Ireland’s own Willy Wonka
QUESTION Further to the question about the Cleeve’s confectionery brand, how old is the Irish brand Caffreys and what’s in their Snowballs?
OFFICIALLY, the Caffreys brand of chocolate started in 1948, but its founder, Thomas Caffrey, had begun making chocolate in the 1930s.
His favourite sweets, still the top choice of many customers, was Snowballs, made to a secret recipe, using marshmallow coated with chocolate and sprinkled with coconut.
Caffrey was born in Dublin in 1917 and he gained experience in chocolate-making at an early age.
When he was a youngster, he worked during his summers at the chocolate factory in the Isle of Man. This business was run by his brother William.
As soon as he was old enough, Thomas Caffrey started his own chocolate-making business in Dublin, beginning in a small way at Harold’s Cross in Dublin before moving to its present factory on the Greenhills Road in Walkinstown, which extends to 4,645 square metres.
Caffrey invented a number of chocolate treats, including Snowballs, Big Time bars and Macaroon bars.
Once it had moved to Walkinstown, the firm began exporting. In 1953, it supplied confectionery for consumption during the festivities surrounding the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in London, while also in the 1950s, Caffreys secured a contract to supply Woolworths in the UK with chocolate.
Over the years, the company has made and supplied many types of product, all made to the highest standard, using Irish ingredients whenever possible.
The treats include marshmallow and chocolate confectionery, hand-made chocolate, Easter eggs, chocolate novelties, toffees, caramels and fudge, lollipops, and even potato crisps.
Products like Big Time bars and Macaroon bars are still very popular, but the most popular item is still the Snowball, its recipe unchanged since Caffrey invented it.
The Snowball product, totally unchanged over the years, comes in a number of different packet sizes, including the 16-pack family size, which is popular at Christmas. All the products made by Caffreys are available in superterms markets and retailers throughout Ireland, while over the years, its products have also been exported to other countries in Europe, Australia and the US.
The firm also holds regular chocolate workshops, whereby groups can come to the factory, learn how chocolate is made and then watch a demonstration of how Easter eggs, hand-made chocolates and other items are made. The firm also makes personalised chocolate bars, aimed at corporate promotions and events.
Caffreys says that it’s the oldest established Irish family-owned chocolate company trading under its own name, one of the few wholly independent chocolate manufacturers in Ireland.
As for Thomas Caffrey, he worked in the factory he had set up until his 70s; he always said that the secret to his success was the fair treatment of staff.
He was predeceased by his wife Eileen and he died, aged 92, on May 15, 2010, a legend in Irish chocolate-making.
Today, the Caffreys factory is run by the third generation of the Caffrey family and with its product list headed by Snowballs, it is still making a great variety of chocolate products especially created to suit Irish tastes.
John Carmody, by email.
QUESTION Is it true that a ‘safe’ cigarette was suppressed by the big tobacco companies in the Sixties?
THIS was a claim made by the late James Mold, a scientist working for Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company in North Carolina.
In 1992, Mold said that from 1954 he had worked on Project XA, an attempt to produce a safe cigarette.
He claimed his team had identified the main cancer-causing ingredient in tobacco smoke and rendered it harmless, a process involving coating the tobacco with palladium.
The project didn’t determine ways to prevent other diseases linked to cigarette smoking, such as emphysema. According to Mold, Liggett & Myers saw merit in the project, stockpiling ingredients and developing an advertising campaign for a product called ‘Tame’ cigarettes.
Mold said the project was killed off because it proved companies knew how dangerous cigarettes were, thus opening the doors to litigation.
‘I think they were concerned they’d have everybody suing them because they’d be admitting they’d been making a hazardous cigarette,’ he said. Greg Forde, Cheltenham.
QUESTION Is the word cancer (illness) associated with Cancer (star sign)? When was the disease identified?
THE first description of cancer, the disease, can be found in the Edwin Smith Papyrus. This was an ancient Egyptian medical text named after the dealer who bought it in 1862.
The word cancer was coined by Greek physician Hippocrates (460-370 BC), the ancient Greek father of medicine. He used the carcinos and carcinoma to describe non-ulcer-forming and ulcer-forming tumours.
The word comes from karkinos, meaning crab, and is said to have been applied to such tumours because the swollen veins around them resembled the limbs of a crab. Canker was the usual form in English until the 17th century when it was superseded by cancer.
Galen (AD130-200), another Greek physician, used oncos (Greek for swelling) to describe tumours. This lives on in the word oncologist.
The naming of the star sign Cancer was independent. The zodiac is the term used to describe the circle of 12 divisions of celestial longitude centred on the path of the sun.
While proposed by the Babylonians in 1000BC, we use the names given to the star signs by Greek astronomers.
Cancer is again named for the crab. Its use is traced to the story of Herakles. Karkinos was a giant crab dispatched by the goddess Hera to the aid of the Hydra in its battle with Herakles at Lerna.
The hero crushed it with his foot but, as a reward for its service, Hera placed it among the stars as a constellation. Dr Ian Smith, Cambridge.
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