Today's New York Times includes an article in the Business section wherein the intrepid reporter heads to Cadbury's Green & Black division to play in the kitchen. Harry Hurt III (my favorite byline since the iambic lilt of Polk Laffoon IV) gets to mix up his own chocolate recipe, basically caramelized peanuts in milk chocolate.
The article gets jiggy with prose and refers to a "well-tempered chocolatier" (hey, piano/music entendre!), bespoke chocolate (in the teaser on the front page, hey, fashion and fragrance entendre!), and a "metal palate knife" (hey, an epicurial spelling spoonerism!). My goodness, has HHIII read my diary? He seems to know my very soul....
On the surface the Times article seems to be a rather thin vanity piece. You don't learn much about chocolatiering you can't pick up from a decent cookbook, and Harry doesn't dabble very far into the conjuring part of cooking. But it reminded me of conversations about bespoke perfume that burbled across the perfume blogs this year, and the thread of chocoholism, erm, chocomania, erm, discerning chocolate mavenry that seems to connect many perfume fans. I am not innocent of either.
So I find myself on a Saturday morning, cup of tea in hand, letting my thoughts meander over chocolate, creating chocolate, perfume, creating perfume, personal creations offered to the masses, the (select) masses being offered a personal creation, and whatnot. Perhaps the fact that the fog outside is so thick it seems like you could gather handfuls and spin it into yarn is affecting my brain's clock speed. Then again, I've never had trouble creating a thick cloud all on my own when thinking...
Be sure to tune in on Monday, when hopefully the fog clears, and I join other bloggers in considering the perfume year in a 2008 retrospective. I'll try to tell tales without spinning yarns. :)
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For conversations this year about bespoke perfume, see:
The Savvy Thinker discussing Neil Morris, Jan 16
Perfume Smelling Things, Feb 25
The Scented Salamander, April 22
Perfume Shrine, November 21
Finding bespoke perfume in Paris:
Gridskipper, March 19
and, from 2007, Now Smell This on Memoire Liquide (Sept 8)
