3 Musketeers

The 3 Musketeers candy bar was the third brand produced and manufactured by M&M/Mars. It was introduced in 1932. The candy's name played off the popular The Three Musketeers (French: Les Trois Mousquetaires) novel by Alexandre Dumas which had many film and TV adaptations.The candy's name came from the fact that originally it had three pieces in one package: chocolate, strawberry and vanilla. Rising costs and restrictions on sugar during World War II caused the company to eliminate the less popular vanilla and strawberry pieces.

But why were the Three Musketeers called musketeers when they spent all their time using swords? The French word mousquetaire originally referred to an infantryman with a musket. Over time, the word changed its meaning, lost the connection with the weapon, and referred to a much grander person.

At five cents, it was marketed as one of the largest chocolate bars available - one that could be shared by friends. 3 Musketeers was advertised on television on the 1950s-era Howdy Doody Show, along with a song that Buffalo Bob Smith encouraged children to sing.

In the mid-late 1990s, the bar's advertisements featured three men dressed as the legendary Three Musketeers to market the "45% less fat" campaign. The product's original slogan ("Big on Chocolate!") was expanded in these advertisements to "Big on Chocolate, Not on Fat!"

Most recently, the bar has been pitched to women with the tagline that it is a "Nice, Light Snack" which features "45% less fat" than other chocolate bars.

In Europe, the 3 Musketeers brand name was used for the French version of the Curly Wurly candy bar in the 1970s and 1980s. More Euro-confusion comes from the The Milky Way bar (also from the Mars confectionery company). The American version of the Milky Way bar is made of chocolate-malt nougat topped with caramel and covered with milk chocolate. It is very similar to the Mars bar sold in other countries. But the Milky Way bar sold outside the U.S. (UK, for example) is not topped with caramel and is therefore similar to the American 3 Musketeers bar.

à la mode

Traditional pie à la mode - vanilla ice cream on apple pie.

I had a recent argument with two colleagues about pie à la mode. We did not agree on whether or not the ice cream can be placed beside the pie, and we disagreed on whether or not flavors other than vanilla are acceptable. (FYI: I say yes to both of those.)

But we might also ask why is a dessert with ice cream called à la mode?

Therefore, I was delighted to see that the lofty Oxford Dictionary folks did a post on that last question.

The New York Times credits the spread of this term to Charles Watson Townsend. His 1936 obituary reported that after ordering ice cream with his pie at the Cambridge Hotel, in the village of Cambridge, New York, around 1896, a neighboring diner asked him what this wonder was called. “Pie à la mode,” Townsend replied. When Townsend subsequently requested this dessert at the famous Delmonico’s restaurant in New York City, the staff had no idea what it was. Townsend inquired why such a fashionable venue had never heard of pie à la mode. Bien sûr, the dessert found its way onto Delmonico’s menu and requests for it soon spread.

The French expression translates simply as "in a style or fashion" and, when it came to food, it referred to a traditional recipe for braised beef, which at one time was considered a new fashion.

Oxford says that there was also some evidence that John Gieriet of Switzerland had previously invented the dessert in 1885 while proprietor of the Hotel La Perl in Duluth, Minnesota, where he served the ice cream with warm blueberry pie.