Why can you buy lasagne flavour snacks in Thailand but not in Italy? Which country can cope with the hottest chilli? And why do Germans like paprika so much?

Reuben and Peggy’s jobs are not top secret in the way top secret jobs usually are. They don’t have guns, for example – and the grey conference table they sit at is much the same as you’d find in any office in the UK. They even have LinkedIn profiles that tell you their job titles. But this is where things get odd: search the name of the company they work for – a name I have agreed not to print – and you’ll find little information about the work Reuben and Peggy do. You could click through every page on their company’s website and leave with no idea that it creates the most beloved crisp flavours in the world.

Reuben and Peggy are not their real names. Reuben is a snacks development manager and Peggy is a marketer, and they work for a “seasoning house”, a company that manufactures flavourings for crisps.

I meet the pair on Zoom, hoping they can answer a question that has consumed me for years. In January 2019, I was visiting Thailand when I came across a pink packet of Walkers with layered pasta, tomato sauce and cheese pictured on the front. Lasagne flavour, the pack said. You can’t get lasagne Walkers – or Lay’s, as they are known in most of the world – in Italy. Relatively speaking, Italians have a small selection of Lay’s – paprika, bacon, barbecue, salted and Ricetta Campagnola, a “country recipe” flavour featuring tomato, paprika, parsley and onion. I’ve sampled Hawaii-style Poké Bowl crisps in Hungary and chocolate-coated potato snacks in Finland; I have turned away from Sweet Mayo Cheese Pringles in South Korea. So why can you get lasagne flavour Lay’s in Thailand but not in Italy, home of the dish? Who figures out which country gets which crisps? Walkers began manufacturing in Britain in 1948; it was acquired by the US crisp company Frito-Lay in 1989, and today Lay’s are available in more than 200 countries, from Argentina to Vietnam. Some varieties require little explanation – Poutine Lay’s are available only in Canada because the gravy-soaked chips are not Brazil’s national dish. Yet the crisp aisles of the world are stacked with mysteries. Why are Salt & Pepper Pringles favoured by Norwegians, and Oven-Roasted Chicken Doritos only available in Korea? Why does Europe love paprika so much? Pringles, like Lay’s, is not even a century old, yet its tubes are available in 80 countries. Both brands have conquered the world. With billions behind them, surely they know untold secrets about our national tastes and temperaments? Peggy says that to understand why, for example, paprika crisps proliferate on German shelves, you have to understand immigration history. But I don’t hear her secrets until the end of my journey. First, I go to Leicester.

read more: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/dec/02/the-weird-secretive-world-of-crisp-flavours

archive link: https://archive.ph/LS2Uc#selection-1224.0-1224.1