Who was first to fry a Mars?
SCOTLAND is famous for many things — tartan, whisky, haggis — but a modern invention has brought us fame and shame in equal measure: the culinary legend that is the deep-fried Mars bar.
Its fame has spread far and wide. Jay Leno, former host of NBC’s Tonight Show in the U.S., when asked what he thought about Scottish cuisine, said: ‘I don’t think there’s any such thing . . . when you buy a Mars bar . . . they dump them in hot oil.’
The story of this 1,200- calorie snack began in 1992 when friends John Davie and Brian McDonald entered The Haven fish bar in Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire.
John, who now lives in Melbourne, Australia, dared Brian to eat the most unhealthy thing he could think of: ‘I remember asking what could be deep-fried. I was told “You’re in a fish and chip shop — you can deep-fry anything.” I decided on a Mars bar. The rest is history.’
The fryer was a lady by the name of Evelyn Balgowan. Today, The Haven has been renamed the Carron Fish Bar and is owned by Lorraine Watson. It sells 150 deep-fried Mars bars a week, at £1.50 each.
A banner is proudly displayed on the side of the building, claiming its staff invented the snack. In 2015, Aberdeenshire council tried to remove it ‘for the good of the wider community’, but Watson refused, arguing it attracts tourists to the town.
Gareth McNairny, Aviemore, Highlands.
Was there once a fad for hiring hermits to show off to your friends?
IN MEDIEVAL England, there were two distinct types of hermit. Not as numerous as monks or nuns, they were nevertheless to be found in most parts of the country.
One type of hermit was an anchorite. After undergoing an elaborate religious ceremony, they would be sealed in a small chamber built against the outside wall of a parish church.
A small window to the outside allowed food and drink to be passed in while another opening (called a squint) looked into the body of the church and allowed the anchorite to follow the services and receive the Eucharist.
More women than men chose this lifestyle, spending much of their time in contemplation and prayer. A formal rule, De Institutione
Inclusarum, was written for such hermits in the early 1160s. The Royal Exchequer supported them financially: up to 11 a year received a silver penny or halfpenny per day. By this public act of charity, the king believed he was ensuring his own place in heaven.
The other type of hermits were called solitaries because they lived apart from the rest of society in remote, isolated places called hermitages.
Usually men, they would be adopted by a local feudal landholder, who would be happy to accommodate them because not only would they gain religious blessings, but practical advantages, too.
Land provided for a hermitage would be worthless wilderness, overgrown and thick with brambles, providing no financial income for the nobleman.
The landholder might provide the hermit with a meagre ration of bread and ale, but as well as spending time in prayer, the recluse would clear the land and improve it by growing vegetables and keeping livestock.
When the hermit died, the land would revert to the landholder and as it had been cultivated, it would have financial value. Hermits were viewed as close to God: living saints who sometimes provided miraculous cures or foretold future events. There was prestige in having a hermit living on your land as providing such charity was seen as a means of ensuring a passport into heaven for yourself. David Rayner, Canterbury, Kent.
Were leaves on the line a problem during the age of steam?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, it is true that early steam locomotives used gravity fed- dry sand to improve the engine’s wheels’ grip on the rail, but the problem of damp sand blocking the pipe was realised at a very early stage.
Engine depots used to have a sand drier to avoid the problem. Later wet sanders were introduced (to eliminate the need to dry the sand first): a jet of steam was used to move the sand down to the wheel/rail area.
However, thanks to the robustness of the designs of our Victorian forebears, large numbers of elderly steam locos survived into the Fifties with the early sanding arrangements still on them.
Engines built between the wars normally had steam or air-forced sanders and diesel engines had them fitted, too.
Electric locos also had them fitted, but latterly electric multiple units (EMUs) — where the traction motors are spread out along the train — were not thought to need sanders.
But then the braking changed from tread to disc, which stopped the crushed leaf slime being cleaned off the wheels by old-style brake blocks.
One-shot air-operated sealed cartridges were introduced, but they proved an inadequate quick fix. So conventional sanders are being introduced on EMUs.
The major problem with using sand — apart from the need to provide and replenish it — is that excessive use can cause sand to build up and jam poweroperated points.
But it remains the most effective and cheap solution to improving the grip of a steel wheel on a steel rail.
C. E. Sayers-Leavy, Retired rail industry engineer,
Broadstairs, Kent.
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