Chocolate Kisses¶
206 words on Food
When shopping the other day I walked past a large pack of ‘chocolate kisses’ – a pack of 5 × 5, 5 each of five varieties. It looked really nice, so I just had to buy it. And once it was in our kitchen it didn’t last long.
I’m not sure the expression ‘chocolate kiss’ actually exists in English. The problem with these sweets is that until about 15 to 20 years ago they were commonly called ‘Negerküsse’, which would translate as negro kisses. And only then people figured that even with them perfectly delicious sweets, this may be a name that’s racist rather than charming (particularly as ‘Neger’ in German is a rather condescending word). So the sweets started going by their current, more neutral, name.
It’s interesting to read the German Wikipedia entry on the topic which traces their origin to France and that of the name to Austria while the English Wikipedia entry traces their origin and name to Denmark and lists them under the name ‘Krembo’ which they seem to have in Israel. A bit more consistency would have been helpful. (Being able to read/understand Hebrew could also be helpful in this context as the entry there seems to be quite long…)
