All a finger lickin’ lie?
QUESTION Is there any evidence that the KFC recipe was appropriated from Louisiana slaves?
THE association of Colonel Sanders’s ‘Kentucky Colonel’ style of dress; goatee, white suit and string tie, with southern plantations and therefore slavery, has led to a number of urban legends.
These include the story that Sanders stole his recipe from the descendents of former slaves (slavery was abolished long before Sanders was born), and the idea that he willed 10% of his company’s profits to the Ku Klux Klan. Both have been firmly debunked.
Harland David Sanders (18901980) was born in Henryville, Illinois. It wasn’t until 1924 that he moved to Kentucky to work for the Michelin Tyre company.
He briefly served in the army (1906-7) but only as a truck driver. It wasn’t until 1950 that he was commissioned as a Kentucky Colonel, an honorary rank, by Governor Lawrence Wetherby.
In 1930, Sanders took up a Shell garage franchise in North Corbin, Kentucky. He opened a diner which became so well known for its fried chicken that Sanders decided to replace the pumps with a motel-restaurant.
Sanders worked hard at perfecting his secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices. He found that conventional frying dried out the meat, and in 1939 produced his signature method to create chicken that was crispy on the outside and moist on the inside by using a pressure cooker. By 1940 Sanders had finalised what came to be known as his Original Recipe.
When Sanders began franchising the chicken as Kentucky Fried Chicken in the mid-Fifties, the company shipped the spices already mixed to restaurants to preserve the recipe’s secrecy. Today, the secret formula is in a safe in KFC’s Louisville headquarters, along with 11 vials containing the herbs and spices.
In 1964, there was a $2million buyout of Sanders’s US operations by a group of investors. He turned his entire holdings in the company’s Canadian franchises over to charity in 1965. Mike Pincher, Salisbury, Wilts.
QUESTION Where does the phrase ‘resting on your laurels’ come from?
TO ‘rest on your laurels’ means to become complacent because you’re too busy basking in the memories of former glories. The laurel is an ancient symbol of success. Victors or ‘laureates’ in the Ancient Greek Phythian Games, a 6th century BC forerunner of the Olympic Games held in honour of the sun God Apollo, were given wreaths made from laurel leaves.
In Greek mythology Apollo declared the laurel plant sacred after his true love – the nymph Daphne – was turned into one. Apollo was depicted wearing a crown of laurel; a symbol featured on Greek coins. The Romans adopted the idea and began presenting laurel wreaths to victorious military commanders. Julius Caesar is rarely pictured without one in the Asterix books.
The laurel as a symbol of triumph was not forgotten. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale, circa 1385: ‘With laurer corouned as a conquerour (With laurel crowned as conqueror) And there he lyueth in ioye and in honour (There he lived in joy and honour).’
In the Victorian era the phrase began to be used in a disapproving way. The review magazine The Literary Chronicle, 1825, which praises the writings of Anglo-Irish author Maria Edgeworth: ‘We do not affect to wish she should repose on her laurels and rest satisfied; on the contrary, we believe that genius is inexhaustible.’
A ‘laureate’ remains an esteemed title, with recipients of the Nobel Prize being referred to as Nobel Laureates. Mr T L Myers, by email.
QUESTION Was there a brief fashion, during the Victorian era, for dressing boys as girls, until they were around five years of age?
THE dressing of boys as girls goes way back before the Victorians.
Historically, in the 16th century, babies were wrapped in swaddling. The baby was dressed in a shirt, and then bandages were wound entirely the length of the infant’s body. A small cap called a biggin was put on their head.
From time to time during the day the swaddling was removed to enable washing, feeding and movement of limbs. After four to six months, the swaddling was removed so the child could be ‘short-coated’ in a waisted ‘frock’ which just covered the feet. False sleeves were often attached at the armholes and were used as leading-strings to help with walking.
Boys and girls often wore aprons over these frocks until around six or seven years old. When a boy reached six or seven, the frock was discarded and he would be ‘breeched’, meaning he would be dressed in clothes of an adult male. This was an important occasion for the boy and his family in the 16th and 17th centuries.
In the 18th century, at about the age of four, boys discarded their long frocks and aprons for a miniversion of male adult clothes; from the age of two, girls wore a version of their mother’s outfits.
In the 1780s, boys wore the ‘skeleton suit’, so named because of its close fit to the body. It consisted of high-waisted trousers fastened on to the bottom of a short jacket by buttons. It was a practical out- fit and was worn by all classes until it went out of fashion in the 1840s. The skeleton suit would be worn until the age of 11 when, thereafter, the boy wore a tailcoat, breeches and waistcoat.
In the 19th century, boys were ‘breeched’ at a much earlier age then previously. The transition to boyhood was made at the age of two, where skirts were substituted with a tunic-like dress with matching trousers. This outfit was popular for boys and girls until the end of the 19th century. However, by six or seven, the tunic and trousers would be dropped for a jacket and knickerbockers, and this, eventually, for a short jacket and long trousers.
Through the Victorian era, children’s clothing followed adult fashion, but very young boys and girls were both put into frilled dresses.
World War I had a dramatic effect on children’s clothing as formal and restrictive clothes were replaced by more practical garments, much to the delight, no doubt, of the children of the time. Anthea Hall, by email.
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