Not A Single Origin

August 30, 2018 5:41 AM

Not A Single Origin takes demographic data from suburbs in Sydney and turns it into chocolate - each box representing the different dominant cultures in each suburb.
posted by divabat (24 comments total)

Wow, beautiful. But sold out.
posted by hawthorne at 6:01 AM on August 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

Nice.

Now do Melbs.

(Might need a bigger box)
posted by pompomtom at 6:09 AM on August 30, 2018 [2 favorites]

Wait, Sydney has a suburb called Londonderry?

Do half the people call it something else?
posted by pompomtom at 6:18 AM on August 30, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'm not usually one to care about fancy-lad chocolatiers--too much hipster artisanal bullshit associated with them in recent years--but I'd really like to try "Banksia."
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:25 AM on August 30, 2018

The act of eating chocolate becomes gamified, prompting a desire to guess and reveal the ancestry underneath each confection

"This one tastes of sugar and booze! Must be the 1760 Scots of Manly! Or maybe the 5056 Irish of Randwick"
posted by 1head2arms2legs at 6:32 AM on August 30, 2018

This is so cool! I'd have to buy two boxes: one to eat and one to admire.
posted by chara at 6:56 AM on August 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

One to eat now and one to admi... Mmm, and one to eat late... to eat now.
posted by Dysk at 7:14 AM on August 30, 2018 [2 favorites]

(I have very little self control with chocolate and these both look and sound very good from the flavour list, and the concept is great!)
posted by Dysk at 7:15 AM on August 30, 2018

"This one tastes of sugar and booze! Must be the 1760 Scots of Manly! Or maybe the 5056 Irish of Randwick"

Is this just a "Ha ha! The Scots and Irish are boozers!" joke? Or is there more cultural nuance to this that I'm missing because I'm not Australian?
posted by Secret Sparrow at 7:27 AM on August 30, 2018

This is amazing. I live in cardomom, coconut and cashew.
posted by lollusc at 7:27 AM on August 30, 2018

Is this just a "Ha ha! The Scots and Irish are boozers!" joke? Or is there more cultural nuance to this that I'm missing because I'm not Australian?

I'm a Canadian-who-lived-in-the-UK. All Brits drink SO MUCH. I'm just surprised that the English one isn't flavoured with beer. But marmalade is a close second.

And the Scots are seriously proud of their whisky - as they should be. It's the best food they gave the world after scotch pies and porridge.

My first thought was: but how can you show chocolate from the British Isles? It's not like cacao grows there. But then I realised they were talking about flavourings, not origin.
posted by jb at 7:35 AM on August 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

"Wait, Sydney has a suburb called Londonderry?

Do half the people call it something else?"

I think I'm missing a joke here, why would half the people call it something else? Also, Londonderry seems like a common enough place name in countries subjugated by white or western people. I know there's a street and apartment complex in my own town with that name.
posted by GoblinHoney at 7:40 AM on August 30, 2018

I lived in one of those suburbs and I could not, for the life of me, place what streets were embossed onto the chocolate for that suburb.

I just picked another suburb at random, and am pretty sure that chocolate's street map bears no actual relation to the suburb either.

While we're talking about Sydney suburbs, if you're wondering where the name Manly comes from, it's exactly what you hope.
posted by Merus at 7:42 AM on August 30, 2018

I think I'm missing a joke here, why would half the people call it something else?

Derry/Londonderry name dispute
posted by wreckingball at 7:46 AM on August 30, 2018 [4 favorites]

What, no Paddo? In that case, for my ancestry, I'll have the Londonderry (Maltese) orange/cinnamon/almond - yummy - followed by the Mosman (English) marmalade/almond - somewhat tart.

A chocolate for my current rural location would have to be eucalyptus/roadkill/kikuyu with air pockets like an Aero.
posted by valetta at 8:56 AM on August 30, 2018 [2 favorites]

Very telling that there isn't one with indigenous Australian flavours.
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:50 AM on August 30, 2018 [7 favorites]

I'm a Canadian-who-lived-in-the-UK. All Brits drink SO MUCH. I'm just surprised that the English one isn't flavoured with beer. But marmalade is a close second.

And the Scots are seriously proud of their whisky - as they should be. It's the best food they gave the world after scotch pies and porridge.

I'm Canadian too - ethnically Scottish & Irish. My personal experience of Scottish cuisine has involved a lot more fruit (apples, blackberries, rhubarb, currants, elderberries, raisins, etc), puddings & baked goods than it has alcohol, but I'm Scots-Canadian, not Scots or Scots-Australian.

The "This one tastes of sugar and booze! Must be the 1760 Scots of Manly! Or maybe the 5056 Irish of Randwick" comment made me twitchy because, to my eye, it smacked a little of the old stereotypes of the Irish and Scots being drunkards and a little of the new stereotypes about trashy unhealthy diets (see: Deep Fried Mars Bars). Maybe that wasn't where 1head2arms2legs was coming from, but, well, I felt the need to ask.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 9:00 PM on August 30, 2018

Manly’s Scottish? I live there and I can’t recall meeting a single Scotsman. Lots of English though.
posted by Jubey at 10:46 PM on August 30, 2018

Very telling that there isn't one with indigenous Australian flavours.

Saltbush and fingerlime in a milk chocolate would be amazing. Or maybe lemon myrtle and quandong in a white chocolate.
posted by Jilder at 10:55 PM on August 30, 2018 [3 favorites]

... comment made me twitchy because, to my eye, it smacked a little of the old stereotypes of the Irish and Scots being drunkards and a little of the new stereotypes about trashy unhealthy diets (see: Deep Fried Mars Bars).

That's exactly my point.

Can't this new generation of hipster chocolatiers and data analysts see past stereotypes? Or does something referencing Scottish or Irish origins have to conform to preconceived ideas?

All Brits drink SO MUCH.

Have you considered a career as a chocolatier/data analyst?
posted by 1head2arms2legs at 4:49 AM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm Canadian too - ethnically Scottish & Irish.

Me too! If you ever get a chance to visit The Highland Village Museum in Cape Breton, it's wonderful. My SO said it was like taking a cultural tour of my family.

I don't really care about the stereotypes largely because the Scots are the establishment in Canada and Australia; the Irish less so, but really aren't subject to discrimination anymore (and that discrimination was always against the Catholic Irish, not the protestant Irish who usually identified as 'Scotch-Irish'). There's a reason our first PM was called "MacDonald".
posted by jb at 10:52 AM on August 31, 2018

The makers (PoC for what it's worth) said they researched desserts in the region to get flavour profile ideas.

I think their methodology talks about having to pick the Top X cultural demographic, which a lot falling off that list due to numbers - that may be why there isn't a Indigenous chocolate.

(Also, which nation Indigenous? They're not all the same.)
posted by divabat at 5:37 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm not 100% on the borders of these suburbs and traditional ownership, but as far as nations go, I think most of these places would be of the Eora nation, maybe Dharug and Tharawal as well.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 9:36 PM on August 31, 2018

I think their methodology talks about having to pick the Top X cultural demographic, which a lot falling off that list due to numbers - that may be why there isn't a Indigenous chocolate.

I feel that when indigenous Australians aren't included or even acknowledged in something supposed to reflect the cultures of an area it contributes to airbrushing them from history. They're not like other groups in Sydney,, whose numbers were determined by historic migration patterns: they were the victims of physical and cultural genocide arguably extending to the present day.

As for the question of flavour – there wasn't a traditional Aboriginal variety of chocolate, obviously, but I expect most people in Sydney would have consumed a variety of foods local to the region. Something that reflects those flavours would have been a good opportunity to acknowledge the indigenous inhabitants, and take a stance against our collective memory failure regarding European settlement.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:44 AM on September 1, 2018 [4 favorites]