#23 TATE & LYLE PLC

There are people who don’t need to eat large amounts of sugar and saturated fat to get through the dark and dismal winter months. Those people are alcoholics. If you’re not an alcoholic and you’re looking for something to keep you busy while you’re stuck inside for the next few weeks, you might turn to baking, which I’ve done recently. Tate & Lyle plc, the maker of Lyle’s golden syrup, holds a Royal Warrant from Her Majesty the Queen as “Sugar Refiners.”

Lyle’s golden syrup is one of those quintessentially British foods for which Americans don’t really have a substitute. The British seem to use it in the same way we might use Karo syrup here—in baking, in sauces, in lieu of maple syrup on pancakes. Maybe the most appealing thing about buying Lyle’s is that it doesn’t appear to be made of corn. In the United States, everything is made from corn. This sweetener that doesn’t rely on it seems like something special to me.

And it is special. The company’s history dates back to 1881, when Abram Lyle and his three sons began operating an English sugar refinery on the banks of the Thames. In 1883 they first invented their golden syrup, which they refined from the sweet and sticky liquid produced by sugar refining. The company registered its “lion and bees” trademark symbol in 1904 and has used it ever since; it’s a reference to the Old Testament story of Samson in the Bible. Between the two world wars, Abram Lyle & Sons merged with another sugar refinery, Henry Tate & Sons. (Tate was the same Tate who the famous British art museums were named after). The company has held a Royal Warrant since 1922.

I first heard of Lyle’s golden syrup a few years ago because one of my co-workers at my first job in Chicago was British. He knew I loved baking, so one day he put in a special request for a dessert called caramel slice. I had no trouble finding recipes for this yummy caramel-filled and chocolate-covered shortbread bar (the name “slice” is most commonly used in Australia, where it refers to a bar cookie), but I did have trouble finding golden syrup. I finally gave up and used corn syrup, and that turned out to be a disaster. The caramel filling was way too runny, and the taste was all wrong. My friend was nice about it, but he finally admitted it was nothing like the dessert he remembered from home.

I tried my first caramel slice two summers ago in London at Café Nero, that ubiquitous London coffee chain with a shop in Westminster. I’ve wanted to get my hands on a decent caramel slice ever since, and I admit this is one of the royal warrant products I most wanted to try when I began this blog. I’ve been so thrilled with it all the way around—the surprisingly vibrant and beautiful copper color of the syrup when I opened the tin, the smooth and satiny caramel sauce I made on my stovetop last weekend, and the fantastic bar cookies Adam and I have been snacking on all week.

The recipes I pulled and combined to make my own caramel slice hybrid all came from Australian cooking websites. I found myself getting pulled into their quirky derivation of the English language: the absence of articles before nouns; the use of the metric system in the kitchen—which seems so odd to Americans dependent on the oddities of the English system; and the reference to exotic food products like copha, a vegetable shortening made from coconut oil. My Internet foray into Australia made me think about Australia when it was part of the British Empire, when it was one of many distant lands under the rule of the English monarchy.

 

To educate myself more about British imperialism, I checked out Piers Brendon’s fabulous new book The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997. This book is a tome, which I will either never finish or will owe the Chicago Public Library a large amount of fines for, or both, but I couldn’t resist bringing it home this week. If you think about it, and Brendon has done a lot of that, the story of the United Kingdom in the 20^th century is the story of a crumbling modern empire. While Queen Elizabeth has served for decades as a consistent and unifying tour de force for the British monarchy, she’s also watched as her country has lost a good deal of power and control on the world stage. Without this vast empire to govern—and with a fully capable Parliament handling law-making—many wonder how the monarchy can continue to function without it too crumbling, just like the flaky shortbread crust of so many caramel slices.

Where to buy: I ordered my little tin of golden syrup on Amazon. In Chicago, I've seen it for sale at Spencer's Jolly Posh Foods.

Caramel Slice

Shortbread crust:

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 cups flour

Caramel filling:

1 can sweetened condensed milk
2 T. Lyle’s golden syrup
½ cup butter

Topping:

1 ½ cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Combine butter and sugar, then flour, until the mixture is crumbly and has several pea-sized pieces. Grease the bottom and sides of a 13x9” pan and press shortbread mixture into an even layer in the pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until shortbread is firm but still soft. Let cool.

On stovetop, combine milk, golden syrup, and butter and bring to a boil over medium heat. Simmer over low heat, stirring constantly with a whisk, for five more minutes, until caramel mixture has thickened. Pour over cooled shortbread crust and refrigerate for 3-4 hours.

Melt chocolate in a double broiler or in the microwave and pour over firm caramel layer. Refrigerate for another hour before cutting bars into squares. Tip: Don’t wait too long to cut these; the harder the chocolate gets, the harder they are to cut.

#22 COCA-COLA INTERNATIONAL SALES LIMITED

I probably already know what you're thinking. Coke? Someone gave a Royal Warrant to Coke? Why? I'm reminded of the Britvic controversy over whether something as mundane as a soft drink deserves royal attention. I'm tempted to ignore this one. Still, I don't know much about the British side of this business, and it's possible you don't either. That could be interesting. So let's hear it out. Coca-Cola International Sales Limited holds a Royal Warrant from HM the Queen as Suppliers of Soft Drinks, and it has since 1972.

Coca-Cola has gotten nothing if not negative press in the past few years, due mainly to research linking sugary soda consumption to obesity. This bad press is having more of a profound effect than I realized. In doing some research for this post the other day, I stumbled upon a graph on The Atlantic that illustrated just how sharply sales of soda have fallen in the past decade. In the United States alone, revenue has dropped 40%.

On Coca-Cola UK's website, there seems to be widespread acknowledgement of the health concerns of drinking soda, diet or otherwise. In addition to addressing obesity and diabetes, the website also offers information about bone health, tooth decay, and other potential problems related to drinking soda.

If you're watching your weight and you don't like diet soda, you may be interested to know that I found a nice little loophole on the UK Coke website. Ever calculated your body mass index (BMI) and been less than happy with the results? Maybe you're using the wrong website. I'm a pretty thin 5'10", 130 pounds, which gives me a BMI of 18.7. In the United States, this is an acceptable BMI; you're considered underweight if you dip below 18.5. In the UK? You should be above 20, or at least that's what the BMI calculator on Coke UK's website told me.

"They're letting people be fatter over there!" I told Adam excitedly just now.

"Well..." he replied.

It's a bit cumbersome to use Coke's calculator if you don't know your weight in stone, but you can use an easy Google convertor to figure it out.

If Coca-Cola's looser guidelines for checking your weight haven't convinced you of how thin you are, of how perfectly fine it would be for you to drink their full-calorie soft drinks as part of a healthful diet, you're not alone. Queen Elizabeth's daughter, Princess Anne, apparently gave the stuff up right around the same time the company was granted a Royal Warrant. In a now out-of-print biography of Anne written by Anne Matheson and Reginald Davis and titled Princess Anne: A Royal Girl of Our Time (I know), the authors share that Anne "used to enjoy a refreshing glass of coke but this, along with other foods like sugar and potatoes, she was encouraged to give up."

Before we get any further, I really feel the need to make a confession. To ask out loud a question I've had in my head since I began this blog. Just who is this Princess Anne? Have you ever heard of her before? I didn't even know Queen Elizabeth had a daughter until seven months ago. With all the attention given to the British royal family in this country, that seems so completely impossible that I've been asking around all over the place trying to find someone who knows who she is. The other day one of my co-workers made a reference to the Queen Mother, and I jumped all over it.

"The Queen Mother? That's a pretty specific reference to the royal family. Do you know who Princess Anne is?"

He hesitated. "Princess Anne?"

"Princess Anne."

"She's...the Queen's...sister?"

"No."

"Her aunt?"

"No. Her daughter."

"Wouldn't have thought that."

No one thinks that. In America, people under 40 just simply don't know who this woman is. To get a view of people over 40--people just slightly over 40, of course--I decided to ask my mom about Anne. She had no idea who I was talking about either. Consider also the results of my New York Times query, in which the most recent article about her was from 1992. That’s the year I finished fourth grade.

Anne is actually a pretty big deal in the UK. She makes more visits on behalf of the Crown than any other member of the royal family. She's a great equestrian, as is her daughter Zara Phillips. She’s had her share of media attention too. Her wedding to Mark Phillips in 1973 garnered national and international press, much like Kate and William’s wedding did more recently. (By the way, you have to watch this footage of their wedding. Do it right now). She’s out there in the public eye...but we’re just never hearing about her in the U.S.

I can't argue I have a good explanation for American inattention to Anne, but I think it has a lot to do with the birth of Prince Andrew in 1960. Before his birth and after her mother's coronation, Anne was second in line to the British throne, after her brother Charles. Matheson and Davis refer to Andrew as "the baby who was to change the whole course of her life." At that time, the law dictated the a male heir would trump a female heir, so Anne was off the hook, so to speak. In America it seems we only ever hear news of those directly in line to take over the throne, while the other members of the royal family live way back in the shadows. Maybe that's lucky for them.

Coke's product line strikes me as somewhat similar. When I think about Coca-Cola, I think about Coke, Diet Coke, and Sprite, but the global company makes a whole host of healthier drinks, including Dasani bottled water, Honest Tea (that super expensive bottled tea you see at Whole Foods), and Simply Orange (love that stuff!). In the UK specifically they make Powerade and Vitamin Water, in addition to juices like Kia-Ora and 5 Alive. See? Sometimes the good ones are off in the shadows.

Where to Buy: You can find quintessentially British juice brands like 5 Alive on Brit Superstore. Kia-Ora seems much harder to find stateside.

#21 HAMLEYS

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about toys. Post-Christmas, our house is ridiculously full of them. Nathan now sleeps with three stuffed animal dogs (two of them were gifts for Nicholas, mind you), plays with a fully-stocked kitchen, and uses a train table to run a railroad network as extensive as the one on the Island of Sodor. Our living room is covered with Legos and Elmo puzzle pieces, and our hallway resembles a parking garage for rideable toy trains. There was a time, pretty long ago, that Buckingham Palace and the other royal residences didn’t look much different. What was the toy store of choice to purchase gifts for the royal children? Hamleys, of course. For decades the British toy superstore held Royal Warrants—from the Queen Mother for supplying toys to Elizabeth and Margaret, and later to Queen Elizabeth for her own children. 
 

When Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip moved Charles and Anne into Buckingham Palace in 1952, they tried their best to recreate the nursery in their former home, Clarence House. It was “stuffed with handed-down royal toys—a model of Gibraltar with a working railway, cast-off royal garments to be used as dressing-up clothes, a miniature car.” Maybe some of Charles and Anne’s toys were hand-me-down’s, but this certainly wasn’t true of all of them. Hamleys took great pride in the fact that, when her children were small, the Queen was a devoted customer. The store does not currently hold a Royal Warrant—maybe because the royal family has so few small children to spoil these days? I wonder if the baby about to be born in July will prompt the Queen or Prince Charles to again patronize the long-famous store.

To write about Hamleys in a way that would make any sense at all to Americans, I needed to get over two pretty major hurdles: 1.) convince Hamleys to ship their products to America, even though their website says they’ll only ship to the UK and Europe and 2.) figure out a way to describe a place I’ve never visited. To solve the first problem I emailed customer service and within just a few hours received a thoughtful response and a very good solution:

“Although we don't deliver to the US from our online website, you can place orders from our Regent Street store over the phone, and have them shipped to you in the US from there. If you would like to do that, please feel free to call us on 0871 704 1977, select the option for the Regent Street store, and we can then put you through to the appropriate floor in Regent Street to make a purchase.”

Problem solved. To get over the next hurdle, I enlisted my friend Katie. If my friend Beth was exactly the kind of person you’d want to take with you to a dog show, Katie turns out to be exactly the kind of person you’d want to run an errand for you in the West End. She promised me on Monday that she’d try to get there “sometime this week” but when I woke up Tuesday I already had emails from her with great photos and even a short essay detailing her experience. She seems somewhat keen on becoming a regular England-based correspondent for this blog, and it goes without saying that she is hired. She will be paid in McVitie’s dark chocolate digestive biscuits. 

Let’s turn it over to Katie now:
 

“To say that Hamleys is the FAO Schwartz of yesteryear on cocaine would be a bit of an understatement. I HATE going in Hamleys. I do it twice a year (because my kids LOVE everything I hate about it), but that’s about all I can tolerate. It’s definitely an experience, though!

The whole “Hamleys” experience is built around and for the kids. They have every toy you could ever imagine (and many you’d never even imagined were possible), and they are all on display to play with and try out. That’s the cool part. What’s more, there is a ratio of about 1 Hamleys employee for every five shoppers who is lurking around every corner to throw a Glitter Fairy in your face or poke you with their magic wand, or say “HEY THERE! Turn that frown upside down - YOU’RE IN HAMLEYS!!!” Thus, the reason I hate the store. This time, I had a guy stand in front of the escalator with his magic wand so that I had to run into his wand, and when I inevitably ran into his wand at the end of the escalator he said, “WHY did you just run right into my magic wand? You didn’t even try and move out of the way?! HAHAHA!” They have kids’ music blaring on the loud speakers, which causes the employees to sing along and spontaneously break into dance and of course, try to get you to dance along. Everyone wants to “help” you shop, and everyone tries to sell you something else. So, if you happen to bring your kids along, it becomes a VERY difficult battle of the wills to escape with JUST the doll (or My Little Pony, or whatever) you went in there to buy.”

(Isn’t she fabulous? Seriously, she nailed it.)

I wanted to know a little more about the store and its connection to the Royal Warrant, so I enjoyed reading this timeline on the store’s website. Hamleys was begun as part of the dream of toy-lover William Hamley, who opened a toy store called Noah’s Ark in London in 1760. His grandsons carried on the tradition by opening another toy store called the Joy Emporium, which was popular in London during Queen Victoria’s reign. Although the store was forced to close during the Great Depression, Walter Lines bought the store and reopened it as Hamleys. It was awarded its first Royal Warrant in 1938 by Queen Mary, and during the 1950s by Queen Elizabeth as a “Toys and Sports Merchant.”

If we know now that Hamleys in its present form is a bit...intense...maybe we’re lucky we Americans don’t have much access to it other than ordering online or via the telephone. Surely they can’t poke a wand at you over the phone? As I write this entry sitting on a couch next to two dinosaurs and a stack of children’s books, I’m thinking maybe I’m lucky I have no need to be in the British equivalent of FAO Schwartz on crack anytime soon. 

Where to buy: See the instructions above for having orders shipped from the Regent Street store in London to your home in the United States. If you’re in the UK or mainland Europe, you’re in luck; Hamleys happily delivers to you already.

#20 CHARBONNEL ET WALKER

I guess it wouldn’t be January without sweeping plans for self-transformation and long lists of New Year’s resolutions. The usual items are there—eat more fruits & vegetables, less sugar; do more exercising and less lounging around—so much so that I heard eight different news programs this week about how I should go about revamping myself. Maybe it’s reaching the wise old age of 30, or maybe it’s the fact that running after two kids has me down to my college weight, but I’m really not interested in hearing dieting and exercise tips this week. On the off chance that you’re getting a little tired of it too, I promise you’ve found a safe haven here. This week we’re not going to talk about an exercise regimen (although it really is important and I really do endorse such a habit) or about dieting (diets are usually miserable failures) but about chocolate.

“Are you kidding me? I’m tired of chocolate,” you might be protesting.

I get that. We’ve all sort of overloaded on sweets lately. We’re fresh off the holidays. That’s why I want to make clear that I’m targeting the select few of you who—like me—actually aren’t tired of chocolate right now. You could never get tired of chocolate. Like me you’ve stashed away the good stuff you received in stockings and gift bags: boxes of Moonstruck Chocolates, individually wrapped Baci truffles, tins of Ghirardelli hot cocoa, and Ritter Sport bars with whole hazelnuts (like the one I consumed between 2 and 5 pm yesterday). You’re freezer is not lacking in buckeye candy, fudge, or chocolate-covered Oreos either. You’re not looking for a way to get rid of the stuff. Just the opposite—you’re hoarding it. This week I’m writing to you, fellow chocolate addicts. This week is for us. Charbonnel et Walker holds a Royal Warrant from Her Majesty the Queen (and has since 1970) as “Chocolate Manufacturers.”

I first heard of Charbonnel et Walker a couple of summers ago when I read about it in Eugenia Bell’s beautiful little guidebook called The Traditional Shops and Restaurants of London. Bell recommends stopping by the storefront in the busy Royal Arcade of Piccadilly Circus. The historical narrative she tells of the store is wonderful. In 1873 King Edward VII was responsible for uniting the confectionery duo of Madame Charbonnel of Paris and Mrs. Walker of London. During a visit to France, he loved Mme. Charbonnel’s chocolates so much that he persuaded her to relocate herself and her chocolate-making talents to his city, making Charbonnel et Walker one of the very first chocolate producers in the country. Bell recommends trying the drinking chocolate—which I’ve unfortunately never sampled—or a small pink box of champagne truffles. The really special thing about these truffles is that the round boxes they come in are made to look like old-fashioned powder cosmetic boxes. The truffles inside are milky and decadent and melt-in-your-mouth delicious.

The story of how Charbonnel et Walker truffles have stayed on the list of Royal Warrants is also an interesting one. The Queen Mother was apparently a huge fan, and passed her fondness for them onto her daughter. Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon—dubbed the Queen Mother, or sometimes just the Queen Mum, after her husband’s death in 1952—was a well-liked figure in the United Kingdom ever since her marriage to Prince Albert in 1923. Their marriage was somewhat unusual since it broke the longstanding tradition of royals marrying royals, e.g. some distant cousin from another European royal family. Albert married an English girl (much like Prince William did three years ago), and the country was delighted with his choice. In the 50 years between her husband’s death and her own in 2002, the Queen Mother continued to elevate and strengthen the image of the English monarchy. She was known for being easygoing, for her good sense of humor, and for her sweet tooth. She also helped eased her daughter’s transition into becoming a ruling monarch. Elizabeth’s father was dead and her entire life was changing in the early 1950s, but none of this change happened without her mother by her side.

This is an excellent week for me to offer an opinion about Charbonnel et Walker truffles because I’m surrounded by all of my usual favorites. How do they measure up? They’re good...but they’re certainly not at the top of my list. I really like variety in my chocolates, and I think it’s fair to say these lack the flare and innovation I love so much about Moonstruck Chocolates, based out of Portland, Oregon. If you haven’t tried these, you absolutely should. Right away—go order some. And I’m not just saying that because Charbonnel et Walker have ignored all of my polite emails asking more about their company history.

(Still, if I’m completely honest, I’ll point out that the only photo I have of the inside of my own box of milk chocolate truffles shows it looking pretty empty.)

Where to buy: The availability of Charbonnel et Walker truffles in America is a relatively new thing. You can order from Saks Fifth Avenue. From time to time I also see them at Williams-Sonoma.

#19 SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS UK LIMITED

I’m worried we’ve veered off course here at Middle Class Monarchs and that we’ve stayed off course for several weeks. It probably started with the dog show, but in my defense that was a fabulous dog show. Anyway, there was a time when I was using these Royal Warrant products to tell a neat, chronological story about Queen Elizabeth’s life. It wasn’t something I expected to do when I started this project, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well it was working. I really loved feeling like we were going somewhere. This week it’s time to pick up our story where we left off. The year is 1952. Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip have two small children: Charles and Anne. Elizabeth’s father has just died and she’s become the queen of England sooner than she ever expected. Plans for a formal coronation ceremony are in full force. How do we tie Samsung into the story? It could be tricky. Samsung holds a Royal Warrant from Her Majesty the Queen as “Supplier of Televisions and Audio Visual Products.”

The Royal Family has a somewhat uncomfortable relationship with television. For the past 60 years they’ve attempted to keep this medium at arm’s length and to keep their members away from its harsh glare, but anyone who's seen even the recent reports about the Duchess of Cambridge’s pregnancy or any of Prince Harry’s latest missteps knows those attempts have obviously been futile. As plans for her coronation were being made in the summer of 1952, Queen Elizabeth at first refused to have the whole thing televised as it played out in Westminster Abbey. Her husband and the Archbishop of Canterbury were in agreement, and for multiple reasons. The Queen viewed the religious ceremony as something that should largely be kept sacred and private. Portions of the coronation—such as when the Archbishop anointed the upper part of her chest—were personal. It was also thought that all of the lights needed to televise the ceremony would make the Queen uncomfortably hot. The monarchy and the church ultimately viewed television as vulgar and common; it had no place in such sacred ceremonial occasions. The Queen didn’t want her coronation televised, so it wasn’t going to be televised.

But that didn’t go over so well. In the fall of 1952 the decision not to televise was finally shared with the press, and the subsequent outcry against the decision was both strong and stunning. In his biography of the Queen, Robert Lacey shares that “the ban was front-page news in every newspaper, and the editorials condemned it with remarkable unanimity.” The Queen was forced to change her decision. While there was some compromise—BBC cameras never took close-up shots of her face, and they turned away during such private moments as her anointing and her communion—the cameras were present for live coverage of the entire event. (You can view some of the footage—some portions are in black and white, some in color—here). In the war over how close they could get to the monarchy, the public won the battle over the coronation.

Samsung is brand new to the list of Royal Warrant holders, as you can see from this press release added to the company’s website last winter. Since 2006 the company has supplied “more than 100 premium TV and AV products to the Royal residences.” If the Queen at one time thought that television was too vulgar to be part of the life of the monarchy, her decision to award a Royal Warrant to a supplier of televisions suggests her opinion has softened. I’ve read claims that her favorite television shows to watch are those like Coronation Street, the popular British soap opera. Unlike typical American soap operas—where everyone is wealthy and successful—in the UK these shows depict more common people grappling with the pressures of everyday life. However, in a 2001 visit to the set of another popular British soap, EastEnders, the Queen and Prince Philip admitted to knowing very little about the show and to rarely watching it. 

Perhaps the Queen only needs so many televisions because she wants to monitor what is being said about her and her family...but I like to think she’s just as addicted to Downton Abbey as we are.

Where to buy: Samsung televisions are available at most American electronics retailers, although the company’s website promises better deals if you buy online.

#18 LEA & PERRINS

Tis the season for work holiday parties. I found myself having a surprisingly good time at Adam’s this past Saturday night. I even won a door prize: a Bloody Mary kit, which consisted of V8 juice, a bottle of Absolut vodka, and tiny jars of condiments like horseradish, tobasco, and worcestershire sauce. When I opened it I tossed the bottle of generic worcestershire sauce into the back-shelf purgatory of our pantry and replaced it with my own bottle of Lea & Perrins. Get excited: this week at MCM* we’re focusing on this mysterious condiment in its original version. Lea & Perrins holds a Royal Warrant from Her Majesty the Queen as “Purveyors of Worcestershire Sauce.”

Let’s put aside the Bloody Marys for a second to start at square one. How do you pronounce ’worcestershire’? I always make the mistake of trying to pronounce all the syllables, thereby ending up with a mouthful that sounds like WUR-shest-er-shire. So common is this problem that Lea & Perrins’ website addresses it:

“Worcestershire can be properly pronounced a few ways: WUST-ter-shire, WOOS-ter- sheer, or WOOS-ter-sher sauce. But the easiest way to say Worcestershire Sauce is Lea & Perrins®.”

Well-played. For what it’s worth, I’ve decided my favorite way to say it is probably WOOS-ter-sher.

Lea & Perrins—like many of the older Royal Warrant holders I’ve come across in the past few months—has a really inspiring company story. The sauce was invented in the early 1800s in the English county of Worcester by two chemists, John Lea and William Perrins. They were intensely secretive about their ingredients. At first it was a complete disaster; the taste was terrible. The inventors ended up storing all of the sauce they made in large barrels in a cellar and forgetting about it. When they came across it a year and a half later, they decided to try it again and found it was delicious. What they had thought of as a failure was really just a sauce so complex it needed a little more time than normal to marinate. If only all business and creative failures could be solved by something as simple as time, right?

After the 1830s, Lea & Perrins took off, becoming a worldwide phenomenon. For a time it was the only commercially bottled condiment sold in the United States. It’s so versatile that the way it’s eaten today depends on the country in which you’re eating it. In the UK it’s popular on “cheese on toast”; in Hong Kong it’s used in salads; in the US and Canada it’s used to flavor hamburgers.

We’ve been putting Lea & Perrins on everything this week. I whipped up a batch of Chex mix one day, and we added a couple of tablespoons to lemon rosemary meatballs over whole wheat pasta tonight. We even played with the somewhat questionable idea of cheese on toast by baking cheddar cheese and worcestershire sauce on whole wheat buns for turkey burgers.

It’s pretty safe to say we’re on board here. Still, I had trouble getting past my preconceived notions about Bloody Marys, the most famous alcoholic drink to use worcestershire sauce. I admit I’ve never had one. I’ve turned my nose up at them ever since I was a freshman in college and my friends were mixing them up on a dorm room desk using vodka and tomato juice they’d stashed in their mini-fridge next to leftover slices of Totino’s pizza. The whole idea just doesn’t appeal to me, and most of that has to do with the V8 juice. Do people actually drink this stuff? It literally stinks. I mixed up my cocktail the other night with three parts V8 to one part vodka. That looked and smelled so unappetizing it frightened me, so I found myself shaking in a lot of Lea & Perrins. Even with that help, I couldn’t get past the first sip of this drink. I just don’t get it. Who does this savory drink appeal to? Why don’t I just add a few shots of vodka to a pot of chili?

If the allure of a Bloody Mary remains a mystery to this cocktail snob, the contents of Lea & Perrins need not be. According to an article published a few years ago in the Daily Mail, the closely-guarded secret ingredients of Lea & Perrins were made public when a company accountant discovered an old handwritten copy of the recipe. In addition to the vinegar, tamarind, and anchovies listed on the back of each bottle, the sauce apparently also contains cloves, pickles, peppers and lemon. If you’re feeling really ambitious, I suppose it’s now possible to make this at home, barrel it, and then wait 18 months for your sauce to fully mature. Alternatively, you could just buy some.

Where to Buy: Lea & Perrins is widely available in American grocery stores.

*Full disclosure: my friend Beth once referred to this blog by its MCM acronym to me in an email, and I had no idea what she was talking about.

#17 FORTNUM & MASON

Christmas is coming. Although we’ve had a sudden heatwave in Chicago with temperatures reaching up into the low 50s these last two days, that hasn’t stopped the city from exploding in red and green, in twinkling white Christmas lights, and all manner of snowmen and reindeer. I’ve been noticing Christmas decorations more this year than ever before with an almost three year-old as my sidekick. On our walk home from his daycare the other night, Nathan got so excited he stopped and yelled “CHRISTMAS!” as loud as he could on the sidewalk. Certainly Buckingham Palace explodes with joy and panache at the holidays. Queen Elizabeth has a rather long Christmas list—not only does she buy gifts for her husband, her children, and her grandchildren but also for more distant relatives and for her large household staff. In At Home with the Royal Family James and Russell share that the Queen’s go-to store for Christmas shopping, especially for fruitcakes, is Fortnum & Mason. The Piccadilly institution has a Royal Warrant from the Queen as “Grocers & Provision Merchants” and from Prince Charles as “Tea Merchants & Grocers.”

Have you ever been to Fortnum & Mason? It’s such a beautiful store. It’s easily my favorite place we visited in London. The five-floor flagship in Piccadilly Circus is a nice respite from the hustle and bustle of that area. The lower level food hall features a wine bar, fruits and vegetables, and fine cheeses. The ground floor is filled with tins of tea, tubes of biscuits, and drums of chocolates. On the other floors Fortnum does men’s and women’s toiletries, packaged gifts, glassware, and fine dishes like the tea set we bought there.

 

At Christmas they specialize in hampers—large wicker baskets emblazoned with the F&M logo that house tins of biscuits and truffles and bottles of champagne. Maybe the best part about perusing this selection online is reading the descriptions. Consider The First Christmas Hamper (£100):

“Inside this little wicker hamper you will find a fluffy pair of slippers, a pretty rocking-horse decoration for the Christmas tree and Fortnum’s own teddy bear, Master Mason, which is handmade in Shropshire from softest mohair.”

Sold. I’m also intrigued by The Grosvenor Hamper (£100):

“rich butter biscuits, a bizarre of olives, and a drum of rich chocolate truffles are included in the feast, ensuring that every inch of one’s appetite will be nicely sated.”
 
Isn’t that a fantastic use of the word “bizarre”?

But I don’t live in England, you might be thinking. Fortnum’s website assures me that this won’t be a problem. Worldwide shipping is available; to ship to the United States you’ll pay a £30 fee. I’ve been considering this as a gift for Adam for the past couple of weeks, but I just can’t choke down the prices. As I just pointed out to him, instead of spending £130 on one of these hampers (almost $300), you might as well scrape a little more money together and buy a plane ticket to London. Adam nodded enthusiastically. “No kidding.”

“So when are we going?”

Here's a video of a special visit the Queen made to the store not so long ago.

Where to buy: To purchase online, visit Fortnum’s website. You can see the store’s Christmas window display in this movie. If you’re craving a British Christmas shopping experience stateside, consider that Spencer’s Jolly Posh Foods in Chicago is also now decorated for Christmas.