Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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The English National Cryogenic Chocolate Repository

Chilly chocolate.
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The recent takeover of Cadbury by Kraft is cause for concern - will we see this much-loved English chocolate gradually diluted into sugary hersheyness? Is there an insidious plan to gradually replace cocoa with a mixture of vegetable fat, sugar and brownth? Has this, in fact, already begun? Is Cadbury's chocolate less chocolatey than it was when you were a child?

Once such thoughts take hold, they are very difficult to eradicate. Surely, Snickers tastes less chocolatey and less peanutty than it did when it was called Marathon, and distinctly lacking in that tiny tang of salt? And doesn't Cadbury's Fruit and Nut seem a little sweeter and blander than you remember from your childhood?

The problem is that there is no absolute reference point for chocolate, making it impossible to tell if a perceived change is real, the product of a faulty chocolate-tinted memory, or simply the result of gradually degenerating taste-buds. Were those Bournville bars of yesteryear really such a jolt of bittersweet chocolatiness? If only there were some way to re-live those latterday chocolate experiences.

So.

Chocolate flavour nostalgia uncertainties begone!!!! (At least in a few decades.) MaxCo is proud to be sponsoring The National English Cryogenic Chocolate Repository.

Located in secret location which is secret, TENCCR is housed in a massive underground subterranean cave beneath the surface, protected from nuclear attack, global warming and mice by over 723ft of granite.

A constant influx of liquid nitrogen maintains the oxygen-free environment at -196°C throughout the serried* ranks of shelves, which are even now being stocked with England's favourite brands of chocolate. So far, seventeen thousand examples of each of 98 popular confectionaries have been stored. Within the next four years, we expect to have archives of all English chocolate products, and will then be able to expand the archive gradually to keep pace with new products.

TENCCR's robotic retrieval system allows any chosen item of confectionary to be retrieved and gradually re-equilibrated to room temperature. Our panel of experts and of volunteer tasters may then compare this time-capsule of chocolatey goodness to its current equivalent, and blow the whistlington whistle on any slippage of standards over the years.

Please note: TENCCR is not affiliated in any way with the I'm Sure Bacon Used To Taste More Bacony League.

*serrying is expected to be complete by July 2010.

MaxwellBuchanan, May 02 2010

TFL http://www.tfl.gov....odalpages/2625.aspx
A dark place you don't want to go. [8th of 7, May 03 2010]

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       Hmmm. (in both the cogitating way and salivating way)   

       I see where you're coming from- Cadbury's Dairy Milk may be in jeopardy of Hershiness <shudder>. On the other hand, it's not like DM is gourmet cocoa solid stuff - even though I love it.   

       The Hershey threat is too important to ignore though. A pain au chocolate from me (+).
Jinbish, May 02 2010
  

       //The problem is that there is no absolute reference point for chocolate,// Ooh yes there is, % cocoa anyone?
pocmloc, May 03 2010
  

       I am at war with Kraft over this. I call them KKKraft, and I now call Cadburys Kadburys. I have redesigned their logos accordingly. Kraft are a vile company, who deserve to be punctured in any way possible.   

       If anyone wants copies of the logos I have devised over this, I will put them up on Picasa for free download.
xenzag, May 03 2010
  

       There seems to be a fundamental flaw in this proposal. If we understand correctly, it involves posessing chocolate, but not actually eating it.   

       This is obviously impossible.   

       // Probably using railway technology. //   

       We suggest you approach TFL. They operate on a totally different timeline to the rest of this Universe. We have probable cause to suspect that the Circle Line is in fact a completely closed Space-Time toroid, which would be consistent with the fact that many Dr Who episodes involve Something Nasty Lurking In The Tube Tunnels.
8th of 7, May 03 2010
  

       Well, yes, storing the chocolate is all well and good but this idea really only addresses one half of the problem: the availability of historical confectionary. The other issue is more vexing. Say, for saying's sake, that the theory of evolution is correct. That being the case, it is reasonable to assume that human beings will be subject to its vagaries and, as almost all human beings have mouths of some variety or another, it is reasonable to assume that said mouths will be so affected. Who is to say that in plenty many (or, indeed, fewer) years the human mouth will not resemble less the human maw of yore but instead some, I dunno, baleenous cavity into which is scooped or poured (depending on social status) great nacreous dollops of calcified bat-ghee? Could such a mouth not find glass-and-a-half CDM to be more vile than a welly full of puke would be to us with our underdeveloped present-day gobs? Yes, what is needed is a sister warehouse were the mouths of forward-thinking early-gravers can, once sliced from the relevant cadaver, be stored, also frozen, pressed between lucite plates, until such time as science requires that ancient mouths, silent and starved for so long, be grafted onto the jawbone of a future human, to answer the age old question.
calum, May 03 2010
  

       // to answer the age old question //   

       Would that be the question of the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow ?
8th of 7, May 03 2010
  

       //glass-and-a-half CDM to be more vile than a welly full of puke// [calum], do you live in an alternative universe where that stuff is considered pleasant?   

       //easily-derived divisions of the absolute size of the universe// Sorry [Ian], the Universe is generally supposed to be expanding, so your size reference would also grow.
pocmloc, May 03 2010
  

       //glass-and-a-half CDM to be more vile//   

       Well, have you ever eaten a Hershey bar? Seriously?
MaxwellBuchanan, May 03 2010
  

       // Hershey bar //   

       Another Nutri-Matic product, we presume.
8th of 7, May 03 2010
  

       A [+] for "brownth" -- and I regret have not another one to give the idea.
awesomest, May 03 2010
  

       Someone once gave me a thing called a Hershey Kiss. I tried a tiny part of it, then used what was left to demonstrate how far I could throw something (a seldom used skill I somehow have always possessed)
xenzag, May 04 2010
  

       The real problem is if they change the CDM recipe to use a glass and a half of rotten sour milk like they do in hersheys. And yes, the american who offered me a taste of his hersheys bar did assure me that it always tasted like that.
prufrax, May 04 2010
  

       If you want to do this you'd better buy up the chocolate quick. My brother is an engineer and he's going to Cadburys Bournville factory tomorrow. I think he's going to help turn it over to processed cheese manufacture.
Loris, May 04 2010
  

       I feel a need to point out that Kraft and Hershey are completely un-related, and that, at present, the only chocolate/confectionary companies owned by Kraft are European (except Bakers which is good quality even though it's US domestic).
MechE, May 04 2010
  

       //who lent Kraft the money...RBS. And who owns RBS, we do.//

Mr morrison_rm astutely observes that the takeover is, in fact, a fine, old English tradition. Selling off our overpriced businesses to greedy foreigners for inflated amounts of money and then lending them the money to do it and charging them interest for the privilege, thus inflating the price even further, is what has made this country great.

Well, not really actually. Exploiting helpless foreigners who had never heard of gunpowder is what actually made this country great. But selling off our businessess based on the model above is what has made our decline from the World's greatest military, economic, literary, intellectual, moral and sporting power a bearably slow one that we can all gradually adapt to rather than a catastrophic, overnight collapse of Soviet Union proportions.

Actually I don't believe that either. I like Fruit & Nut quite a lot though, so stockpiling it in some secret underground bunker for his own personal consumption, which is what I rather suspect Maxwell is really up to here, is right out! I'd rather scoff as much as I can now until I feel sick and then spend my retirement years regaling bored teenagers with endlessly repeated tales about how much better chocolate was when I were a lad. Mmmm, yes! I think I'd much rather do that thanks.
DrBob, May 04 2010
  

       // stockpiling it in some secret underground bunker for his own personal consumption//   

       Actually, no. My secret agenda is to store _myself_ in a quiet corner of the TENCCR, so that I can be revived in more propitious and chocolatey times.
MaxwellBuchanan, May 04 2010
  
      
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