Nu
Hahaha oh dear no it’s not nut-ella, it’s nu (noo but sharper) tella. I must have first encountered it in the UK because I’ve always pronounced it that way. Apparently Americans think the first three letters mean nut.
I didn’t know its history though.
Nutella® spread, in its earliest form, was created in the 1940s by Mr. Pietro Ferrero, a pastry maker and founder of the Ferrero company. At the time, there was very little chocolate because cocoa was in short supply due to World War II rationing.
So Mr. Ferrero used hazelnuts, which are plentiful in the Piedmont region of Italy (northwest), to extend the chocolate supply.
It was just to extend the chocolate. But it’s so delicious. Extend shmextend, bring on the hazelnuts.
Here’s an Italian ad for it, so you can hear how they pronounce it. Nu, not nut.
No, no, no. Not nu; ni!
Thanks for this post. Most entertaining!
Ah, I understand it so well! When I was a teenager, cocoa was also in short supply due to … well, due to whatever (World War II, probably). Anyway, that’s how our socialist economy handled the situation. In our shops you could find bars
of chocolatewith the etiquette “The chocolate-like product”. No cocoa inside.It was brown. Definitely brown. It looked like chocolate … or like shit. Hmm, I regret to say that it tasted more like shit.
Speaking of Italian cuisine, you should know that at that time we were worldly enough to have our own pizzerias. My favorite was “The Little Duck” downtown, not far from my school. What’s the result of mixing socialism and pizza, you could ask? Here is the recipe: in order to make a decent pizza, prepare the dough in a waffle-maker. Add hard yellow cheese, mushrooms and Polish sausage. Put it in the waffle-maker again. Pour a lot of ketchup on the top. Ready.
Many years later I tried an Italian pizza for the first time in my life. You would bet it was a revelation for me, wouldn’t you? Sorry but no, it wasn’t. It felt wrong, it smelled wrong, it also tasted wrong. And where was the ketchup?!!? I didn’t say a word but I would exchange it for “The Little Duck” pizza without much ado.
Where “The Little Duck” was, there is now a Rossmann drugstore. It always pains me to look at the place.
Fuck Rossmann, fuck Nivea, fuck Calvin Klein! I want “The Little Duck” back! I want the REAL pizza, not a fake Italian one! Fuck capitalism! Workers of the world, unite!
(Ah, there comes only this sobering thought: oh my, but what if “the chocolate-like product” still tastes like shit?)