Nestlé KitKat Chunky Giant Carton - 320g

Born in York, still in York

Kit Kat began life in 1935 as Rowntree's "Chocolate Crisp", a four-finger wafer bar, and was renamed Kit Kat within a couple of years. Sensible call. Rowntree's goes back further still: in 1862 Henry Isaac Rowntree bought a cocoa and chocolate business in York. And here is the bit that makes people smile: Kit Kat is still produced at Nestlé's factory on Haxby Road in York. Same city. Different century. Same argument about how to eat one.

A Swiss pharmacist walks into Yorkshire

The Nestlé half starts with Henri Nestlé, a German-born pharmacist who settled in Vevey, Switzerland, and developed a powdered milk-based infant food, Farine Lactée, in 1867. In 1905 his firm merged with the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company to form the modern Nestlé. Over in Yorkshire, Mackintosh's merged with Rowntree's in 1969 to form Rowntree Mackintosh, and in 1988 Nestlé bought it, bringing Kit Kat, Quality Street, Smarties, Rolo and Aero into its British portfolio. Not a bad afternoon's shopping.

Good company in the cupboard

Kit Kat keeps respectable company. Smarties were introduced by Rowntree's in 1937, and Dairy Box was launched by Rowntree's in the 1930s as a boxed chocolate assortment. Quality Street was launched in 1936 by Mackintosh's of Halifax, West Yorkshire, its name taken from a J. M. Barrie play of the same name. Still, the Kit Kat is the everyday one: the desk drawer, the kettle on, the last piece that somebody swears they did not take.