Request for info: black currant sweets

[redbird]

There's a kind of candy cattitude would like, which we haven't been able to find in a while and are starting to suspect are no longer manufactured. But maybe they're still out there and just lost their US distributor.

The search object: black currant–flavored boiled sweets [1], round, about a centimeter in diameter, and came in little tins. If that sounds familiar, brand names or sources of supply, especially online, would be most welcome. I think they were British, but they might be from somewhere else in Europe. (If you know of something that sounds right but happens to be made in Peru or Tanzania, that's fine too. Maybe I should go look for chicha morada. Maybe I should give up and cook dinner, something light but nourishing, Chinese egg flower soup perhaps.)

[1] Hard candy, if you prefer. You can work centimeters out for yourself.

ETA: A company called La Vie de la Vosgienne makes the right sort of candies, but the only ones I've been able to find lately are raspberry (or, as the package kindly states, framboises).

Comments

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

I think they sell these at a place right across from my office. I'll try and check tomorrow and let you know what I find out.

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

You know, I always read about "boiled sweets" in British children's books and imagined that they must be something wonderfully exotic and delicious... and you tell me they're just hard candy? Childhood just ended for me.

Re:

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Heh. I had exactly the same experience when I found out the truth about sugarplums. (http://www.foodreference.com/html/fsugarplums.html) It's a cruel world ...

Re:

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I was just going to post the exact same thing. Honest.

They are called "travel sweets"

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

And here are links to a couple of companies that import them into the US

http://www.britishdelights.com/simpkin.htm
http://www.dutchmarket.com/specialsmithkendon.html

And for other British foods (including clotted cream fudge, yorkshire tea etc.) try http://www.bluemoontea.com/catalog.htm

Re: They are called "travel sweets"

[redbird]

fivemack found me some of those, in Montreal; I'm looking for something smaller.

Re: They are called "travel sweets"

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

but you said about a centimetre, that's the size of these travel sweets ... how much smaller do you want?

Re: They are called "travel sweets"

[redbird]

Maybe a half centimeter, then. I know that the ones you pointed to are too big, because I tried them already.

Re: They are called "travel sweets"

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

From your description, I also thought of travel sweets.

If they were covered in a sweet white powder, then they were proberbly travel sweets.

Re: They are called "travel sweets"

[akicif.livejournal.com]

If they're the ones I'm thinking of - which also come in mint, lemon and coffee flavours (the coffee ones looking like little beans, the lemon ones like tiny lemons) - then they're made in France, come in tins a little smaller than an old pipe tobacco tin (thinks: I don't know if you have those across the pond - how about slightly under 8cm across, with a convex top and a slightly concave bottom?), and not quite as common here as they used to be, either.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

The Fairway out here on LI carries a fair number of British imports, so you might try the upper west side Fairway.

And, of course, since I'm going back to the UK in a month or so, I'll be more than happy to bring some back -- blackcurrant is quite a common flavour there. (Will you be at Lunacon?)

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Ones like the ones Tom found are manufactured in Britain by Smith and Kendall.

Smaller ones are available in Britain loose in big jars in sweetshops usually mixed with raspberry ones under the name of "blackcurrant and raspberry sweets" as in "Can I have 2 ounces of blackcurrant and respberry sweets or useful metric equivalent".

I could get some in the summer.