Comments

You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name

Your e-mail (optional)

Website (optional)

	My Original Nic Pic-a-Nic Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Foto

Submit your comments on this article

Home Front

Itâs yellow, but not French

2003-03-19

The company that makes French's mustard wants Americans to know the spicy condiment isn't French. It's British, but that's beside the point. Reckitt Benckiser PLC â the British behemoth that manufactures Lysol, Spray 'n Wash and French's mustard â issued a press release yesterday through a New Jersey subsidiary to remind reporters of the condiment's American seeds. "For the record, French's would like to say, there is nothing more American than French's mustard," the statement said. R.T. French Co., a Reckitt Benckiser precursor, introduced its "cream salad mustard," alongside the hot dog, in 1904 at the St. Louis World's Fair.

We knew that. Gulden's isn't really golden, either. It's kinda brown. Tasty, though. Gray Poupon, on the other hand, has a problem, even though it's not really gray...

Americans expect this sort of thing from politicians. But a press release, on the eve of war, to declare French's mustard isn't French? Isn't that laying it on a little thick? What's next? Is Betty Crocker going to hit the talk-show circuit to remind us that German chocolate cake isn't really from Germany?
Ba-Zing

Posted by:Anonymous

#10 I am looking for the email address of the R T French Co.
Thanks,

Posted by: alan matula 2004-09-28 4:38:36 PM

#9 Actually, the Cajuns came from Nova Scotia. Cajun is a corruption of Acadian. They are not so big in New Orleans as in the Bayous to the south and west. The French did colonize LA first. Eventually having children here and coming to be known as Creoles, completely different from Cajuns. Interesting side note, the French Quarter is really the legacy of the brief period when Spain owned New Orleans. They instituted building codes. Before that, the French stuff kept burning down.

Posted by: Alex 2003-03-20 09:05:26

#8 Amazing how many places the French have left their mark in America. Detroit, Demoines, Debuque, St Louis, Louisville.
Samuel de Champlain thought the Mississippi flowed all the way to China.

But the French in Louisiana actually came from Canada when the British booted them out from Nova Scotia or l'Acadia as it was then called.

Of course, rather than invade and occupy Louisiana in the traditional European way, America just bought it. So much for violent agressive tendencies.

Posted by: john 2003-03-19 22:25:43

#7 And St. Louis really was a saint. His appalling descendants lived off of the moral capital his generosity and fierce pursuit of Justice created for centuries.

Posted by: Ptah 2003-03-19 18:56:14

#6 St. Louis was a French king of the 13th century, the last crusader.
Picked the wrong place for his last stand though: Tunis. Died from malaria. Natural biological warfare then...

Posted by: tcc 2003-03-19 17:21:54

#5 Actually, back during a playoff game between St. Louis and New Orleans, a New Orleans newspaper called the St. Louis's Laclede's Landing a rip off of New Orleans French Quarter, apparently not realizing that St. Louis was originally founded by the French, too.

Posted by: Jeremy 2003-03-19 16:58:15

#4 And here I thought it was named after Mr. French.

Posted by: mojo 2003-03-19 13:10:21

#3 Iguess ilike mustard allright mmhmhmhmhhm

Posted by: Wills 2003-03-19 11:59:13

#2 The R.T. French Company originated in Rochester, NY. Their headquarters was on Mustard Street in Rochester.

Posted by: Chuck 2003-03-19 11:01:08

#1 And New Orleans was never French, no no!
OMG, St. Louis????

Posted by: Anonymous 2003-03-19 10:51:17

00:00