Thief of Time - Chocolate

Susan had been unusually inexact. To call Wienrich and Boettcher 'chocolate makers' was like calling Leonard of Quirm 'a decent painter who also tinkered with things', or Death 'not someone you'd want to meet every day'. It was accurate, but it didn't tell the whole story.

For one thing, they didn't make, they created. There's an important difference. And, while their select little shop sold the results, it didn't do anything so crass as to fill the window with them. That would suggest... well, over-eagerness. Generally, W&B had a display of silk and velvet drapes with, on a small
stand, perhaps one of their special pralines or no more than three of their renowned frosted caramels.

There was no price tag. If you had to ask the price of W&B's chocolates, you couldn't afford them. And if you'd tasted one, and still couldn't afford them, you'd save and scrimp and rob and sell elderly members of your family for just one more of those mouthfuls that fell in love with your tongue and turned
your soul to whipped cream.

There was a discreet drain in the pavement in case people standing in front of the window drooled too much.

Wienrich and Boettcher were, naturally, foreigners, and according to Ankh-Morpork's Guild of Confectioners they did not understand the peculiarities of the city's tastebuds. Ankh-Morpork people, said the Guild, were hearty, no-nonsense folk who did not want chocolate that was stuffed with cocoa liquor, and were certainly not like effete la-di-dah foreigners who wanted cream in everything. In fact they actually preferred chocolate made mostly from milk, sugar, suet, hooves, lips, miscellaneous squeezings, rat droppings, plaster, flies, tallow, bits of tree, hair, lint, spiders and powdered
cocoa husks. This meant that according to the food standards of the great chocolate centres in Borogravia and Quirm, Ankh-Morpork chocolate was formally classed as 'cheese' and only escaped, through being the wrong colour, being defined as 'tile grout'.

Susan allowed herself one of their cheaper boxes per month. And she could easily stop at the first layer if she wanted to.

***

The Thief of Time - p292-294