The chef in charge of dreaming up the new flavours for Norfolk-made Kettle Chips has revealed some of the more bizarre varieties which failed to make the grade.
Kettle Chips' innovation chef Phil Hovey whose job it is to come up with new exciting flavours - and taste test them - has revealed two ideas he had which never got off the ground.
One was fried egg flavour crisps and the other - sausage roll.
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"I spend a lot of time looking at what foods are doing well and I really liked the idea of either fried egg or sausage roll but when I tried them out on the team, they didn't do very well.
"I was then tasked with coming up with a luxury flavour for Christmas and thought I can't quite do caviar so that's what gave me the idea of doing the truffled cheese and sparkling wine."
Phil took over at Kettle from head chef Chris Barnard when he retired in 2016 after working for 27 years and like him, trained at Norwich City College. He then worked at the former Adlard's restaurant and the Wine Cellar in Norwich. Since he joined he has come up with some of Kettle's more unusual varieties such as apple with Norfolk pork sausage and beetroot with goat's cheese and caramelised onion.
But he admits that in fact the most popular remains a little more basic - the lightly salted and also the sea salt and balsamic vinegar.
"They remain our best-sellers," he said. He's recently teamed up with Winbirri vineyard owner Lee Dyer to create the Christmas special, using the 2014 vintage sparkling wine to add a little fizz.
"The truffled cheese gives you a very earthy note with a taste of the creamy cheese that's also nutty but with acidity and a little fizz from the sparkling wine."
Lee, who owns a vineyard at Surlingham, near Norwich, said: "It's two Norfolk companies coming together, even the raw ingredients, the potatoes are grown locally so it seemed like the perfect union." He said the sparkling wine was from grapes processed over five years but that weather conditions had been perfect over the last two years with hot, dry summers followed by autumn rainfall.
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