TribLive Taste Test: National Jelly Bean Day
Not only is Easter coming up, but Easter Monday is officially National Jelly Bean Day.
The TribLive Taste Test team dove into four different varieties of the bean-shaped candy, compared Starburst Strawberry jelly beans with the old-fashioned “spiced” jelly beans — which raised a very important question for us: spiced with WHAT, exactly? — and also made a comparison between Jelly Belly’s endless variety of flavors and its counterparts at Gimbal’s, which is making a run at Jelly Belly by offering 41 flavors per bag as compared to Jelly Belly’s 49 flavors.
Then again, does anyone really need a jelly bean that tastes like caramel corn? Find out in today’s TribLive Taste Test!
But first, how about a little history?
According to the L.A. Times, the “jelly” part of jelly beans contains no jelly at all, but is actually based on Turkish Delight, a cornstarch-thickened sweet created in Istanbul in 1777. Jelly beans have been around in one form or another in the U.S. since the 1860s, and have been associated with Easter — due to their egg shape — since the 1930s.
Jelly beans are also associated with one of the most unique episodes in the history of the Beatles. During a 1963 interview, George Harrison told the press that the Beatles loved Jelly Babies, a British candy that was similar to today’s gummy bears. Fans in the U.S. misunderstood, and when the Beatles came to the States on tour, they began getting pelted with rock-hard jelly beans at their first show in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 11, 1964.
Harrison told a reporter afterward: “Imagine waves of rock-hard little bullets raining down on you from the sky. … We don’t mind them throwing streamers, but jelly beans are a bit dangerous, you see!”
An August 1964 Beatles concert in San Francisco had to be stopped twice because of the hail of delicious projectiles.
What’s your favorite brand and flavor of jelly bean? Do you have an idea for a product you’d like to see us test? Drop us an email!
Patrick Varine is a TribLive reporter covering Delmont, Export and Murrysville. He is a Western Pennsylvania native and joined the Trib in 2010 after working as a reporter and editor with the former Dover Post Co. in Delaware. He can be reached at pvarine@triblive.com.
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