Okay, hands up, who delves into the jar and rakes out the circular blue or pink aniseed one, you know, the one with little balls of sugar on the outside? Strangely enough this is the only one of the Liquorice Allsort mixture that does not contain liquorice! What? No liquorice? Yes, that's right... simply aniseed jelly coated in little balls of sugar.... oh, scrummy, yum.
When delving in I head straight for them, feeling strangely guilty about the others, you know... the three, or is it four? layered ones, each with squares of coconut paste with liquorice layers. Yes, they are a cubic wonder! And then there are the rosettes! Sugary paste surrounding circles of yummy liquorice, heaven knows what I like best once I really get stuck into a jar, liquorice, aniseed, coconut, I end up eating them ALL anyway.
We do have a certain person to thank though for such scrummy sweets. The company who first made Liquorice Allsorts was the Bassett Company, based in Sheffield. The story of how Liquorice Allsorts were first marketed is now quite famous. In 1899, Bassett's sales person, Charlie Thompson, was discussing an order with a prospective customer. Then, completely by accident, his tray of samples was knocked onto the floor. They scattered everywhere, and while Thompson was desperately trying to pick them up, the buyer took an interest in the oddly shaped sweets, and placed an order right there and then. Bassett's Liquorice Allsorts soon went into mass production. Today the company is owned by Candbury. In 1992 Bassett's was taken over by Trebor and then they were sold as Trebor Bassett before becoming what is now known as Cadbury Trebor Bassett.
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