Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2018 | Page 40

Notebook
Hunting down
the egg
They arrive on the supermarket shelves pretty much as soon
as the Christmas tinsel is cleared away – whole shelves full of
gleaming, tempting, foil-wrapped chocolate eggs, guaranteed to
blow any New Year resolutions out of the water.
So what is it with chocolate and Easter? How did we come to
celebrate a religious festival by bingeing on cocoa products?
Well, the now-defunct
confectionery company JS
Fry of Bristol (remember their
iconic Fry’s Chocolate Cream?)
was responsible for making
the first chocolate egg in the
UK, way back in 1873, with
Cadbury’s launching their
version two years later.
Decorated by hand to suit
Victorian tastes, these eggs
were made from dark chocolate
and would have been rather
grainy and bitter by today’s
standards, according to
Cadbury’s. They would also
have been a very expensive
and luxury gift – not the pocket
money mass market products
we see today.
It was in 1905 that
Cadbury’s launched its Dairy
Milk chocolate bar, and the
subsequent Easter egg made
with this new-style milk
chocolate proved a big hit
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with the confectionery-loving
public.
Better transportation, a
lowering of trade tariffs on
cocoa, and developments in
production allowed the masses
to enjoy Easter eggs – although
at that time, adults rather than
children were still the target
market.
Fast-forward to 2017, and
approximately 80 million
chocolate Easter eggs were
sold in the UK, with the
average child consuming eight
chocolate eggs, according to
research. Britain’s chocolate
egg and Easter confectionery
sales will total a belt-busting
£200 million.
Prior to the hi-jacking of
Easter by the chocolate industry,
the festival was celebrated
with much simpler customs,
although eggs still featured
strongly as a symbol of re-birth.