Before you tuck into your chocolate eggs today I thought you might like to hear a little bit about how they came being. In the UK Fry’s of Bristol are credited with inventing the first moulded chocolate bar in 1847 and hollow chocolate eggs a couple of decades later. I had a chat recently with chocolate historian and archivist Alex Hutchinson about Fry’s which led to a discussion about the unsung beauty of French chocolate. So were Fry’s as creative as we think or should we be looking further afield for the chocolate innovators?

You’ll be able to hear the full interview with Alex soon where we discuss rise and fall of the Fry’s chocolate company. You can also find two recipes for Easter Biscuits on this Substack including a chocolatey version.

Useful Links

Alex the Archivist

Penny Thorpe Books:

* The Quality Street Girls

* The Mothers of Quality Street

* The Quality Street Wedding

* A Quality Street Christmas

Suggested Reading

You can discover more about the history of chocolate in my book, The Philosophy of Chocolate, published by the British Library

You can read more about the origins of Easter eggs in this article I wrote for English Heritage a few years back.

Rachel over at Folklore, Food & Fairytales has also written a rather good piece on Easter Food Traditions on Substack.

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