Food that sounds great in books but is disappointing in real life

[BlowDryRat]

As a child I was very into reading the Famous Five and begged my mum to buy me ginger beer. It was a disappointing experience. It tasted horrible!

Ditto cakes made with chestnut flour (The Wolves of Willoughby Chase) and the butterbeer at the Harry Potter studio tour.

@Wildswim

Food in books that sounds kind of OK and I'd like to try -

Graham crackers (American books)
Kippers (what people used to have for breakfast in England)

Food in books that sounds disgusting -

Tripe (in Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier - he says it is disgusting)
Calf's jelly and beef tea (what Victorians seemed to eat and drink when then were ill).

Graham crackers are just disappointing digestives.

Wasnt there toffee or fudge in The Magic Faraway Tree ?

I love crumpets toasted with proper butter and cheese

Iced tea in the States is fantastic, un sweetened, it is so refreshing and available everywhere.

I’d love to try mint juleps....it’s in all sorts of books about the South. I can’t even imagine what it would be like.

The vinegary fruit drink is a shrub. Supposed to be lovely when homemade.

My brothers used to make it, it would explode.

I don't mind butterbeer (it's very similar to American Cream Soda which I liked as a child) but didn't like the Pumpkin Juice. 18y loves Butterbeer abd has even attempted making her own versions.

From American tv and books Hershey's and Root Beer. Both are horrid with dreadful after taste.

Oh and pancakes with bacon and maple syrup mentioned in various books. Bleah.

God I love pancakes with bacon and maple syrup

@cateycloggs

Actually , my mistake, it would have been cow heel jelly as it was glutinous. And served cold I believe. Another thing Americans seemed to write about a lot is or was salads set in jello, did anyone eat that?

Calf's foot jelly. I think it's mentioned in Little Women and other 19th century books. It's what people ate when they were ill, along with beef tea.

@pabloescobarselasticband

Twinkies....disgustingly sweet and fake tasting.

From Buffy; "Xander snacks: Ampata is introduced to the Twinkie for the first time by Xander. This popular US snack food "contains no ingredients that a human can pronounce" according to him. This is entirely untrue as a major ingredient of Twinkies is sugar. For the full list of ingredients, see the BBC's H2G2 site's Twinkies entry."

Remember all the fuss in What Katy Did Next about getting critically ill little Amy March the right kind of beef tea, which, despite the fact that she has Roman fever, her doctor says is ‘her only medicine’? The hotel chefs keep sending up a mixture of grease and hot water and stealing the meat, even bribed, so Katy herself chops up the meat, seals it in bottles and sends it down to be boiled daily, until some handy American starts sending her some daily.

I think I thought it was some kind of delicious magic, rather than beef broth.

Weirdly, as I am vegetarian now, it was mostly the meaty things in children’s books that sounded so appealing, like potted meat sandwiches in the Famous Five — but I realised in adulthood that potted meat was essentially dog food.

@NaughtyNell

Wasnt there toffee or fudge in The Magic Faraway Tree ?

"Pop toffees" or similar. They grew n your mouth, then exploded. I’ll admit to sometimes dipping a slice of bread into the roasting tin to mopping up the juices when I’ve roasted a chicken My Mum did that when she open-roasted a beef joint. The "dip" was divine. She was a Geordie, and you used to be able to buy dips from the shops up North.

Shrubs are lovely but you don’t drink them alone. It’s a cocktail ingredient you’d use a bit like bitters

@Slacktide

Remember all the fuss in What Katy Did Next about getting critically ill little Amy March the right kind of beef tea, which, despite the fact that she has Roman fever, her doctor says is ‘her only medicine’? The hotel chefs keep sending up a mixture of grease and hot water and stealing the meat, even bribed, so Katy herself chops up the meat, seals it in bottles and sends it down to be boiled daily, until some handy American starts sending her some daily.

I think I thought it was some kind of delicious magic, rather than beef broth.

Weirdly, as I am vegetarian now, it was mostly the meaty things in children’s books that sounded so appealing, like potted meat sandwiches in the Famous Five — but I realised in adulthood that potted meat was essentially dog food.

Yes! It sounds much more appetising than basically watery stewed beef.

In the same book, I always thought the chicken with cream that they had in the next place they stayed sounded nice. I didn't get Amy's obsession with figs, though. Figs are OK but wouldn't eating that many give you terrible diarrhoea?

(She was Amy Ashe, incidentally - you're probably thinking of Little Women's Amy with 'March').

Yes, I reread What Katy Did Next recently and wondered what was so medicinal about ‘beef tea’! I was visualising some sort of Bovril. Poor Amy Ashe, being ill and forced to drink that!

I was quite disappointed by Panforte si Siena when I finally tried it. Katy rhapsodises about it. On my first trip to Italy I bought some (quite expensive for a small slice) panforte and was disappointed. Not as good as a Cadbury’s Picnic.

Still on Katy, does anyone remember Katy's enormous batches of wedding cake in 'Clover'? That always sounded nice, though in real life I find wedding cake very take-it-or-leave it.

@LApprentiSorcier, duh, Amy Ashe. Yes, some of the lushly described Italian and French food sounds delicious, but I’m underwhelmed by pan forte di Siena as an adult, and have never been given nightmares by it! Agree with you about the figs, but I hate the texture of figs anyway.

(And, off-topic, but Katy and Mrs Ashe’s obsession with flowers all over the Mediterranean, and the sheer volumes they buy daily — they buy ‘half a bushel’ one day ! — must have made all their rooms look like a funeral parlour...)

X-post, @Iamthewombat! I expected nightmares from pan forte, and nary a one.

What Katy Did Next is a fascinatingly odd book, anyway. Surely a major European capital like Rome can’t really have been so ‘backward’ in the 1880s as Katy finds, compared to a small town in Ohio which is all she knows? All that stuff about not being able to get modern feeding cups, beef tea or ice that hasn’t been scraped off the street seems a bit mad.

And I was completely fascinated by the food in What Katy Did as a child — buttered biscuits with cold lamb (which I imagined to be digestives), molasses pies, sassafras tea, puddings with pudding sauce.

What Katy Did Next is a fascinatingly odd book, anyway. Surely a major European capital like Rome can’t really have been so ‘backward’ in the 1880s as Katy finds, compared to a small town in Ohio which is all she knows? All that stuff about not being able to get modern feeding cups, beef tea or ice that hasn’t been scraped off the street seems a bit mad.

Yes - and being advised to give up any idea of visiting Scotland due to the bad weather! It's October when they're in London (I think) - it can't have been that bad in Scotland. Plus, in 'School' Katy talks of temperatures reaching -20 in Hillsover. Katy seems to do nothing but moan about the weather in England and Paris.

Is t root beer what we used to call dandelion and burdock?

No. Nothing like it. Root beer tastes very medicinal.

Root beer tastes very medicinal.

Yes, like mouthwash at the dentist!

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Turning the OP around, as a child I read all the Narnia books and was fascinated by the fruit that was like toffee. As an adult, the first time I had fresh dates, I became convinced that was what C. S. Lewish was thinking of. I may be wrong, because looking it up I see that he describes the fruit as juicy. But in every other respect a date is a toffee in fruit form, and was just as delicious as I'd always hoped.

YES! I've always called dates 'the treacle toffees of the fruit world'! I like the dried kind, but the semi-dried ones from the fruit and veg aisle are gorgeous.

Grits

I'd read about them in various American books but had no idea what they were - people seemed to like them in the books though.

Ex bf and I did a US road trip. Ordered grits in a diner early on the trip.
OMG they are vile. Do not waste your money. Fortunately we had them as a side dish & didn't contaminate anything else (good) ordered.
The waitress was amazed we hadnt eaten them!

People also go on about Australian Tim Tams, which are just rather inferior Penguins in my view.