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Comment by smacktoward | Hacker News Reader

Not even a drink, but: reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as a child led me down a similar path with regard to Turkish Delight.

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That's such a common one! It's even worse that there's a chocolate bar in the UK called "Turkish Delight" which is nothing like the proper "Lokum". It's not very pleasant :)

Turkish delight (not Cadbury's chocolate bar) is delicious.

The chocolate bar is just crap mass-produced Turkish delight wrapped in chocolate. I agree it's not very pleasant, but I don't know what else one could expect.

It's not that real-world Turkish delight is bad, per se, so much as that Lewis makes it sound so life-changingly incredible that the real-world version is bound to disappoint by comparison.

On the one hand, it was mind-numbingly delicious because of the White Witch's magic making it incredibly addictive, rather than simply the virtue of being Turkish delight.

But why the choice of Turkish delight? A combination of status-signalling and unavailability [1] (post-WW2 sugar-rationing was still in effect when the book was written).

[1] http://www.tor.com/2016/08/08/why-was-turkish-delight-the-ul...

Don't forget that CS Lewis was writing for a UK audience that still had rationing for sweets when published.

Turkish Delight was /Is a common UK Christmas time treat.

Yep I've since had it (in Istanbul, no less) and it is very nice

It's WAYYYY too sweet.

When my wife's parents come visit us from Moldova they usually bring over a box of Turkish Delight; it's always unveiled with cries of "Turkish Delight for the young prince! Ha ha ha!"

Same here with Harry Potter in regards to stale bread and cheese.

Where is that in Harry Potter?

(I'm British, so if it's something completely normal in Britain I might not have noticed. But I don't eat stale bread...)

I have a strong memory of Harry being banished to his room and he only manages to get some stale bread and cheese. I can't remember which book it was, but thinking maybe Chamber of Secrets (or at least one of the first three). I remember at the time going and getting some stale bread and cheese. (it wasn't necessarily presented as a good thing in the book, but somehow I found it appealing).

I mean, fresh bread and cheese is delicious. Stale bread, not so much. You're aware that stale just means old?

Yes. I found it appealing because I identified with Harry and wanted to share an experience with him. Why you hate on me.

Because Harry was forced into eating that by the Dursleys! Why would you want to eat something Harry didn't even want to eat? If you had an obsession with treacle or coffee cake or one of the many other delights Harry enjoyed at Hogwarts are at the Weasley's, I'd understand your motives better!

I definitely wanted the other things too, such as the moving chocolate frogs, but sadly they aren't as available as stale bread and cheese.

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