Walnut Whip

A Nestlé Walnut Whip split

A Walnut Whip is a whirl-shaped cone of milk chocolate with a whipped vanilla fondant filling, topped with a half-walnut.

Origin

Launched in 1910 by Duncan's of Edinburgh,^[1] Walnut Whip is Nestlé Rowntree's oldest current brand. Over one million walnuts, most of them imported from China and India, are used every week in the manufacture of Walnut Whips at Halifax, West Yorkshire. Nestlé claim that almost one Walnut Whip is eaten every two seconds in the UK.^[1]

Variations

Originally manufactured by Duncan's of Edinburgh in their Beaverhall Road factory, there have been a number of flavours of Walnut Whip over the years, including coffee and maple flavours, but currently only vanilla is widely available.

The original Walnut Whip contained a half-walnut, or more usually walnuts that had been broken during handling and transportation and therefore not suitable to be placed on the top. It was later marketed with an extra walnut on top, and subsequently the walnut inside was removed to leave one walnut outside.

The chocolate cone itself and the vanilla fondant filling have altered in recent years. The original whips were hand made by ladies extruding chocolate from a piping bag onto a rubber mould, each containing 12 'formers'. This generated the original deeply ridged surface, and the fondant at that time was more dense. ^[1] The texture of the outside surface is a skeuomorph.

When the Duncan's brand name was dispensed with by Rowntree's and manufacturing moved from Beaverhall Road in the late 1970s, the manufacturing process changed from being hand made to being hollow moulded by machine. An attempt was made to recreate the original surface appearance but with limited success, and it now has no function other than decoration. ^[2]

In popular culture

Ken Livingstone famously said the London 2012 Summer Olympics will cost Londoners 38p per week (the price of a Walnut Whip)^[3]

References