 | 0:09:43 | |
When you look at the size of what we're using, | 0:09:46 | 0:09:47 | |
you know immediately that the game and the plan has changed, | 0:09:47 | 0:09:51 | |
and your target is completely different. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:53 | |
Definitely. A much bigger end point. | 0:09:53 | 0:09:55 | |
Oh, look, it's gone completely soft. | 0:09:55 | 0:09:58 | |
Making boiled sweets depends on getting the temperature | 0:09:59 | 0:10:02 | |
of the sugar syrup to 312 degrees Fahrenheit. | 0:10:02 | 0:10:05 | |
We've got thermometers now. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:06 | |
Thermometer, quite right. | 0:10:06 | 0:10:08 | |
In previous eras, the confectioners were judging the heat by touch, | 0:10:08 | 0:10:12 | |
using their bare hands. | 0:10:12 | 0:10:14 | |
200... | 0:10:15 | 0:10:16 | |
Invented in the 1860s, | 0:10:18 | 0:10:20 | |
sugar thermometers could withstand the high temperatures | 0:10:20 | 0:10:23 | |
without shattering and leaking poisonous mercury. | 0:10:23 | 0:10:25 | |
225. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:28 | |
Paul and Diana are using a cold water table | 0:10:31 | 0:10:33 | |
to quickly cool their syrup and speed up production. | 0:10:33 | 0:10:36 | |
I'll take this over, OK? | 0:10:38 | 0:10:40 | |
Like their Victorian counterparts, | 0:10:40 | 0:10:42 | |
the confectioners are embracing | 0:10:42 | 0:10:43 | |
newly available synthetic colours and flavours... | 0:10:43 | 0:10:47 | |
A little bit of red colour, just into our mix, | 0:10:47 | 0:10:50 | |
is it going to be enough? A little bit more? | 0:10:50 | 0:10:52 | |
-A little bit more, yeah. -Yeah. | 0:10:52 | 0:10:53 | |
Enough to make the whole thing a nice, rosy colour. | 0:10:53 | 0:10:58 | |
I've done what I said don't do earlier. Don't breathe it in. | 0:10:58 | 0:11:02 | |
..Little realising most were derived from coal tar waste, | 0:11:02 | 0:11:05 | |
and often highly toxic. | 0:11:05 | 0:11:07 | |
That smells gorgeous. | 0:11:07 | 0:11:08 | |
Colour to make them appealing to the younger generations. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:11 | |
-OK. -Beautiful. | 0:11:13 | 0:11:14 | |
-Tartaric acid. -Tartaric acid, going in. | 0:11:14 | 0:11:16 | |
This is going to get lots of zingy flavour. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:18 | |
Beautiful. Smells incredible, doesn't it? | 0:11:21 | 0:11:25 | |
It's not just the confectioners' ingredients that have changed, | 0:11:27 | 0:11:31 | |
there are new techniques to master. | 0:11:31 | 0:11:33 | |
It's a lovely, rosy colour. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:36 | |
We're pulling it on the hook, | 0:11:37 | 0:11:39 | |
to incorporate air into it to make it a little lighter. | 0:11:39 | 0:11:42 | |
We get this - a nice, light, creamy colour. | 0:11:42 | 0:11:45 | |
-So we need to make this into a flat sheet. -OK. | 0:11:45 | 0:11:47 | |
It's the speed, because as soon as the heat goes, | 0:11:47 | 0:11:50 | |
we'll never get it through the drop roller. | 0:11:50 | 0:11:53 | |
Once the required consistency is reached, | 0:11:53 | 0:11:55 | |
the mixture must be fed through the drop rollers | 0:11:55 | 0:11:57 | |
to mould the individual sweets. | 0:11:57 | 0:11:59 | |
If they're too slow, though, the boiled sugar will set hard. | 0:12:00 | 0:12:04 | |
If we don't start the nobble... It's important to eek in. | 0:12:05 | 0:12:08 | |
I don't know what a nobble is. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:10 | |
But it's going to be fed into here. | 0:12:10 | 0:12:13 | |
-Ooh, ooh, ooh! -SHE LAUGHS | 0:12:14 | 0:12:17 | |
Oh, I've lost me end! | 0:12:17 | 0:12:19 | |
That's not looking good, is it? | 0:12:19 | 0:12:22 | |
Oh, can we not just snip it? | 0:12:22 | 0:12:23 | |
This is bum-clenching stuff... | 0:12:23 | 0:12:25 | |
SHE LAUGHS | 0:12:25 | 0:12:27 | |
It looks like a tape worm. It doesn't very appetising, does it? | 0:12:27 | 0:12:30 | |
Wahey! | 0:12:30 | 0:12:32 | |
Diane and Paul, watch this and weep. | 0:12:32 | 0:12:35 | |
We're not going to be able to fill 20 jars at this rate. | 0:12:38 | 0:12:40 | |
We're under producing. | 0:12:40 | 0:12:43 | |
While Paul and Diana wrestle with their tapeworm... | 0:12:43 | 0:12:45 | |
..Cynthia and Andy's mint drops are going swimmingly. | 0:12:46 | 0:12:50 | |
They've got a jar of sweets already! | 0:12:50 | 0:12:52 | |
The confectioners' new customers are the urban factory workers, | 0:12:55 | 0:12:59 | |
working ten hours a day, six days a week. | 0:12:59 | 0:13:02 | |
They needed up to 4,500 calories per day to keep going, | 0:13:02 | 0:13:07 | |
and sugar was now the cheapest source of sustenance. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:10 | |
In poor households, men were allocated any costly meat, | 0:13:10 | 0:13:14 | |
while women and children survived and a diet of white bread, jam, | 0:13:14 | 0:13:17 | |
treacle, sugary tea and a treat of boiled sweets. | 0:13:17 | 0:13:21 | |
We've made sweets! | 0:13:24 | 0:13:25 | |
-Right, let's crack on. Clean down. -I think so. | 0:13:27 | 0:13:30 | |
When the sheet is partly set, | 0:13:33 | 0:13:34 | |
cut the whole length of it with scissors into strips one inch wide. | 0:13:34 | 0:13:38 | |
For the next batch, | 0:13:38 | 0:13:40 | |
Paul and Diana are attempting Skuse's recipe for barley twists. | 0:13:40 | 0:13:44 | |
But they're reading it a touch too late. | 0:13:44 | 0:13:47 | |
"To make these goods, the operators must be very quick | 0:13:47 | 0:13:50 | |
"with their movements, the slab on which the sugar | 0:13:50 | 0:13:53 | |
-"is poured must be warm." -Oh, -BLEEP! | 0:13:53 | 0:13:55 | |
Wow, so we've got... | 0:13:55 | 0:13:56 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:13:56 | 0:13:57 | |
..not to swear... and crack on, crack on. | 0:13:57 | 0:14:01 | |
-It's already setting. -It is! | 0:14:01 | 0:14:03 | |
Should we turn it over? | 0:14:03 | 0:14:04 | |
-Oh! -HE LAUGHS | 0:14:06 | 0:14:07 | |
The syrup has cooled and is now too brittle to shape. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:13 | |
-We'll boil it again. -We'll boil it again. | 0:14:13 | 0:14:16 | |
Get it back in, get it back in. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:17 | |
Do it again, because this is warm now. | 0:14:17 | 0:14:20 | |
-Let's get it back in. -I'm doing it, I'm doing it. | 0:14:20 | 0:14:22 | |
Let's get it back in. | 0:14:22 | 0:14:23 | |
It's back on the boil for the barley twists, | 0:14:23 | 0:14:26 | |
and all hands on deck as the confectioners try to salvage them. | 0:14:26 | 0:14:30 | |
Hot, hot, hot! | 0:14:32 | 0:14:34 | |
Well, I'm really thinking now about how we get these the same size, | 0:14:39 | 0:14:43 | |
the same width, the same length | 0:14:43 | 0:14:45 | |
so that customers buying them get the same product every time. | 0:14:45 | 0:14:49 | |
-It's really hard, isn't it? -It's quite hard. | 0:14:49 | 0:14:51 | |
I'm really disappointed that the first time we did it, | 0:14:53 | 0:14:56 | |
we couldn't cut it into twists, and we had to re-melt it. | 0:14:56 | 0:14:59 | |
We've re-melted it, and they've gone from these beautiful, | 0:14:59 | 0:15:02 | |
clear twists to an opaque twist. | 0:15:02 | 0:15:05 | |
We haven't really got an even twist at all. | 0:15:05 | 0:15:07 | |
Victorian sweet makers couldn't afford to produce a shoddy batch. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:18 | |
Profit margins were smaller than they'd ever been before, | 0:15:18 | 0:15:21 | |
and our confectioners don't have time to redo the twists. | 0:15:21 | 0:15:26 | |
I'm really frustrated that we couldn't get the barley twists | 0:15:26 | 0:15:29 | |
clear and beautiful. I'm just annoyed. | 0:15:29 | 0:15:33 | |
I think we should have been able to nail that, | 0:15:33 | 0:15:35 | |
I don't think there should have been a problem with it. | 0:15:35 | 0:15:37 | |
But there was. And I burned my thumb. | 0:15:37 | 0:15:39 | |
We both run our own small businesses, | 0:15:42 | 0:15:44 | |
and if these kind of mistakes happen in our business today, | 0:15:44 | 0:15:49 | |
it's wasted money. It's a wasted time, isn't it? | 0:15:49 | 0:15:52 | |
The frustration is the same. | 0:15:52 | 0:15:54 | |
We get disappointed in ourselves, because we're perfectionists. | 0:15:54 | 0:15:57 | |
Exactly. | 0:15:57 | 0:15:58 | |
In every town and village, | 0:16:00 | 0:16:02 | |
small-scale confectioners created their own versions | 0:16:02 | 0:16:05 | |
of the classic boiled sweet. | 0:16:05 | 0:16:07 | |
-Where's our peppermint? -Where's the peppermint? There. | 0:16:07 | 0:16:09 | |
Lemon and lime mixed together. | 0:16:09 | 0:16:11 | |
Paul and Diana are turning their back on Skuse | 0:16:11 | 0:16:14 | |
and designing a unique sweet, using a beautiful, Victorian mould. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:19 | |
The other one I feel very interested in is sarsaparilla. | 0:16:19 | 0:16:22 | |
It's nondescript, herbally, botanical, slightly aniseed - | 0:16:22 | 0:16:27 | |
a little bit like Germolene. | 0:16:27 | 0:16:30 | |
Antisepticy. | 0:16:30 | 0:16:32 | |
I think you and I both have an absolute key favourite thing | 0:16:32 | 0:16:35 | |
-on the shelf. -I'm drawn to the Devon butter. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:37 | |
Yeah, me too. I think it has to be. | 0:16:37 | 0:16:40 | |
Are we going for Devon butter fish? | 0:16:40 | 0:16:42 | |
Devon butter fish! | 0:16:42 | 0:16:44 | |
-Do you know what? it's delicious. -I think it needs the... | 0:16:44 | 0:16:47 | |
I think it needs the peppermint with it | 0:16:47 | 0:16:49 | |
to give it that buttermint flavour. | 0:16:49 | 0:16:51 | |
So maybe they can be... | 0:16:51 | 0:16:53 | |
Buttermint Bass? | 0:16:53 | 0:16:54 | |
-Yeah, butter... -Buttermint Bass. | 0:16:54 | 0:16:56 | |
Buttermint Bass sounds fantastic. | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
That's it. Pour it all. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:00 | |
Cut it in half. | 0:17:03 | 0:17:04 | |
It's a tricky game, this. | 0:17:04 | 0:17:06 | |
-Right, are you ready? -Yep. -Sorry. | 0:17:09 | 0:17:11 | |
Go on, pull! | 0:17:15 | 0:17:17 | |
Go on! | 0:17:17 | 0:17:18 | |
Shoal of fish! | 0:17:20 | 0:17:22 | |
Shoal of fish. | 0:17:22 | 0:17:24 | |
My heart is racing. | 0:17:24 | 0:17:26 | |
My heart is like... | 0:17:27 | 0:17:28 | |
Iridescent blue and green. | 0:17:29 | 0:17:31 | |
Oh, my God. | 0:17:31 | 0:17:32 | |
We don't know what it's going to taste like. | 0:17:33 | 0:17:35 | |
-It's just like buttermint. -It is buttermint, yeah. | 0:17:38 | 0:17:40 | |
We got that right. | 0:17:41 | 0:17:43 | |
That's very nice. | 0:17:43 | 0:17:45 | |
-We have a jar full of fish. -We do have a jar full of fish. | 0:17:45 | 0:17:47 | |
After nine hours in the workshop, | 0:17:52 | 0:17:54 | |
the confectioners are still four jars short of Skuse's target | 0:17:54 | 0:17:57 | |
of 20 jars in a day. | 0:17:57 | 0:18:00 | |
Next one. | 0:18:00 | 0:18:01 | |
We can do it. | 0:18:01 | 0:18:03 | |
Time was money for the Victorian confectioner, | 0:18:03 | 0:18:06 | |
and night is falling. | 0:18:06 | 0:18:07 | |
This is our final batch. | 0:18:11 | 0:18:12 | |
Come on! | 0:18:18 | 0:18:19 | |
Three, two, one... | 0:18:30 | 0:18:32 | |
CHEERING | 0:18:32 | 0:18:34 | |
20 jars in one day. | 0:18:36 | 0:18:39 | |
But these 20 jars of boiled sweets are just a fraction | 0:18:39 | 0:18:42 | |
of what they'll need to produce to stock an entire shop. | 0:18:42 | 0:18:45 | |
They have to keep this pace up every day | 0:18:46 | 0:18:49 | |
if they're going to succeed as Victorian confectioners. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:52 | |
12 hours a day, you're standing on your feet. | 0:18:53 | 0:18:56 | |
The sort of machines we're talking about, | 0:18:56 | 0:18:57 | |
you still need a lot of physical... You know, you need brute force. | 0:18:57 | 0:19:01 | |
This feels industrial now. | 0:19:01 | 0:19:02 | |
It's the end of an exhausting first shift in their Victorian workshop. | 0:19:04 | 0:19:08 | |
-Long day at work? -Very. -Mmm. | 0:19:12 | 0:19:14 | |
Life is very tough for confectioners at the end of the Victorian period, | 0:19:14 | 0:19:17 | |
and it's getting steadily tougher. | 0:19:17 | 0:19:20 | |
You're no longer confectioners to the upper classes, | 0:19:20 | 0:19:23 | |
you're peddling mass-market products to people with no money. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:27 | |
Let's look at York, it's got a lot of the small-scale confectioners. | 0:19:27 | 0:19:31 | |
A lot of people like yourselves. | 0:19:31 | 0:19:32 | |
Most of them lived in an area called Walmgate. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:34 | |
There are a few other areas as well. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:36 | |
About 69% of the housing was deemed to be pretty much unfit to live in. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:41 | |
So those are the areas that you would be living in, | 0:19:41 | 0:19:43 | |
as Victorian confectioners. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:45 | |
This is a photograph of Walmgate. | 0:19:45 | 0:19:48 | |
Oh, it's not joyous, is it? Dark. | 0:19:48 | 0:19:51 | |
You wouldn't want to go home, would you? | 0:19:53 | 0:19:54 | |
Golly! That's quite a shock, isn't it? | 0:19:54 | 0:19:57 | |
Grim and foreboding that, isn't it? | 0:19:57 | 0:19:59 | |
There is no safety net at this point for those people who end up failing. | 0:19:59 | 0:20:04 | |
If you fail at your business and cannot get another job, | 0:20:04 | 0:20:06 | |
you will be in the workhouse. | 0:20:06 | 0:20:08 | |
York was once dominated by the confectionery trade. | 0:20:18 | 0:20:21 | |
Curator Faye Pryor, from the Castle Museum, | 0:20:23 | 0:20:25 | |
is an expert on the pressures | 0:20:25 | 0:20:26 | |
facing the smallest sweet makers in the city. | 0:20:26 | 0:20:30 | |
There were so many small confectioners working in York | 0:20:31 | 0:20:34 | |
in this period, and these were family businesses. | 0:20:34 | 0:20:37 | |
There was, firstly, | 0:20:37 | 0:20:39 | |
quite a struggle for them to make money on a local basis. | 0:20:39 | 0:20:41 | |
But then they're competing against more established families, | 0:20:41 | 0:20:45 | |
who've had a lot longer to develop their businesses, | 0:20:45 | 0:20:48 | |
who are now becoming national brands. | 0:20:48 | 0:20:50 | |
The big three in the country at this point are Cadbury's, | 0:20:50 | 0:20:54 | |
Fry's and Rowntree's. | 0:20:54 | 0:20:56 | |
And by the 1870s, these are all national brands. | 0:20:56 | 0:20:59 | |
They're absolutely massive. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:01 | |
In the 1870s, Rowntree's have 100 employees, | 0:21:01 | 0:21:04 | |
Cadbury's have 200 employees. | 0:21:04 | 0:21:05 | |
By the 1890s, Rowntree's have over 800 employees. | 0:21:05 | 0:21:09 | |
Interestingly, what unites them all | 0:21:09 | 0:21:11 | |
is that they were all founded by and run by Quaker families. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:15 | |
The Quakers weren't allowed to go into certain areas - | 0:21:15 | 0:21:18 | |
military, politics, law - in this period. | 0:21:18 | 0:21:22 | |
And so they tended to go into trade instead. | 0:21:22 | 0:21:24 | |
Banking, insurance, for example - | 0:21:24 | 0:21:26 | |
but confectionery was a really big one. | 0:21:26 | 0:21:28 | |
Quaker companies tended to do a lot of business with each other, | 0:21:29 | 0:21:32 | |
because the knew they could trust each other. | 0:21:32 | 0:21:34 | |
That sounds like something of a paradox, though, | 0:21:34 | 0:21:37 | |
because they're supporting each other, | 0:21:37 | 0:21:39 | |
but they're also competing with each other. | 0:21:39 | 0:21:41 | |
You know, they're running businesses on a national scale, | 0:21:41 | 0:21:43 | |
especially Cadbury's, Fry's and Rowntree's, | 0:21:43 | 0:21:45 | |
where they are trying to sell the same kind of products | 0:21:45 | 0:21:49 | |
to the same customer base, | 0:21:49 | 0:21:51 | |
and trying to make sure their product | 0:21:51 | 0:21:53 | |
is the one going to be bought, instead of their competitors'. | 0:21:53 | 0:21:56 | |
So it's quite a complicated relationship that they have. | 0:21:56 | 0:21:59 | |
The rivalry could be fierce, but in 1879, | 0:22:06 | 0:22:09 | |
the Quaker firm Rowntree's were handed a secret French weapon. | 0:22:09 | 0:22:12 | |
A new type of sweet that no company in England | 0:22:17 | 0:22:20 | |
had yet been able to produce. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:23 | |
What we're going to be doing today is quite a specific thing. | 0:22:25 | 0:22:28 | |
There is a particular branch of high-end confectionery | 0:22:28 | 0:22:31 | |
that still sells mainly to the rich and has not yet reached the masses, | 0:22:31 | 0:22:35 | |
and they are French-imported pastilles. | 0:22:35 | 0:22:39 | |
This is something very beautiful, but the story is about to change. | 0:22:39 | 0:22:43 | |
In 1879, a Frenchman called August Claude Gaget | 0:22:43 | 0:22:47 | |
approaches a manufacturer in York called Rowntree's | 0:22:47 | 0:22:50 | |
and suggests to him that he has developed a process | 0:22:50 | 0:22:53 | |
for making fruit pastilles, | 0:22:53 | 0:22:55 | |
which will make them the kings of confectionery. | 0:22:55 | 0:22:58 | |
And so Rowntree's employ him | 0:22:58 | 0:22:59 | |
and put him in charge of the French confectionery department. | 0:22:59 | 0:23:03 | |
Gaget took three long years to develop the top-secret recipe | 0:23:03 | 0:23:08 | |
for a British pastilles, or fruit pastille, | 0:23:08 | 0:23:11 | |
that was high-quality, but also cheap enough for the market. | 0:23:11 | 0:23:15 | |
Oh, wow! | 0:23:17 | 0:23:18 | |
That's gum arabic. | 0:23:19 | 0:23:20 | |
It's rock-hard, isn't it? | 0:23:20 | 0:23:22 | |
That rock-hard thing is going to make our gums chewy? | 0:23:22 | 0:23:24 | |
Certainly will. | 0:23:24 | 0:23:26 | |
-Are we nearly there? -No. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:30 | |
-There we go. -There we go. God, it's a lot. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:33 | |
The confectioners are working from a pastille recipe | 0:23:38 | 0:23:40 | |
from 1890 edition of Edward Skuse's Handbook, | 0:23:40 | 0:23:43 | |
as the original has remained closely guarded. | 0:23:43 | 0:23:47 | |
We're going to need quite a lot of starch, aren't we? | 0:23:47 | 0:23:49 | |
Well, we are making a lot of sweets. | 0:23:49 | 0:23:51 | |
They only need to be about an inch thick, I think. | 0:23:51 | 0:23:53 | |
Oh, I'd overfill it and scrape off the rest. | 0:23:53 | 0:23:55 | |
One of the innovations Gaget introduced to Rowntree's | 0:23:57 | 0:23:59 | |
was the use of starch trays, | 0:23:59 | 0:24:02 | |
which rapidly dry the outer layer of the sweet, | 0:24:02 | 0:24:04 | |
but leaves the centre chewy. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:06 | |
How much space do we leave, do you think? | 0:24:08 | 0:24:10 | |
I'd leave as much as you can, just in case you move... | 0:24:10 | 0:24:15 | |
Oh, look! | 0:24:15 | 0:24:17 | |
In previous eras, our confectioners have the satisfaction | 0:24:17 | 0:24:20 | |
of making each sugary dish from start to finish. | 0:24:20 | 0:24:23 | |
Now, sweet making was broken down into a series of simple tasks, | 0:24:24 | 0:24:28 | |
and often divided along gender lines. | 0:24:28 | 0:24:31 | |
I'm sure that women working in the starch rooms had targets to meet. | 0:24:31 | 0:24:35 | |
They'd have an aim, wouldn't they, for the day? For sure. | 0:24:35 | 0:24:39 | |
Like female workers in the Victorian confectionery trade, | 0:24:41 | 0:24:45 | |
Diana and Cynthia have been allocated a job | 0:24:45 | 0:24:47 | |
requiring manual dexterity - | 0:24:47 | 0:24:50 | |
making precise indentations in the starch. | 0:24:50 | 0:24:53 | |
There is an art to it, because it's not quite as easy as it looks. | 0:24:53 | 0:24:57 | |
Obviously, this misbehaves if you put | 0:24:57 | 0:24:59 | |
just the wrong amount of pressure. | 0:24:59 | 0:25:01 | |
You can see where the lightness of touch comes in. | 0:25:01 | 0:25:03 | |
Men were assigned the boiling jobs. | 0:25:06 | 0:25:09 | |
So Paul and Andy are making the fruit syrup | 0:25:09 | 0:25:12 | |
with gum arabic, sugar, water, colours and flavours. | 0:25:12 | 0:25:15 | |
We need some lime flavouring and some saffron colour. | 0:25:17 | 0:25:20 | |
-Not very strong. -It's not citrusy. | 0:25:22 | 0:25:25 | |
We'll have to use quite a bit of that. | 0:25:25 | 0:25:29 | |
-Especially with this, because this'll hold the flavour. -It will. | 0:25:29 | 0:25:32 | |
OK. Let's light the fire, get this on. | 0:25:32 | 0:25:35 | |
Imported fruit was still an expensive luxury. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:39 | |
Sweets like these meant that even those on the most meagre budget | 0:25:39 | 0:25:43 | |
could enjoy the exotic taste of lime and lemons all year round. | 0:25:43 | 0:25:48 | |
-Are we ready? -Yeah. | 0:25:48 | 0:25:49 | |
As we'll ever be. | 0:25:49 | 0:25:51 | |
Ooh, it's heavy. | 0:25:51 | 0:25:53 | |
The confectioners need to get their rapidly cooling | 0:25:53 | 0:25:56 | |
rose- and lime-flavoured mixture into the starch moulds. | 0:25:56 | 0:25:59 | |
We're going to have to work fast, aren't we? Shall we spoon? | 0:25:59 | 0:26:02 | |
But the skill of their Victorian counterparts is becoming clear. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:07 | |
-Andy? -Mmm-hmm? -I'm frustrated on the first one. | 0:26:07 | 0:26:11 | |
This is not productive. | 0:26:11 | 0:26:12 | |
This is not going to make a single bit of profit. | 0:26:12 | 0:26:15 | |
-This won't come out. -Mine's stuck now, look. | 0:26:15 | 0:26:17 | |
Yeah, so's mine. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:19 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:26:19 | 0:26:21 | |
After half an hour, they've only filled one tray. | 0:26:21 | 0:26:25 | |
Looks like balls of snot. | 0:26:27 | 0:26:29 | |
It's stuck to my scissors as well. | 0:26:29 | 0:26:31 | |
It's a bit... I think you're going to need your imagination. | 0:26:31 | 0:26:34 | |
Perhaps they should have heeded Skuse, | 0:26:34 | 0:26:36 | |
who warned that pastilles are "a little tedious". | 0:26:36 | 0:26:40 | |
OK, shall we stack for drying? | 0:26:40 | 0:26:42 | |
Our masterpieces of gum. | 0:26:44 | 0:26:46 | |
There's some interesting shapes up here, Cynthia. | 0:26:47 | 0:26:50 | |
Lovely, thank you. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:51 | |
The division of tasks wasn't the only thing | 0:26:56 | 0:26:58 | |
that had changed Victorian confectionery. | 0:26:58 | 0:27:00 | |
New, steam-powered machinery had transformed the industry. | 0:27:00 | 0:27:06 | |
Ooh, she's noisy, isn't she? OK. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:09 | |
Let's pop them in. | 0:27:09 | 0:27:11 | |
In the Tudor era, confectioners painstakingly applied | 0:27:11 | 0:27:14 | |
layers of sugar by hand to make treats like comfits. | 0:27:14 | 0:27:17 | |
Now, mechanised rotating pans could coat up to three tonnes of sweets | 0:27:19 | 0:27:23 | |
every week - more than 20 times what was possible by hand. | 0:27:23 | 0:27:27 | |
-LOUD WHIRRING -Wow. | 0:27:27 | 0:27:28 | |
Wow! | 0:27:32 | 0:27:34 | |
What do you think you'd think, coming in for the first time, | 0:27:34 | 0:27:37 | |
seeing that this had been installed? | 0:27:37 | 0:27:39 | |
Well, I would think, "My job is at risk. | 0:27:39 | 0:27:42 | |
"This is going to deliver significant amounts of product." | 0:27:42 | 0:27:47 | |
But do you not embrace it, thinking, | 0:27:47 | 0:27:48 | |
"Wow, this is going to make my job so much easier"? | 0:27:48 | 0:27:50 | |
I would, but I might lose some of my team well. | 0:27:50 | 0:27:52 | |
This is going to do more than my team can do. | 0:27:52 | 0:27:54 | |
Let's have a try. Ooh! | 0:27:57 | 0:27:59 | |
Quite chewy. | 0:28:01 | 0:28:02 | |
Sugar makes a difference, actually. | 0:28:02 | 0:28:04 | |
Mmm. The sugar'll bring the flavour out much more. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:06 | |
That reminds me of a Rowntree's Fruit Pastille. | 0:28:06 | 0:28:09 | |
The confectioners have only managed to make six jars of fruit pastilles. | 0:28:11 | 0:28:15 | |
Following their launch in 1881, | 0:28:17 | 0:28:19 | |
Rowntree's were churning out four tonnes of pastilles and gums | 0:28:19 | 0:28:22 | |
every week to keep up with demand. | 0:28:22 | 0:28:23 | |
As the bigger Quaker companies invested in machinery, | 0:28:25 | 0:28:28 | |
smaller firms found it increasingly hard to compete. | 0:28:28 | 0:28:31 | |
By the end of the Victorian period, | 0:28:38 | 0:28:40 | |
small-scale confectioners like yourselves are struggling. | 0:28:40 | 0:28:43 | |
The big boys are getting ever bigger, and, I'm afraid to say, | 0:28:43 | 0:28:47 | |
we really are in a situation of innovate or die. | 0:28:47 | 0:28:50 | |
One of the products that really does change the market at this point | 0:28:50 | 0:28:53 | |
is toffee. You've heard of Mackintosh's of Halifax? | 0:28:53 | 0:28:56 | |
Well, John and Violet Mackintosh, they became Mackintosh's of Halifax, | 0:28:56 | 0:29:00 | |
they were a couple. He worked in a mill, she had a small-scale shop, | 0:29:00 | 0:29:03 | |
and they developed a radically different type of toffee. | 0:29:03 | 0:29:06 | |
It crossed over, really, | 0:29:06 | 0:29:08 | |
the divide between American, caramel-style toffees | 0:29:08 | 0:29:10 | |
and British, very brittle, hard toffee. | 0:29:10 | 0:29:13 | |
Now, we don't know what was in the recipe, | 0:29:13 | 0:29:15 | |
it was always kept a secret. | 0:29:15 | 0:29:16 | |
But one of the products that we do know | 0:29:16 | 0:29:18 | |
that was revolutionising the confectionery industry at the time | 0:29:18 | 0:29:22 | |
-was condensed milk. -Ooh, lovely. | 0:29:22 | 0:29:24 | |
And it ends up being used in an wide variety of products, | 0:29:24 | 0:29:27 | |
of which toffees are one. | 0:29:27 | 0:29:29 | |
So, you're going to go away, Andy and Cynthia, | 0:29:29 | 0:29:31 | |
and work on a toffee recipe to turn around your business. | 0:29:31 | 0:29:35 | |
The condensed milk has been added to sugar, butter and water. | 0:29:39 | 0:29:42 | |
-That'll do. -Ah, smells so good! | 0:29:42 | 0:29:46 | |
And the flavouring isn't even in yet. | 0:29:46 | 0:29:48 | |
It actually smells really buttery. | 0:29:48 | 0:29:50 | |
That'll go darker as we go along. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:52 | |
I'm afraid to say, however, you have a slightly more challenging role, | 0:29:54 | 0:29:59 | |
which is try and cheapen your existing product | 0:29:59 | 0:30:02 | |
so you can make more profit. | 0:30:02 | 0:30:03 | |
I have fear and trepidation in my soul. | 0:30:03 | 0:30:06 | |
This just feels like something I don't want to do already. | 0:30:06 | 0:30:08 | |
This is plaster of Paris. | 0:30:08 | 0:30:10 | |
Paraffin wax, so similar to what you put into oil lamps. | 0:30:10 | 0:30:14 | |
And this one is limestone. | 0:30:14 | 0:30:16 | |
These are adulterants that we know people were using in sweets. | 0:30:16 | 0:30:19 | |
Although that had been various acts passed, anti-adulteration acts, | 0:30:19 | 0:30:23 | |
and the worst excesses have largely stopped, | 0:30:23 | 0:30:26 | |
that doesn't mean people aren't still doing it. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:28 | |
The Adulteration Of Food And Drink Act had been passed in 1860, | 0:30:29 | 0:30:33 | |
partly prompted by an accidental mass poisoning in Bradford, | 0:30:33 | 0:30:37 | |
when a confectioner's arsenic-laced lozenges killed 20 people, | 0:30:37 | 0:30:41 | |
including young children. | 0:30:41 | 0:30:43 | |
But it wasn't the last time arsenic turned up in sweet shops. | 0:30:43 | 0:30:47 | |
Here is an article from the Saint James's Gazette, 1904. | 0:30:49 | 0:30:52 | |
"Sweets or poison? | 0:30:52 | 0:30:54 | |
"One reason why children are deteriorating." | 0:30:54 | 0:30:57 | |
-Oh, my goodness. -Yes. | 0:30:57 | 0:30:59 | |
And look, here again, over and over again, | 0:30:59 | 0:31:01 | |
"Cheap glucose contains arsenic." | 0:31:01 | 0:31:04 | |
"It is a terrible evil. | 0:31:04 | 0:31:05 | |
"The children, of course, buy where they can get the most | 0:31:05 | 0:31:08 | |
"for their money, and get these goods, every line of which - | 0:31:08 | 0:31:11 | |
"it's not saying too much - | 0:31:11 | 0:31:13 | |
"is poisonous or dangerous and injurious to health." | 0:31:13 | 0:31:16 | |
It feels a little bit like the Child Catcher, you know? | 0:31:16 | 0:31:18 | |
You have these beautiful, glistening, colourful sweets | 0:31:18 | 0:31:21 | |
in the window. "Come, taste my wares." | 0:31:21 | 0:31:23 | |
-Deceiving. -Yeah. -Well, this is what you're going to do, | 0:31:23 | 0:31:25 | |
because you need to turn out a product that will pass muster. | 0:31:25 | 0:31:28 | |
Because, at the end of the day, you won't be able to sell these things | 0:31:28 | 0:31:31 | |
to customers if they don't taste and feel good. | 0:31:31 | 0:31:34 | |
While Cynthia and Andy are pouring their quality toffee out to set... | 0:31:35 | 0:31:39 | |
..Paul and Diana are making a cheaper version, | 0:31:40 | 0:31:43 | |
adulterated with paraffin wax. | 0:31:43 | 0:31:45 | |
Paul, what do you think, does this look quite a lot? | 0:31:48 | 0:31:50 | |
Let's have a look. | 0:31:50 | 0:31:52 | |
No, it doesn't, actually. | 0:31:52 | 0:31:53 | |
There's a lot of butter there. We could take that bit off. | 0:31:53 | 0:31:56 | |
Let's be brave, we need to make some money. | 0:31:56 | 0:31:58 | |
That will go into our next batch. | 0:31:58 | 0:31:59 | |
No-one will know, because we'll put lots of nice flavour in there. | 0:31:59 | 0:32:02 | |
And they just say 7% will kill a child. | 0:32:02 | 0:32:05 | |
Oh, my God! | 0:32:05 | 0:32:07 | |
It's brutal, isn't it? | 0:32:07 | 0:32:08 | |
-It's in, it's in. -That's so much! | 0:32:11 | 0:32:14 | |
Well, look, you can't see it, | 0:32:17 | 0:32:19 | |
I don't think you'll be able to taste it. I wonder how far we go? | 0:32:19 | 0:32:22 | |
-This is just the beginning... -Slippery slope, isn't it? | 0:32:22 | 0:32:24 | |
-Slippery slope. -Yep. | 0:32:24 | 0:32:26 | |
It's in there. The liquid looks great, exactly like toffee. | 0:32:26 | 0:32:30 | |
There's a kind of an almost waxy texture to it. | 0:32:32 | 0:32:36 | |
There we go. | 0:32:38 | 0:32:39 | |
The Mackintoshes understood the power of packaging. | 0:32:44 | 0:32:47 | |
Every one of their toffees was individually wrapped | 0:32:47 | 0:32:50 | |
and sold in beautiful tins, embellished with their name. | 0:32:50 | 0:32:54 | |
Distinctive packaging helped differentiate their quality products | 0:32:54 | 0:32:58 | |
from the less wholesome alternatives | 0:32:58 | 0:33:00 | |
being produced by some small confectioners. | 0:33:00 | 0:33:03 | |
I mean, just looking at them now, | 0:33:05 | 0:33:07 | |
I want to put my hand in and unwrap them, | 0:33:07 | 0:33:09 | |
so hopefully this will be the money-maker as well for us. | 0:33:09 | 0:33:12 | |
Rainbow of toffee. | 0:33:12 | 0:33:13 | |
But how does Paul and Diana's paraffin-wax-loaded toffee compare? | 0:33:15 | 0:33:19 | |
Could they sell this and get away with it? | 0:33:19 | 0:33:21 | |
Try a bit of ours. | 0:33:22 | 0:33:24 | |
Smell, smells good. | 0:33:24 | 0:33:27 | |
-Mmm. Just a little piece. -There's a little piece, yeah. | 0:33:27 | 0:33:29 | |
OK. | 0:33:30 | 0:33:31 | |
Good grief. | 0:33:33 | 0:33:35 | |
-It's got a hardness to it, hasn't it? -Mmm. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:38 | |
-You wouldn't know. -You wouldn't know there's wax in this. | 0:33:38 | 0:33:41 | |
It doesn't taste a lot different, does it? | 0:33:41 | 0:33:43 | |
The texture is different. | 0:33:43 | 0:33:46 | |
But only if you eat these two side-by-side. | 0:33:46 | 0:33:48 | |
Yeah. | 0:33:48 | 0:33:49 | |
The truth is, you probably wouldn't in a shop, would you? | 0:33:49 | 0:33:52 | |
With the sugar, you can almost get away with anything, | 0:33:52 | 0:33:55 | |
because you've got that sweetness. | 0:33:55 | 0:33:56 | |
But we both did it with a sadness. | 0:33:56 | 0:33:59 | |
Kind of horrified, really, that it's possible. | 0:33:59 | 0:34:02 | |
It's a finished, lovely tasting product. | 0:34:02 | 0:34:05 | |
-Yeah, yeah. -With more yields, higher yields and higher profit. | 0:34:05 | 0:34:09 | |
But, right now, would I do this at work? | 0:34:09 | 0:34:12 | |
-Absolutely not! -Oh, no! | 0:34:12 | 0:34:13 | |
Even if I was at the breaking point, no. | 0:34:14 | 0:34:18 | |
Smaller confectioners struggled as the big Quaker firms | 0:34:20 | 0:34:23 | |
became trusted household brands, making reliable, safe products. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:27 | |
And they had a captive market of sugar addicts. | 0:34:27 | 0:34:30 | |
By 1900, every person in Britain was eating the equivalent | 0:34:32 | 0:34:35 | |
of 33 bags of sugar a year. | 0:34:35 | 0:34:38 | |
More than 60,000 people were working in confectionery. | 0:34:38 | 0:34:41 | |
And the Quakers were even building pretty model villages | 0:34:43 | 0:34:46 | |
to keep their staff content. | 0:34:46 | 0:34:48 | |
Cadbury's had already established Bournville outside Birmingham, | 0:34:49 | 0:34:52 | |
and Rowntree's soon followed suit with New Earswick near York. | 0:34:52 | 0:34:55 | |
These workers were needed to meet the explosion in demand | 0:34:59 | 0:35:02 | |
for a new type of confectionery | 0:35:02 | 0:35:04 | |
that would transform the trade in the 20th century. | 0:35:04 | 0:35:07 | |
Look what she's got! | 0:35:08 | 0:35:10 | |
My favourite thing in the world. | 0:35:10 | 0:35:12 | |
Right up your street. | 0:35:12 | 0:35:14 | |
-I almost don't have to say anything. -No. | 0:35:14 | 0:35:17 | |
By the early 20th century, | 0:35:17 | 0:35:18 | |
a revolution has taken place in chocolate. | 0:35:18 | 0:35:21 | |
Up to this point, really, most chocolate still consumed as a drink. | 0:35:21 | 0:35:26 | |
But partly because, quite frankly, | 0:35:26 | 0:35:28 | |
the eating chocolate that was on the market in the 19th century | 0:35:28 | 0:35:30 | |
wasn't very good. | 0:35:30 | 0:35:31 | |
It was still quite grainy, it didn't have that beautiful, | 0:35:31 | 0:35:34 | |
smooth texture that we want from our chocolate. | 0:35:34 | 0:35:37 | |
In the late 19th century, various technological developments happen | 0:35:37 | 0:35:41 | |
and, as a result, we start to see the first types | 0:35:41 | 0:35:44 | |
of beautiful eating chocolate. | 0:35:44 | 0:35:46 | |
And one of the key types is milk chocolate. | 0:35:46 | 0:35:48 | |
The first chocolate bar was invented by Fry's in 1847, | 0:35:50 | 0:35:53 | |
who added cocoa butter. | 0:35:53 | 0:35:55 | |
But it was Swiss confectioners who made the crucial addition | 0:35:57 | 0:36:00 | |
of dried milk to develop milk chocolate. | 0:36:00 | 0:36:02 | |
Rodolphe Lindt then invented a process called conching, | 0:36:04 | 0:36:07 | |
that repeatedly kneads the chocolate to create a super-fine texture | 0:36:07 | 0:36:11 | |
and melt-in-the-mouth taste. | 0:36:11 | 0:36:12 | |
Let's have a good look. | 0:36:16 | 0:36:18 | |
Finally then, finally we're working with... | 0:36:18 | 0:36:21 | |
-Real chocolate. -Proper chocolate. | 0:36:21 | 0:36:23 | |
Unlike the Tudor one, it is actually sweet. | 0:36:23 | 0:36:25 | |
It is very, very sweet. So... | 0:36:25 | 0:36:28 | |
Smaller confectioners bought in slabs of pre-prepared chocolate | 0:36:32 | 0:36:36 | |
from the big factories. | 0:36:36 | 0:36:37 | |
I got that in my hair! | 0:36:39 | 0:36:41 | |
Lovely. | 0:36:44 | 0:36:45 | |
Chocolate was still an expensive luxury | 0:36:48 | 0:36:50 | |
at the beginning of the 20th century, | 0:36:50 | 0:36:52 | |
and fancy boxes, the Victorian equivalent of the selection box, | 0:36:52 | 0:36:56 | |
were a lucrative product. | 0:36:56 | 0:36:58 | |
They normally included a range of chocolate-covered fondants. | 0:36:58 | 0:37:01 | |
How do I get some more flavour into this? | 0:37:01 | 0:37:04 | |
So the confectioners were experimenting | 0:37:05 | 0:37:07 | |
with some fashionable flavours. | 0:37:07 | 0:37:09 | |
Go gently with it. | 0:37:09 | 0:37:11 | |
Ooh la la. It's tutti-frutti in it. | 0:37:11 | 0:37:16 | |
-I quite like that. -Do you? | 0:37:16 | 0:37:17 | |
Oh, it reminds me of Juicy Fruit chewing gum. | 0:37:17 | 0:37:19 | |
Exactly, it reminds me of my childhood. | 0:37:19 | 0:37:21 | |
-Oh, no. -It's very, very strong. | 0:37:21 | 0:37:23 | |
That's enough! | 0:37:26 | 0:37:27 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:37:27 | 0:37:29 | |
To make enough fancy boxes will require our confectioners | 0:37:29 | 0:37:32 | |
to work as a tight team, and break down each stage | 0:37:32 | 0:37:36 | |
into tasks to speed up production. | 0:37:36 | 0:37:39 | |
Andy, if you're doing centres... | 0:37:39 | 0:37:41 | |
Prepare the centres, OK. | 0:37:41 | 0:37:43 | |
I'll temper the chocolate. | 0:37:43 | 0:37:45 | |
-OK. -Cynthia, dipping. | 0:37:45 | 0:37:47 | |
Diana, we need our boxes, we need to have them looking beautiful, | 0:37:47 | 0:37:51 | |
-don't they? -Yeah. -Packed and made to look gorgeous. | 0:37:51 | 0:37:53 | |
-We've got a lot of boxes to fill, haven't we? -Yeah. -Ready? | 0:37:53 | 0:37:56 | |
They look absolutely gorgeous. | 0:37:59 | 0:38:01 | |
They smell strong, don't they, still? | 0:38:02 | 0:38:04 | |
Tutti-frutti diamonds. | 0:38:04 | 0:38:05 | |
Nice. | 0:38:05 | 0:38:06 | |
Cynthia, I won't start tempering | 0:38:12 | 0:38:13 | |
-until you've got your fillings just about ready. -Okey doke. | 0:38:13 | 0:38:16 | |
So I've got about 15 minutes. | 0:38:20 | 0:38:22 | |
-OK. -To get this tempered for you. | 0:38:22 | 0:38:24 | |
-We'll give you ten. -I'll give you five to get enough. | 0:38:24 | 0:38:27 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:38:27 | 0:38:28 | |
Chocolatier Paul is a master of tempering, | 0:38:30 | 0:38:33 | |
as it's still an important part of his modern job. | 0:38:33 | 0:38:36 | |
Moving the chocolate around subtly controls the temperature | 0:38:36 | 0:38:39 | |
as it cools, to produce silky smooth, glossy chocolate | 0:38:39 | 0:38:43 | |
which snaps when you bite it. | 0:38:43 | 0:38:45 | |
Do you see it crystallising on the surface? | 0:38:45 | 0:38:47 | |
-Yeah. -When I push it, it wrinkles. | 0:38:47 | 0:38:49 | |
-See all the crystals? -It's not there yet, then? | 0:38:49 | 0:38:51 | |
That's when it absolutely has to come off the slab. | 0:38:51 | 0:38:54 | |
There we go. | 0:38:54 | 0:38:55 | |
Cynthia, you ready? | 0:38:58 | 0:39:00 | |
-Ready. -On there. | 0:39:00 | 0:39:01 | |
-Are you ready to go? -Yeah. -Excellent. | 0:39:04 | 0:39:06 | |
Alongside their tutti-frutti diamonds, | 0:39:09 | 0:39:11 | |
the confectioners have made a range of chocolates, | 0:39:11 | 0:39:14 | |
including orange and rose fondants, | 0:39:14 | 0:39:16 | |
coconut pralines and caramels for their fancy boxes. | 0:39:16 | 0:39:20 | |
Do you mind if I come and dip with you, Cynthia? | 0:39:25 | 0:39:27 | |
-Go for it. -Good. | 0:39:27 | 0:39:28 | |
-Shall I start on these ones? -Yeah. | 0:39:28 | 0:39:31 | |
I think this is a more efficient way of doing things, don't you? | 0:39:31 | 0:39:34 | |
Rather than us all doing one task? | 0:39:34 | 0:39:36 | |
Absolutely. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:37 | |
It is nice to know that things are going step, step, step, step. | 0:39:37 | 0:39:41 | |
-Yeah. -Very methodically. | 0:39:41 | 0:39:42 | |
Once you get into your stride, it's very efficient. | 0:39:44 | 0:39:48 | |
Imagine if you had ten times the amount of people doing this. | 0:39:50 | 0:39:53 | |
-Good grief. -We'd fly through product, wouldn't we? | 0:39:55 | 0:39:57 | |
There's not enough satisfaction or creativity in doing this. | 0:40:02 | 0:40:07 | |
You're a cog in a wheel. I'm a chocolate dipper. | 0:40:07 | 0:40:11 | |
That's my job, you know? | 0:40:11 | 0:40:12 | |
Certainly my productivity has gone up, | 0:40:12 | 0:40:14 | |
but my creativity has gone right down. | 0:40:14 | 0:40:16 | |
I love the fact that these chocolates are being prettied up | 0:40:22 | 0:40:25 | |
and dressed in a beautiful box. | 0:40:25 | 0:40:27 | |
You know, this feeling that they are something special, | 0:40:27 | 0:40:29 | |
they're not just to be sort of scoffed. | 0:40:29 | 0:40:31 | |
My philosophy has always been that chocolate should be a treat. | 0:40:32 | 0:40:35 | |
The sort of modern-day demonisation of sugar, | 0:40:35 | 0:40:38 | |
and chocolate in particular, is misplaced, | 0:40:38 | 0:40:40 | |
because chocolate was never meant to be something | 0:40:40 | 0:40:42 | |
you ate every single day. | 0:40:42 | 0:40:44 | |
Fancy boxes were items to be saved up for, | 0:40:44 | 0:40:47 | |
with gifts such as cigarette cases and watches | 0:40:47 | 0:40:50 | |
nestled between the handmade chocolates. | 0:40:50 | 0:40:53 | |
No eating the sweets on the job, either. | 0:40:53 | 0:40:54 | |
-No. -No time. | 0:40:54 | 0:40:56 | |
In 1904, the cost of a top range box was 21 shillings, | 0:40:56 | 0:41:01 | |
equivalent to the weekly average food budget for a working family. | 0:41:01 | 0:41:05 | |
We have some lovely coconut pralines down here as well, girls. | 0:41:06 | 0:41:09 | |
OK. | 0:41:09 | 0:41:11 | |
Cadbury's now made over 450 different fancy boxes, | 0:41:11 | 0:41:15 | |
with wonderfully romantic names such as Peach Oh Mine and Dorothy. | 0:41:15 | 0:41:21 | |
This would have been hard work, though, wouldn't it? | 0:41:21 | 0:41:23 | |
You know, it's quite backbreaking. | 0:41:23 | 0:41:25 | |
-It's constant, isn't it? -Yeah, nonstop. | 0:41:25 | 0:41:27 | |
It doesn't end, doesn't stop. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:29 | |
But the booming confectionery industry was thrown into chaos | 0:41:32 | 0:41:35 | |
when Europe erupted into war in 1914. | 0:41:35 | 0:41:38 | |
As the conflict spread, | 0:41:49 | 0:41:50 | |
the continent's beet fields and refineries were destroyed... | 0:41:50 | 0:41:53 | |
..and Britain's supply of sugar was drastically reduced. | 0:41:54 | 0:41:57 | |
Tate's business lost 80% of their imports. | 0:41:58 | 0:42:01 | |
As the shortages kicked in, | 0:42:02 | 0:42:04 | |
companies slashed their product ranges, | 0:42:04 | 0:42:06 | |
and chocolate became more precious than ever. | 0:42:06 | 0:42:09 | |
So, Christmas of 1914, the Sheriff of York and the mayor | 0:42:12 | 0:42:18 | |
sent thousands of chocolate boxes to the young men on the front line, | 0:42:18 | 0:42:22 | |
to just kind of try and boost their morale | 0:42:22 | 0:42:25 | |
and just send them a little something from home. | 0:42:25 | 0:42:28 | |
The young men are really touched by this. | 0:42:28 | 0:42:32 | |
Paul, perhaps you could read this one. | 0:42:32 | 0:42:34 | |
"Dear sirs, undoubtedly you will be more than surprised | 0:42:34 | 0:42:38 | |
"at receiving a few lines from me, | 0:42:38 | 0:42:41 | |
"but I feel that I ought to send my very best thanks | 0:42:41 | 0:42:45 | |
"for the nice box of chocolates | 0:42:45 | 0:42:47 | |
"which I received so unexpectedly yesterday morning." | 0:42:47 | 0:42:51 | |
And what a box of chocolates has done... | 0:42:51 | 0:42:53 | |
For people to write back in those circumstances is... | 0:42:53 | 0:42:57 | |
-touching, isn't it? -Absolutely. | 0:42:57 | 0:42:59 | |
"I should have liked to have spent Christmas at home with my parents." | 0:42:59 | 0:43:04 | |
-Oh. -I know. | 0:43:04 | 0:43:06 | |
"But duty before pleasure. | 0:43:06 | 0:43:08 | |
"I shall prize the box etc as long as God spares me. | 0:43:08 | 0:43:13 | |
"One never knows what a day brings forth. | 0:43:13 | 0:43:17 | |
"I'm proud to be able to say that I'm a York lad | 0:43:17 | 0:43:19 | |
"and I'm looking forward to a speedy termination of this cruel war." | 0:43:19 | 0:43:23 | |
"Your humble servant, Henry Bailey." | 0:43:26 | 0:43:29 | |
Do you know that letter, | 0:43:32 | 0:43:34 | |
it speaks of a young man who doesn't actually think he's coming home. | 0:43:34 | 0:43:38 | |
-It is. -He sounds really young. | 0:43:39 | 0:43:41 | |
He sounds like he's seen some horrific... | 0:43:41 | 0:43:43 | |
We know that he died shortly after this. | 0:43:43 | 0:43:47 | |
He was killed in active duty, so he never made it back to York. | 0:43:47 | 0:43:51 | |
By the end of the war, | 0:44:06 | 0:44:07 | |
over half the men working for Cadbury's at Bournville | 0:44:07 | 0:44:10 | |
had been called up, | 0:44:10 | 0:44:11 | |
and many of the companies' factories requisitioned for war work. | 0:44:11 | 0:44:14 | |
But with peace came a gradual return to normality. | 0:44:17 | 0:44:20 | |
By the 1920s, beet sugar was now being produced in Britain | 0:44:25 | 0:44:28 | |
and demand for confectionery was growing again. | 0:44:28 | 0:44:31 | |
The big brands increasingly turned to a new form of advertising | 0:44:33 | 0:44:37 | |
to give them the edge. | 0:44:37 | 0:44:38 | |
ADVERT: You can always fill the gap with tuppeny bars of York Milk. | 0:44:41 | 0:44:45 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:44:45 | 0:44:47 | |
HORN BEEPS | 0:44:49 | 0:44:51 | |
What an escape! | 0:44:54 | 0:44:57 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:44:57 | 0:44:58 | |
-It's so bizarre, isn't it? -But cute. | 0:44:58 | 0:45:01 | |
The advert that we've just watched is significant for many reasons, | 0:45:01 | 0:45:05 | |
not least of all the fact that this is the first animated advert | 0:45:05 | 0:45:10 | |
with sound ever made. | 0:45:10 | 0:45:12 | |
That's quite extraordinary, when you think it's for a chocolate bar. | 0:45:12 | 0:45:15 | |
So this was Rowntree's attempt at competing with Cadbury's, | 0:45:15 | 0:45:18 | |
who were their biggest rivals at the time. | 0:45:18 | 0:45:21 | |
Did you notice when they present the bar | 0:45:21 | 0:45:24 | |
and they use it as a bridge and they're saying it fills the gap? | 0:45:24 | 0:45:27 | |
Yeah, so they're introducing that idea of using the bar | 0:45:27 | 0:45:31 | |
for elevenses or even to replace a meal. | 0:45:31 | 0:45:34 | |
There's an introduction of, you know, | 0:45:34 | 0:45:36 | |
it is OK to eat again before lunch. | 0:45:36 | 0:45:40 | |
-Exactly. -And it's OK to eat chocolate. | 0:45:40 | 0:45:42 | |
-Have a snack and a treat. -Before lunch, you know? | 0:45:42 | 0:45:45 | |
The more chocolate you eat, the more you want it. | 0:45:45 | 0:45:48 | |
Sugar's such a powerful, addictive substance, | 0:45:48 | 0:45:51 | |
you've just created a whole industry for yourself, and it's brilliant. | 0:45:51 | 0:45:54 | |
You're smiling all the way to the bank. | 0:45:54 | 0:45:58 | |
British spending on confectionery doubled in this period. | 0:45:58 | 0:46:02 | |
Crucial to chocolate's success was the development | 0:46:02 | 0:46:04 | |
of cheaper treats and memorable brands for the mass market. | 0:46:04 | 0:46:07 | |
Oooh, ice cream? | 0:46:10 | 0:46:12 | |
Stop me and buy one. | 0:46:12 | 0:46:14 | |
We're now in the 1930s - | 0:46:14 | 0:46:16 | |
boom time for chocolate confectionery - | 0:46:16 | 0:46:18 | |
and a lot of the household names that we know and love | 0:46:18 | 0:46:21 | |
in the 21st century are introduced. | 0:46:21 | 0:46:23 | |
-Wow. -What do you reckon? | 0:46:23 | 0:46:24 | |
Aero, I love a bit of Aero! | 0:46:24 | 0:46:26 | |
Rollos, oh. | 0:46:26 | 0:46:29 | |
Flake. | 0:46:29 | 0:46:30 | |
Is that right, it was that early, Flake? | 0:46:30 | 0:46:32 | |
-Blimey. -Wow. | 0:46:32 | 0:46:34 | |
One of the really lovely things about this period | 0:46:34 | 0:46:36 | |
is the level of innovation, | 0:46:36 | 0:46:38 | |
and it's innovation from the big manufacturers. | 0:46:38 | 0:46:41 | |
They work out that you can sell a new type of bar, | 0:46:41 | 0:46:44 | |
a bar called a combination bar. | 0:46:44 | 0:46:47 | |
Now, combination bars are exactly what you think they are. | 0:46:49 | 0:46:53 | |
So there's a combination of nougat or toffee or biscuit, | 0:46:53 | 0:46:57 | |
whatever it is, with chocolate. | 0:46:57 | 0:46:59 | |
The secret bit is that the stuff inside is cheaper | 0:46:59 | 0:47:02 | |
-than what's outside. -Cheaper than chocolate, right. | 0:47:02 | 0:47:04 | |
So, of course, you can sell them for a lot less money. | 0:47:04 | 0:47:07 | |
These bars opened up a whole new market | 0:47:07 | 0:47:09 | |
for the big confectionery firms. | 0:47:09 | 0:47:11 | |
A Kit Kat introduced in 1937 sold for tuppence, | 0:47:11 | 0:47:15 | |
half the price of a Dairy Milk. | 0:47:15 | 0:47:17 | |
By the end of the 1930s, | 0:47:17 | 0:47:19 | |
Britons were eating the equivalent | 0:47:19 | 0:47:21 | |
of three small bars of chocolate every week. | 0:47:21 | 0:47:24 | |
Everyone can have chocolate. | 0:47:24 | 0:47:25 | |
The child on the street, the worker in the factory, | 0:47:25 | 0:47:29 | |
the domestic servant who's on a day off. | 0:47:29 | 0:47:31 | |
This is really the democratisation of chocolate. | 0:47:31 | 0:47:35 | |
So is this going to hit our sweetie sales, then? | 0:47:35 | 0:47:37 | |
Yeah. Yeah. | 0:47:37 | 0:47:40 | |
As factories get bigger and bigger and bigger, | 0:47:40 | 0:47:42 | |
and the technology increases, | 0:47:42 | 0:47:44 | |
you're really looking at something that you just, in terms of scale, | 0:47:44 | 0:47:47 | |
sheer scale, thousands, millions of bars being produced, | 0:47:47 | 0:47:51 | |
and from your point of view, well... | 0:47:51 | 0:47:54 | |
-No way, no way could keep up with that. -No. | 0:47:54 | 0:47:56 | |
The ability of the big confectionery firms to innovate, | 0:47:56 | 0:47:59 | |
to mass-produce cheap chocolate and to advertise it everywhere | 0:47:59 | 0:48:03 | |
made them impossible to compete with. | 0:48:03 | 0:48:06 | |
Increasingly, small confectioners' shelves | 0:48:06 | 0:48:08 | |
were filled with products made by others. | 0:48:08 | 0:48:11 | |
But, at certain times of the year, | 0:48:15 | 0:48:17 | |
there was still real demand for beautiful handmade treats. | 0:48:17 | 0:48:22 | |
-Diana... -Oh, big boy! -Look at the size of my egg! | 0:48:22 | 0:48:26 | |
-I say. -How fantastic is that? | 0:48:26 | 0:48:28 | |
That's like a bomb. | 0:48:28 | 0:48:30 | |
Shall we unclip it and see the inside? | 0:48:30 | 0:48:32 | |
-And see, yeah. -In the window, this kind of just sets us apart from | 0:48:32 | 0:48:34 | |
everybody else, doesn't it? | 0:48:34 | 0:48:36 | |
I tell you what? I hold one side, if you kind of unclip. | 0:48:36 | 0:48:38 | |
Oh, it'll lift off. Oooh. | 0:48:38 | 0:48:41 | |
Gives us a nice big canvas to work on, doesn't it? | 0:48:41 | 0:48:43 | |
Yeah, we can do all sorts on the outside, can't we? | 0:48:43 | 0:48:45 | |
Love it! | 0:48:45 | 0:48:46 | |
Decorated eggs at Easter are a centuries-old tradition, | 0:48:47 | 0:48:50 | |
linked to the Christian Church. | 0:48:50 | 0:48:52 | |
They were painted and turned into beautiful gifts for children | 0:48:52 | 0:48:56 | |
after the privations of Lent. | 0:48:56 | 0:48:58 | |
I like that... | 0:49:02 | 0:49:03 | |
Look at that! | 0:49:08 | 0:49:09 | |
OK, you start swirling right to the edge. | 0:49:09 | 0:49:12 | |
It's a big responsibility for a little shop, | 0:49:12 | 0:49:15 | |
in terms of raw materials, time... | 0:49:15 | 0:49:17 | |
-It is. -Look at the size of it. -This is our draw. | 0:49:17 | 0:49:21 | |
The first chocolate eggs appeared in 1873, | 0:49:21 | 0:49:24 | |
designed by Fry's, | 0:49:24 | 0:49:26 | |
and by the 1930s, all of the big Quaker firms had their own ranges - | 0:49:26 | 0:49:30 | |
from fancy eggs which were cardboard with treats inside, | 0:49:30 | 0:49:34 | |
to hollow milk and dark chocolate versions, | 0:49:34 | 0:49:37 | |
elaborately iced and often coming with a novelty gift. | 0:49:37 | 0:49:40 | |
And they didn't stop at eggs. | 0:49:42 | 0:49:44 | |
-This fills my heart with joy. -It does. | 0:49:45 | 0:49:48 | |
HE GASPS | 0:49:48 | 0:49:49 | |
That is an epic and very, very grand elephant, isn't it? | 0:49:49 | 0:49:53 | |
These are very different, aren't they? An elephant, for Easter? | 0:49:53 | 0:49:56 | |
Yeah, yeah. Although we do see chocolate fish, | 0:49:56 | 0:49:58 | |
we don't see them at Easter time, do we? | 0:49:58 | 0:50:01 | |
-I'm not sure about an Eastery bear. -An Easter bear... | 0:50:01 | 0:50:04 | |
This is really scary - frightening baby. | 0:50:04 | 0:50:07 | |
It's a little bit Chucky. | 0:50:07 | 0:50:09 | |
Do you know what's even worse, when you see it in 3D, look at that. | 0:50:09 | 0:50:12 | |
-She's beautifully made, but... -That's scary. | 0:50:12 | 0:50:14 | |
It's like a traditional doll, dolly, isn't it? | 0:50:14 | 0:50:18 | |
The big Quaker companies made chocolate synonymous with Easter, | 0:50:18 | 0:50:21 | |
so our confectioners are working | 0:50:21 | 0:50:23 | |
on their own spectacular window display | 0:50:23 | 0:50:26 | |
to draw customers into their shop. | 0:50:26 | 0:50:28 | |
I've never worked with metal moulds before, | 0:50:28 | 0:50:30 | |
I've only worked with polycarbonate moulds, | 0:50:30 | 0:50:32 | |
so it will be interesting to see what a difference it makes, | 0:50:32 | 0:50:35 | |
if any, to the way things turn out. | 0:50:35 | 0:50:38 | |
We're going to take it up to the top. | 0:50:38 | 0:50:40 | |
-Say when. -When. | 0:50:40 | 0:50:42 | |
I'm just going to move it around, so that the chocolate... | 0:50:42 | 0:50:45 | |
It takes some highly skilled jiggling of the mould to completely cover it | 0:50:47 | 0:50:51 | |
in chocolate, or their perfect centrepiece will be ruined. | 0:50:51 | 0:50:56 | |
Clip! | 0:50:56 | 0:50:57 | |
This will keep us fit. | 0:50:58 | 0:50:59 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:51:01 | 0:51:02 | |
-Your turn. -Thank you. -You're very welcome. | 0:51:02 | 0:51:05 | |
It certainly is a beast. | 0:51:05 | 0:51:06 | |
I wouldn't like to meet the bird that laid this! | 0:51:09 | 0:51:11 | |
This has to work, it has to. | 0:51:13 | 0:51:14 | |
This is the thing I have butterflies in my tummy about. | 0:51:14 | 0:51:17 | |
I'm not going to sleep tonight. | 0:51:19 | 0:51:21 | |
I'm really nervous about tomorrow. | 0:51:21 | 0:51:23 | |
It's their final day as Victorian confectioners, | 0:51:32 | 0:51:35 | |
and the enormous Easter egg centrepiece for their shop window | 0:51:35 | 0:51:38 | |
has been drying overnight. | 0:51:38 | 0:51:40 | |
-It's the big reveal. -I'm actually quite nervous. | 0:51:41 | 0:51:44 | |
Let's lift her forward. | 0:51:44 | 0:51:45 | |
Do you think we should give her a little tap? | 0:51:45 | 0:51:47 | |
Give her a little tap. | 0:51:47 | 0:51:49 | |
-Shall we unclip? -Yeah. | 0:51:49 | 0:51:50 | |
OK. Ooh, it moved, without... | 0:51:52 | 0:51:54 | |
Pop a knife in. | 0:51:55 | 0:51:56 | |
Ooh. | 0:51:58 | 0:51:59 | |
Shall we do it? | 0:52:00 | 0:52:01 | |
Ooh, it's a bit scuffy. | 0:52:03 | 0:52:06 | |
That's just some scratches on the mould itself, isn't it? | 0:52:06 | 0:52:09 | |
-Yeah. -But, it's not cracked, it's shiny. | 0:52:09 | 0:52:13 | |
We can hear a pin drop. | 0:52:15 | 0:52:17 | |
-OK. -Let's do half and half, towards us. | 0:52:17 | 0:52:21 | |
-Yeah. -Ooh. -Oooh. -METAL CLANGS | 0:52:21 | 0:52:23 | |
-Ooh. -Ooh. | 0:52:29 | 0:52:31 | |
-Can you feel the static? -Yeah. | 0:52:31 | 0:52:32 | |
But will the more unusual chocolate shapes come out of the moulds? | 0:52:34 | 0:52:38 | |
If this elephant comes out in one piece, I'll be made up. | 0:52:41 | 0:52:44 | |
-Oh! -Oh! | 0:52:47 | 0:52:49 | |
Man! | 0:52:49 | 0:52:50 | |
No. Andy will be distraught. | 0:52:54 | 0:52:57 | |
Come on, please work, please work, come on. | 0:52:57 | 0:53:01 | |
-Ooh! -Nice! | 0:53:01 | 0:53:03 | |
-Yes, yes, yes. -Oh, my God, wow. | 0:53:03 | 0:53:06 | |
-Look at that. -Brilliant. Look at that. | 0:53:06 | 0:53:08 | |
That's my favourite piece so far. | 0:53:08 | 0:53:10 | |
-Oh, my goodness. -Really successful. | 0:53:10 | 0:53:12 | |
I've never piped with chocolate, and it behaves completely differently. | 0:53:18 | 0:53:23 | |
You don't have time, that's the thing with piping chocolate, | 0:53:23 | 0:53:26 | |
you don't have time. Just when you're getting into your flow, | 0:53:26 | 0:53:29 | |
it sets up and you have to start again. | 0:53:29 | 0:53:31 | |
Good job, team. | 0:53:31 | 0:53:33 | |
Good. Are you sure? | 0:53:33 | 0:53:37 | |
Great, brilliant. | 0:53:37 | 0:53:38 | |
After four days of backbreaking work, | 0:53:44 | 0:53:47 | |
it's time to finally stock their shop. | 0:53:47 | 0:53:49 | |
This has been the most productive period. | 0:53:51 | 0:53:54 | |
It's been the busiest, in terms of volume, | 0:53:54 | 0:53:58 | |
how much product we have to get out of every single batch. | 0:53:58 | 0:54:02 | |
We haven't had two minutes to sit down. | 0:54:02 | 0:54:05 | |
The fish are great, aren't they? | 0:54:05 | 0:54:07 | |
What about that? | 0:54:07 | 0:54:09 | |
There's your lovely bear. | 0:54:10 | 0:54:12 | |
How's it looking, Cynthia? | 0:54:23 | 0:54:24 | |
Is it going to lie on its back in the straw? | 0:54:24 | 0:54:26 | |
Doesn't it look amazing? | 0:54:41 | 0:54:42 | |
You can imagine that once we open those doors, | 0:54:42 | 0:54:45 | |
people are going to come in and want to peer around. | 0:54:45 | 0:54:49 | |
BELL RINGS | 0:54:49 | 0:54:51 | |
-Gosh! -Hello. -Hello. -Wow. | 0:54:51 | 0:54:53 | |
-You did make a lot. -Look at all these delights, you've been busy. | 0:54:53 | 0:54:56 | |
-Pastilles? -Fruit pastilles! -Fruit pastilles. | 0:54:56 | 0:55:00 | |
That's really yummy. | 0:55:01 | 0:55:03 | |
Ooh, I like the texture. | 0:55:06 | 0:55:08 | |
Very fruity. | 0:55:08 | 0:55:10 | |
-Very chewy, isn't it? -So intense, as well. | 0:55:10 | 0:55:12 | |
Let's get this big egg in the window. | 0:55:12 | 0:55:14 | |
If you grab the base for me, Annie, pop that in the window, | 0:55:14 | 0:55:18 | |
and we'll position it facing out. | 0:55:18 | 0:55:20 | |
That's spectacular, isn't it? It's such a statement there. | 0:55:22 | 0:55:26 | |
-That will draw people in. -Yeah. | 0:55:26 | 0:55:27 | |
Mass production dramatically reduced the cost of confectionery. | 0:55:32 | 0:55:36 | |
By 1935, 96% of the population could now afford | 0:55:36 | 0:55:40 | |
to treat themselves to sweets. | 0:55:40 | 0:55:42 | |
Well, it looks as though your Easter customers have arrived, | 0:55:43 | 0:55:47 | |
so we shall leave you to it. | 0:55:47 | 0:55:49 | |
Thank you. | 0:55:49 | 0:55:51 | |
Hello, come on in! | 0:55:52 | 0:55:54 | |
Hope you've brought lots of money. | 0:55:54 | 0:55:56 | |
We have some lovely sweets here. | 0:55:56 | 0:55:57 | |
Diana, can we have a little bag of lemony sweets please? | 0:55:59 | 0:56:02 | |
Who else has money to spend? | 0:56:02 | 0:56:04 | |
Two shillings. There you go. | 0:56:04 | 0:56:06 | |
Strawberry sweets. | 0:56:06 | 0:56:07 | |
Could we have another bag of strawberry sweets please, Diana? | 0:56:07 | 0:56:10 | |
-Yeah. -Who loves chocolate? | 0:56:10 | 0:56:12 | |
Oh, we've got a shop full of chocolate lovers. | 0:56:14 | 0:56:16 | |
Does anybody want any Easter eggs? | 0:56:16 | 0:56:19 | |
We have small eggs, look. | 0:56:19 | 0:56:21 | |
Yellow, green, red... | 0:56:21 | 0:56:24 | |
TILL RINGS | 0:56:24 | 0:56:25 | |
Guys, there's an Easter egg hunt! | 0:56:25 | 0:56:28 | |
CHEERING | 0:56:28 | 0:56:30 | |
Our confectioners have experienced a revolution in their trade, | 0:56:37 | 0:56:41 | |
from highly skilled servants in the Tudor kitchen, | 0:56:41 | 0:56:44 | |
to production line workers of the 20th century. | 0:56:44 | 0:56:47 | |
Dramatically different. | 0:56:47 | 0:56:49 | |
Went through a high, you were a celebrity chef, really, | 0:56:49 | 0:56:52 | |
in the Georgian period, and now at the end of this stage, | 0:56:52 | 0:56:56 | |
we are at the bottom. That's quite humbling. | 0:56:56 | 0:56:59 | |
It's quite shocking. | 0:56:59 | 0:57:01 | |
I think it's reenergised me, doing all that chocolate work, | 0:57:03 | 0:57:07 | |
and making all those hard-boiled candies. | 0:57:07 | 0:57:10 | |
Actually getting your hands dirty and getting down to it again, | 0:57:10 | 0:57:14 | |
it was brilliant, I really enjoyed it. | 0:57:14 | 0:57:16 | |
You followed, you know, the life of a confectioner through every stage, | 0:57:17 | 0:57:21 | |
and I have a lot of empathy for them, and a lot of admiration. | 0:57:21 | 0:57:24 | |
I feel really privileged to do the job I do. | 0:57:25 | 0:57:29 | |
Today, our modern confectioners are part of a renaissance | 0:57:31 | 0:57:35 | |
in beautiful handmade confectionery, | 0:57:35 | 0:57:38 | |
an echo of the early history of their trade. | 0:57:38 | 0:57:41 | |
There is still a place for mass-produced confectionery | 0:57:41 | 0:57:44 | |
and there is still a place for the artisan, | 0:57:44 | 0:57:46 | |
so in a lot of ways, we've come together. | 0:57:46 | 0:57:49 | |
Everybody has the choice, though, and that's the difference. | 0:57:49 | 0:57:52 | |
The mass confectionery of this period, | 0:57:52 | 0:57:55 | |
it gave everybody the chance to try the things | 0:57:55 | 0:57:58 | |
that were once the preserve of the rich. | 0:57:58 | 0:58:00 |