The etymology of the phrase, "hokey pokey" has been suggested as "derived from the Italian O che poco! [or] 'Oh, how little!'" (Ward, 1923, p. 245). it is the name for an inferior grade of ice cream - of no particular flavour - in the US and Britain around the turn of the century.
However, as seems a bit odd to me, as - here in New Zealand - hokey pokey is a lovely fizzy sticky sweet treat which sticks to our teeth. I had always assumed that the name was down to 'hocus pocus' because as we add the baking soda into the mix of sugar etc et viola!: we have magic fizzing skin-scorchingly hot and quick-scrape-it-onto-the-tray-before-it-sticks-to-the-bowl hokey pokey. It is apparently known elsewhere on the planet as 'honeycomb toffee'. But there is no honey in it...perhaps it is because of the airholes...?
And, apparently, hokey pokey IS a New Zealand thing. Well, the name is. The actual confectionery may be a Kiwi invention, if it really was invented in the 1890s. The Auckland Star "offered a [mail-order] cookbook including a Hokey Pokey recipe in 1895", and William Hatton registered a NZ patent for hokey pokey in 1896 (Archives New Zealand, 2011; Zam, 2012). There is also an 1892 ad in the South Canterbury Times and the Timaru Herald for “one penny a lump” hokey pokey, placed by one Edward Hill (as cited by NZICA, 2023b), but I haven't seen the ad. As Mr Hill worked for Hudson's - the forerunner of Cadbury Schweppes Hudson in Dunedin (Ryan, 2017), now owned by Mondelez International - we can probably assume that perhaps he might have had the wherewithal to make what was advertised as hokey pokey a mere three years later in the Auckland Star (NZICA, 2023b).
Kiwis were apparently the first to segue broken hokey pokey - possibly Cadbury/Hudson hokey pokey bars - into dessert by putting it into ice cream, possibly somewhere in the 1940s (Smith & Pitt, 2019, p. 37). Mmmm.
(NB: Crunchies were first made by Fry's in the UK, launched in 1929 - but after the Cadbury merger with Fry's in 1918; Chrystal, 2012).
Christchurch City Libraries state that hokey pokey ice cream was first sold in New Zealand by Auckland's Meadowgold Ice Cream (2023), the fore-runner of Tip Top; although there are no verifiable sources for this. However, it may actually have been Fred Elbe Jr, a Lower Hutt ice cream maker, who was the creator of hokey pokey ice cream. Fred Junior's grandson still remember smashing up hokey pokey to go into ice cream in the 1940s (Zam, 2015). This opens up another possibility: T. C. Denne - branded as Peter Pan - may have gained their "Hokey Pokey recipe from their acquisition of Elbe's" organisation (Zam, 2012); and then - as Denne's was swallowed up by Tip Top in 1977 (NZICA, 2023a) - thus Tip Tip by proxy 'owns' the history and creation story of hokey pokey.
And, of course, Tip Top is now part of Nestlé...
Again, what is known in Aotearoa as 'hokey pokey' ice cream is known elsewhere as honeycomb ice cream. Probably because of the "honeycomb toffee" name for hokey pokey - but there is STILL no honey in it. Honeycomb ice cream was Terry Pratchett's favourite (Wilkins, 2022). A man of good taste.
And I do wish that Kiwis would write things down. We are rubbish at keeping our own history. Sigh.
Sam
References:
Archives New Zealand. (8 April 2011). Moments in Time - Hokey Pokey [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/bvi84-sh8uQ
Christchurch City Libraries. (2023). Kiwiana — quintessentially kiwi. https://my.christchurchcitylibraries.com/kiwiana-quintessentially-kiwi/
Chrystal, P. (2012). Cadbury & Fry Through Time. Amberley Publishing.
De Marco, A. (2015). Are green-lipped mussels really green? Touring New Zealand food in translation. The Translator, 21(3), 310-326. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2015.1103098
NZICA. (2023a). Brands from the Past. https://www.nzicecream.org.nz/history-nz-brands.htm
NZICA. (2023b). The History of Ice Cream in New Zealand: 1951-1970. New Zealand Ice Cream Association. https://nzicecream.org.nz/history-nz-1970.htm
RNZ. (2010). Ice cream and hokey pokey. Radio New Zealand. https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/thiswayup/audio/2275383/ice-cream-and-hokey-pokey
Ryan, H. (2017, February 23). The Big Read: Bitter aftertaste as Cadbury closes landmark Dunedin factory. New Zealand Herald. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/the-big-read-bitter-aftertaste-as-cadbury-closes-landmark-dunedin-factory/6HW2AT2343XQFBTR4BWHHDVY4Q/
Smith, B., & Pitt, C. (2019). NZIFST news. Food New Zealand, 19(6), 36-41.
Ward, A. (1923). The Encylopedia of Food: The stories of the foods by which we live, how and where they grow and are marketed, their comparative values and how best to use and enjoy them. P. Smith.
Wikipedia. (2023). Hokey pokey (ice cream). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokey_pokey_(ice_cream)
Wilkins, R. (2022). Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes: The Official Biography. Doubleday.
Zam, D. (2012). Hokey Information: Poking at History. The Long White Kid. https://longwhitekid.wordpress.com/category/ice-cream/
Zam, D. (2015). Elbe’s Ice Cream: The Plot Thickens. The Long White Kid. https://longwhitekid.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/elbes-ice-cream-the-plot-thickens
Loved this article. Yes we are rubbish at writing things down! Have you heard of Helen Leach Emeritus Professor at Otago University She is a food historian and is interested in what we eat and what we used to eat.
ReplyDeleteYes, I have corresponded with Professor Leach at Otago about the pavlova, when I wrote a post about that. She is AWESOME!
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