Manic Pixie Dream Boy

🤢 victory v lozenges

had chloroform and ether in them, and had an eye-watering burn of chemical-grade menthol, deep bitter liquorice, and linseed oil. they also left a gritty taste in the back of your throat when you eat them

🤢 jellied eels

chopped up river thames eels boiled in a spiced broth😍😍

as it cools, the natural proteins from the fish bones congealed into a thick, cold, slimy grey aspic jelly wrapping around the fish..

you have to slide it into your mouth, and spit out the eels vertibrae💀

🤢 liquorice sherbet dib dabs

this flop was made by pairing a stick of salty, bitter, slightly rubbery black liquorice with a packet of incredibly sour, fizzy white chemical sherbet powder...

as you dip the wet liquorice stick into the bag, the sherbet reacts with your saliva inside the packet, creating a gritty, foaming, cement grey sludge that tastes simultaneously hyper sour and bitterly salty

🤢 rare steak

this one isnt necessarily disgusting to eat- steak is nice. but when you cut into a rare steak, a deep red liquid pools onto the plate (myoglobin, just a protein mixed w water)

but this looks a lot like blood...and the unseared red centre looks completely unfinished

🤢 cough candy

these were gorgeous little balls, in a nice jar loking very pretty. but when you ate one, instead of orange or strawberry, your tongue was aggressively assaulted by a heavy, punchy wave of herbal aniseed, menthol, and clove oil

and cuz the 1950s version didnt use any modern artificial flavorings, it relied on highly concentrated, raw essential oils

the vapor was so strong it would immediately cause your eyes to water and shoot a freezing hot sensation straight up into the sinuses💔

🤢 tripe and onions

i present to you, the rubbery, honeycomb-textured inner lining of a cow’s stomach, slowly boiled in milk with onions until it turned translucent and soft😌

this shit smells STRONGLY of an alive cow...and its rubbery as fuck...

🤢 herbal twists

this horrible sweet is packed with horehound (from the mint family and VERYYY bitter) coltsfoot and hyssop...

to keep the sweets shelf-stable in large glass jars, they used heavy amounts of unrefined sugar and glucose, meaning the sweet had a deeply rustic, slightly burnt molasses background flavor underneath the bitter weeds

and it tastes like dirt, damp autumn leaves, and grass...the botanical oils in it meant it made this peppery burn at the back of your throat

🤢 pressed ox tongue

when sliced, you can clearly see the giant taste buds and rough texture of the cow's tongue staring back at you from your sandwich...

it has an incredibly strong, metallic iron taste

🤢 floral gums

these tiny, colorful, translucent domes look like harmless gummy drops

but ohh, the lies.

they were made using a heavy hand of gum arabic (to make them hard and incredibly dense) mixed with real, raw botanical flower oils like geranium, rose, and lavender...

meaning these fuckers taste exactly like a mouthful of liquid perfume or premium hand soap

because they are SO physically hard, you cant even chew them, you have to suck them for ages as they slowly bleed heavy, perfume oils into your mouth💔

🤢 brains on toast

this is calf or pig brains gently simmered, fried in a pan with butter, and smeared over a piece of white toast😔🥀

this has an intensely mushy, soft, custard-like texture with a deeply metallic, mineral flavour...sooo uhh enjoy i guess💀

🤢 parma violets

this was made with chalky binding agents like stearic acid and magnesium carbonate, heavily scented with violet-flower extract oil

they taste exactly like an elderly relative's bathroom smelled, with a heavily artificial, sweet, floral perfume profile

🤢 mock banana sandwiches

fun fact bananas were still an exotic luxury in the early 50s!

but because they were viewed as super duper chic, to copy them, people boiled parsnips until they were soft, mashed them with sugar, and added a single drop of artificial "banana essence" flavoring.

this resulted in a gritty, starchy, sugary root vegetable paste that had a taste i can genuinely only describe as betrayal

🤢 navy lozenges

originally given to ww1 trench soldiers and sailors to boost morale and keep them awake, these hard black lozenges historically contained OPIUM💀 to numb physical pain and suppress coughs

i think roger buys the actual authentically vintage ww1 crusty old ones too...

🤢 black coffee

the british coffee market in the early 1950s was dominated by two things, neither of which yielded a clean cup of black coffee:

1) camp coffee: this was the most popular "coffee" choice in households! it wasn't beans, rather it was a thick, brown, syrupy liquid essence made of sugar, water, 25% chicory extract, and only 4% dried coffee extract..

if you drank this black with water, it didn't taste like coffee, it tasted like a strangely burnt, intensely sweet, medicinal weed juice💀

2) robusta (instant coffee): robusta beans are much easier to grow than arabica beans, but they are naturally twice as caffeinated, twice as bitter, and possess a distinct, harsh flavor profile often compared to burnt rubber or wood💀

the standard method of serving coffee in cafes was to brew a massive glass jug of drip filter coffee and let it sit on an electric hotplate for hours...

as the water slowly evaporated out of the jug all afternoon, the coffee cooked over and over again.

by the time it was poured into a cup black, it was a thick, volatile liquid that tasted "as black as soot".

another fun fact- it was acidic enough to give you instant heartburn and left a heavy, tar like bitter coating on your tongue💀

🤢 aniseed balls

this has layers of boiled sugar wrapped around a single, real rapeseed or aniseed seed at the absolute center, they were heavily infused with aniseed essential oil

these do NOT taste sweet... they tasted intensely of pungent black licorice, accompanied by a sharp, peppery, medicinal burn that intensified the closer you got to the middle

but it stains your mouth teeth and tongue bright red

🤢 baking chocolate

this has pure, unsweetened 100% raw cocoa mass and cocoa butter, with absolutely zero added sugar, milk, or vanilla...