Ingredient
Blue raspberry
A flavour invented to solve a colour problem.
The story
Blue raspberry was created in America in the 1950s and 1960s because soda and ice lolly makers had too many red flavours and customers could not tell cherry from strawberry on a shelf. A blue dye was applied to a raspberry flavour and the problem was solved. The real fruit it loosely refers to, the whitebark raspberry, does have a deep blue black colour, but the flavour we know has nothing to do with it. It reached Britain through slush drinks in the 1990s and a whole generation now treats it as normal.
