Toblerone

Feb 11
5 min read

"Finally, the recipe is quite simple, but paradoxically will never be equaled ... obvious ingredients, inimitable mixture" Eugénie Rousak/Now Village

You may or may not remember, but quite a long time ago now, on one of my walks I decided to photograph everything with a link to food. I think so far I have tackled one, maybe two of those. Today I'm on to this one - Toblerone. A wrapper tossed away by a walker or from a car, on a semi busy road. I don't think that's a bit of Toblerone sitting on it, although it's remarkably real looking. It's just part of the package design. Which has changed somewhat over the years, but with some crucial features remaining in place - the colours - yellow and red, the shape, and the font of the product name. Others ahve come and gone.

So first a tiny bit of history. Wikipedia has the full thing. In 1867 a young man named Jean Tobler began making chocolate in the town Bern. His employer left but he continued on and expanded the business slightly. But it was his son Theodor and his cousin Emil Baumann who invented Toblerone, with the product first appearing in 1908 - the first chocolate bar in history.

The story goes that Emil, after a trip to Italy came back with some Italian nougat which excited them both, and so they experimented until they had the correct mix - and the name - from Theodor's surname - Tobler and part of the Italian for nougat - torrone. But why the shape? And let's admit that it's the shape that's the thing really is it not ? - so important that it is patented - some say Einstein, working as a lowly clerk a the time, worked on the patent.

The main theory, of course is that it's because of the Matterhorn - the nearby almost pyramid shaped mountain, although there is another rather more colourful idea - that Theodor went to Paris and the Moulin Rouge where he saw a performance that ended with all the dancers in a pyramid shape. But it's not can-can dancers on the packaging is it? It's the mountain. Initially there was also an eagle, later replaced by a bear - the symbol of Bern - but that seems to now have disappeared. The mountain does remain, however. Well at least on the bar - there are lots more products now.

The shape in fact became so iconic that when the Swiss set up artillery defences along its border during WW2 they created defences in the shape of the Toblerone pyramid.

It's a brilliant merger of taste and symbolic shape, that has ensured the bar's status in the confectionery world. That status also has a touch of exclusivity about it, in spite of it being available everywhere these days. But somehow it's a special treat - in fact one writer remembers that it only used to be available at airports - or seemed to be anyway. There was a definite association - international airports, duty free - 'looxury' as the Monty Python crew would say.

Of course it is available everywhere these days, but this ad in last month's Coles Magazine reminded me (a) to visit the subject of Toblerone and (b) that they are still leaning in to the luxury image of the product. In this particular instance the product is diamond shaped bites of Toblerone. And over time the yellow has perhaps become more golden? In fact Toblerone now exists in a staggering number of varieties, that come and go, some because they are a 'limited edition' thing and some because they are not a success. But all of this came about after it stopped being a family company. In 1970 it merged with Suchard, in 1982 with Jacobs - coffee makers - and in 1990 the company was bought by Kraft - now renamed Mondelēz - one of the largest food companies in the world.

One last thing about company history - the notorious widening of the gap between the pyramids in the packet. I believe it has now returned to the original shape, due to the huge amount of protest - but, of course, with a rise in price.

It's an advertiser's dream product really. Most of us love it - it has just the right mix of chocolate and nougat - and I have to say I prefer the milk chocolate version. Indeed at one point they also stopped making the dark chocolate version because of a drop in sales - possibly caused by the immense popularity of the Dubai chocolate craze. Back to the advertisers though - just a few examples below because I thought some of them were quite arresting, and sort of quirky like those Aldi ads:

So can you do anything with Toblerone other than eat it? Of course you can. I mean anything you can do with chocolate you can do with Toblerone. But two outliers to begin with.

This one, I think was just for fun - some guys in England - this was in The Guardian - thiking that you could deep fry anything, had a go at Toblerone - well and a whole lot of other things. It was coated in batter and deep fried - like those notorious Scottish deep-fried Mars bars. This, however was not a success. In the words of one of the experimenters:

"This mountain range of artery-hardening goop should work in theory. But it doesn’t. The chocolate is so thin that it just melts into the deep fat fryer until all that’s left is this weird shell. It’s inedible.” Jim Thomlinson

The things people do for fun. I bet it wasn't much fun cleaning out the deep frier.

The second are two examples of Toblerone cocktails - which don't even contain Toblerone - well the second one - Christmas creamy toblerone cocktail from Dobber Nation Loves does grate a bit on top and balances a triangle on a kind of skewer over the top - but the cocktail itself consists of Baileys Salted Caramel, Creme de Cacao, Amaretto, milk and cream. The Toblerone cocktail from Steve the Bartender doesn't have any - that's hot honey slid into an ice-cold glass in the picture. The contents of the cocktail are frangelico, Baileys and kahlua

So why is it called a Toblerone? Well Google's AI tells me

"because its combination of ingredients is designed to perfectly mimic the flavor profile of a Toblerone bar—specifically, the taste of honey, almond, and chocolate."

And Dan Murphy's says it was invented in 2003.

I should perhaps have added Sarah Hobbs Toblerone affogato from the Taste website to the above cocktails. Although it's even more like a dessert than the cocktails above. Lots of icecream, and I'm guessing chopped up Toblerone along with the coffee and the liqueur. I do like an affogato, but perhaps there's no need for chocolate too.

But then there are are all the unsurprising, but rather tempting looking things that bakers delight in doing with chocolate. This is a just a very small selection from the vast number of similar things out there - beginning with Toblerone mousse from Phoodie in The Independent which is a bit of a cheat - it includes marshmallows, and is made in a microwave. The others are perhaps somewhat more conventional: Toblerone brownies - Jane's Patisserie; Toblerone self-saucing pudding - Michelle Southan/Taste; Toblerone cheesecake slice - Jodi Hay/Australia's Best Recipes and No-bake Toblerone tart - Jane's Patisserie