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England (Counties as in 1851-1901) => England => Lancashire => Topic started by: Elaine168 on Friday 26 October 07 11:34 BST (UK)
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Hello Everyone
Just had a querie from an exile in Reading. Does anyone know why the brightly coloured sugar grystals we used to buy measured out in ounces in the sweet shop in the 50s and 60s in Salford, was called Kaylie (no idea how it's spelt) or why we called liquorice 'spanish'
Any answers?
Elaine
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No idea about the sugar, altho I've heard it called 'Coffee Sugar'...
Liquorice - here ...
http://www.licorice.org/The_Plant/body_the_plant.htm
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I have pondered this very thing also, in a fairly recent posting about Darwen area
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,256733.msg1442106.html#msg1442106
It was somewhat off topic so here is the relevant extract from that posting:
A few weeks ago I was trying to avoid doing some real work (surely not, everyone cries), so I looked up the word 'kali', meaning to me, the stuff you got from the sweetshop that was like sherbet but a lot sharper taste. The dictionary said kali, another name for saltwort or glasswort, a spiky plant used in the glass making process.
So now I'm left wondering; how do you make both glass and a sweet from a spiky plant, is 'kali' a Northern word only, can you still get kali the sweet, and does it relate in any way to the modern expression 'I was absolutely kali-ed' . Apart from the dictionary definition, I have never seen this word written down
So I think maybe the sweet is named after either a plant or from a powdery substance used in glassmaking.
:) :) Barbara
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Elaine - I think this is what we called sherbert dips (a triangular paper bag) in my area (a bit east of yours) in the 1960s. Liquorice was just called that - perhaps we were an uncreative lot.
We also had "jubblies" (a corruption of jubilee perhaps?) a tetrahedron pack of similar material used for fruit juice cartons, that was semi-frozen like a soft ice lolly - you tore a corner off & sucked
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No mshrmh, Kaylie was different from sherbert, and sherbert dips. We had sherbert as well. Whilst sherbert was soft and flourey like icing sugar, kaylie was much harder like largsih sugar crystals dyed vibrant colours. Sometimes it was rainbow Kaylie that had several colours in layers in the sweet jar.
We had jublees too. Sometimes a liquid 'orange' drink, sometimes frozen so hard you nearly broke your teeth trying to gnaw it. They were still around in the 90s, my son got hit in the forehead with a discarded one and ended up in A and E!
Hmmn Barbara so is that how you spell it?
Elaine
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Hmmn Barbara so is that how you spell it?
I don't know for sure, like you I only bought this scooped into a bag by the corner shop lady.. Let's call it kaylie as its your post! it wasn't just Salford that had kaylie and Spanish though, was the same the other side of the Irwell in Longsight. Kaylie always made me pull a face like when you taste pure lemon juice; sherbet dips were sweeter than that.
Looking for a smiley that's just had some kaylie but there isn't one! :o!
Barbara
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Hi Barbara
I've goolgled it now and it seems to be spelt kali, AND you can still buy it! Sometimes seems to be called sugar crystals and some times sherbert ( but I think it's very different from sherbert, yes it made your eyes cross. You could lick your finger and dip it in the bag. It got very messy, but lasted quite a while. There is a discussion of old fashioned sweets at
www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2
BUT we called them all toffees not sweets and bought them at the toffee shop not a sweet shop!
Glad you had them too!
Elaine
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Did you find the Liquorice link illuminating ?
:)
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Yes thanks Newf. Spanish seems to be short for Spanish Liquorice, the main supplier of licquorice being Spain.
Cheers
Elaine
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As children in the 50s we bought paper bags of Kali (my mouth's puckering up at the thought of its sharpness now!) and Spanish (chewy roots or twig-like pieces) in Rochdale, too, but at the sweet shop, not the toffee shop, Elaine.
Toffee was sold on the market and was displayed in shallow oblong tins. It had to be broken up with a special hammer. I've still got an old one in my kitchen drawer, and very handy it is, too, for all kinds of jobs. The salesman's cry of "Home made Toffee" rang out across the market and attracted us children, who loved to find the weirdest shaped pieces, especially large ones which would stretch your mouth and face into funny shapes. Really yummy was his treacle toffee. ::)
Gillg
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Hello Gillg
Yes we had toffee on trays too. Gorgeous. I still love Thornton's version now! BUT we called it all toffee. Sweets was a posh word that we didn't bother with.
Interesting isn't it?
Elaine
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Yes, Thornton's is pretty good, but nowadays I daren't eat it in case it pulls my fillings out. ;D My mother used to make delicious Bonfire Toffee with condensed milk. I'm drooling at the thought of it. :P
Gillg
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Interestingly, we used to have kali in the 50's in Lincolnshire, but when we moved to Staffordshire no one had heard of it -- you could just get the sherbet dabs with the hollow liquorice to suck it through - and heaven help you if you sucked too hard ... :-X :-X :-X
Remember flying saucers? You can still buy them here and there..
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Forgot to say that we pronounced it Kay as in the letter K and li as in lie, so just as you wrote it in the title, Elaine.
Gillg ;D
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/lancashire/content/articles/2005/10/27/lists_sweeties_feature.shtml
BBC Lancashire's top 10 of old fashioned sweets or toffees - Flying Saucers come in at no 9. I liked the penny Arrow Bars myself, fortunately (or not) our corner sweet shop was next door but one to the dentist..
I'm glad I'm not the only rootschatter who seems to end up talking about food half the time! ;D
Barbara
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No, Barbara, you're not the only one. We had a long chat about black peas recently!
For me the favourites after toffee would have to be coltsfoot rock, peardrops that made your mouth sore if you sucked too many and liquorice torpedos, especially the red ones that we used as lipstick. :-* All bought by the quarter, of course, or two ounces, if pocket money was running short.
Gillg
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And now I've been half the morning on the 'Silk St Manchester' thread talking about toy shops ::)
there's no hope for me - but its fun
:) Barbara
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Did your seet shop have a penny box? A cardboard tray with all the things you could buy for an old penny? There was also a 2d box but that was generally outside my range! Then on 'spends' day I got 3d and could go into the realms of the 2oz or quarter from the jars or soemtimes you just asked for 'threepennorth of....' Sometimes I'd run errands for the neighbours and the penny or twopence reward would go in the toffee shop. We lived opposite the corner shop, so even in the dark I could be across in three or four leaps, doorstep to doorstep!
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Hi Elaine
No, but we had penny drinks - pop in a glass - or ha'penny ones if we couldn't afford a full glass! Dandelion & Burdock was my favourite, or American Cream Soda.
Gillg ;D
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And you got money back on the big glass pop bottles, ha'penny or a penny that you could then spend on the penny box. Cream soda, yum! And Tizer the appetizer & of course Vimto.
The boxes that the cheaper sweets came in, we used to use to put inside our old lift-the-lid desks at school to keep the desk insides neat. So every August/September everyone went to the corner shop to ask 'can I have a box for me school books please?' We were a class of 45 baby-boomers, that's a lot of sweet boxes to get through ;D
Now I think of it, that's 2 examples of recycling before the word was ever heard of. Nothing new under the sun is there?
:) Barbara
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We used to know it as kayli and spanish. Predated sherbert fountains. This was in Urmston in the '50's.
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Well the sherbet in the yellow plastic tubes was rather fizzy and if too much came up the hollow liquorice tube it really caught your throat.
Sherbet was either eaten with a licked finger or the liquorice root sticks.
It was not fizzy and more like sugar.
Marzipan tea cakes,oooh lovely.
I may have mentioned this in a previous post some time back but can
anyone else remember when Smarties had more colours,but no blue ones,
and there were different types of chocolate centres with different flavours?
The orange ones were like a chocolate orange flavour,the coffee coloured were like coffee and the pastel colours were milk chocolate and darker colours bitter chocolate.
I remember when pre-fabs were being built nearby and we played house in the foundations,I had a box of Smarties and we used the red and maroon ones as lilstick.I remember us discussing the different flavours .Later the police called at our homes because we had played with the orange fibreglass insulation ,not doing any harm except to ourselves when most of us came all over in a rash.”Have you been playing in the prefabs?”-“No”, scratch,scratch ::)
I hated liquorice all sorts,don’t know why but they depressed me !
I loved the Anglo bubble gum and Spearmint sticks,bright pink about an inch or so wide and seven long, wrapped in white waxed paper and dimpled all over with squares. Gorgeous.They had to be pulled with your teeth or if very cold they would break if slammed on a window sill or something similar.
Once got my tongue stuck down a Crunchie bar,what delicious torture!
I’ll have to have a suck on one of my liquorice roots now.
Viktoria.
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Ecky thump - I'd forgotten about liquorice root. Twigs about six inches long and a quarter-inch thick that you chewed & chewed & chewed.
In Bolton in the early 1940s 'black spanish' was the hard black stuff you had to break with a hammer, quite inedible, but put in a bottle of water, left overnight - in a dark place, then shaken up - it made a great drink.
'Kaylie' was what we called the white effervescent powder in those yellow cardboard cylinders with a liquorice tube. My Scottish parents knew them as 'sherbet suckers'.
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William Brown and his friends Henry and a Douglas—-“The Outlaws” made copious amounts of liquorice water,from broken bits of black Spanish dissolved in water and kept in the barn where they had their headquarters.
(And where they made fires etc,not to do damage but just to be like outlaws)
They would most probably be in a young offenders’institution today!
I liked a bar by Rowntrees, “Tiffin”,but it was discontinued.
Hated Fry”s Cream bars,again depressed me because the last time I bought
one was in a little shop in Conway whilst on holiday. There was a monumental “domestic “ going on between the proprietors.My parents never rowed and it really upset me.I have never had one since.
My boyfriend used to buy me each week a lovely box of Terry’s chocolates.Two layers,like little drawers,really expensive,they had no name but a date 1767,the last box he bought me( they too were discontinued) now hold my wedding cake ornaments,only 62 years old!
Don’t eat many sweets now, not diabetic but raised sugar levels ,however a quick suck on a liquorice root stick generally satisfied the craving.
How we digress,but good memories we ought to write down ,if only to stop daft young T.V producers from making dreadful mistakes when making
programmes about WW2,like the other day ,can’t remember the programme but they made wartime biscuits,recipe needed ,wait for it ,8 ounces of butter
————as the butter ration was 2ounces per person per week, I can see(not)
the full ration for a family of four all used up in one go!They have no idea.
Cheerio.
Viktoria.
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Now that would be a long off-topic diversion - mistakes like that in films and TV programmes.
Even spotted a few in 'Foyle's War' - like a fingerpost pointing the way at a crossroads. Has nobody told them that everything like that was taken away at the start of the war?
When we were out on the bikes and got a bit lost, my father always got little me to ask the way - because of my Lanky accent. Out in the country, his Scottish accent sometimes seemed to arouse a suspicious reluctance to say which lane led where. Nazi spies?
Harry.
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Often in period dramas when a newspaper is being read ,for some reason an old yellowed one will be used,why is it not realised that whilst today a newspaper from say 1939 will be yellowed ,at the time it would be crisp,and white.
People saying O.K and great etc,those terms would certainly not have been
used in the time of the drama.
Henry, you are not by any chance THE Henry are you? ;D
They are all too young! ::)
Viktoria.
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Often in period dramas when a newspaper is being read ,for some reason an old yellowed one will be used,why is it not realised that whilst today a newspaper from say 1939 will be yellowed ,at the time it would be crisp,and white....
Yes, I'd noticed that too, and all kinds of other anachronisms. But we're getting a long way off the subject of kaylie!
Dunno about being THE Henry, Viktoria. I'm just a year older than Elvis Presley, but in slightly better nick. I think.
Harry.
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Yes I tend to digress!
Kali was usually bought in little cornet shaped pointy bags which got soggy from wet fingers or liquorice sticks, but we ate it all anyway!
Viktoria.
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So where did the name come from? An old long-vanished trade name maybe, or something to do with potash (kalium)? This use of the name 'kali' for (more or less) sherbet powder, seems to have been used in only a small area of Britain.
Maybe it was made by some Lancashire firm, like Owd Mally Toffee, or Uncle Joe's Mint Balls, with only a fairly local distribution area.
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It is odd but my Dad used to say of someone the worse for drink that they were “ kalied”.
Sherbet comes from what used to be Persia or Turkey where it is used to make a fizzy fruit drink which is very refreshing by all accounts.
Rhubarb dipped in kali was something else!
OK when dipped in sugar if Mum could spare a bit from the rations .A finger surreptitiously dipped in the jar Mum decanted the tin of condensed milk into was sheer bliss.
My teeth are aching at the memory and some of them are crowns-no wonder is it really,condensed milk!
Babies dummies used to be dipped in condensed milk,those horrid big brown rubber ones,oh the flies that swarmed round such babies when they were put out on the pavements in their prams to get fresh air.
Ah well they survived and grew into children who loved kali and sherbet.
Viktoria.
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"'E were right kalied!" - yes, I remember hearing that. Maybe about some neighbour who'd been spotted staggering out of the pub.
But long ago - before 1952, when I left Lancs. I expect it's an expression that has died out by now.
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Who remembers McGowan’s toffee bars,sheer bliss,caramel so tasty.
Marked out in squares for breaking up and wrapped in waxed paper.They were called Highland Cream Toffee bars,with a picture of a highland cow on the wrapping. It all comes flooding back.
I used to get one on a Sunday morning at the paper shop when I went to pick those up,the shop also sold chocolate in bars,unwrapped. If you can imagine the shape of a Toblerone bar but without being in the small triangles the whole thing was one long triangular shape. I believe it was army chocolate but how it got to. Our paper shop I can not imagine.
Oh gosh ,what memories come flooding back.
Viktoria.
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Highland Cream Toffee with a Highland cow on the wrapper? I thought they still sold it. I'll have a look.
Harry (now living in Scotland.)
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It is I think the sort of toffee usually sold in small shops,we have a sweet shop near me but I have not seen McGowans,the stock is more of the old fashioned loose sweets in big jars.
Supermarkets don’t sell it hereabouts.
I ought not to think about it because although I am not diabetic my blood sugar levels are high,so I try seriously to avoid sugary foods.
I can imagine how hard life is for diabetics,I’d rather elect ,myself ,to do without than be forced to.
All this talk of sweets,ooh its agony Ivy(as a long ago comedian(comedienne) used to say.
That is me dated!
Viktoria.
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As I thought, the name was actually McCowan's.
Their Highland toffee seems to be extinct now because of company takeovers. I must have last seen it about ten years since. Time flies.
Sorry Viktoria.
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In Walsall (used to be part of Staffordshire) in the Black Country, we called it "kaylie", too. Whether the stuff is still available, I have no idea, but folks around here still get "kaylied" all too often...
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folks around here still get "kaylied" all too often
also in Manchester too ;)
Welcome to RootsChat ;D