Quality Street The Purple One Cracker - 252g

Quality Street has been part of a British Christmas for generations: the tin on the coffee table, the rustle of wrappers during the film, the slow excavation down to the last few. The Purple One is the one people dig for, which tells you everything about its standing.

Spend a Christmas in Canada and it is the small things you notice missing. The cracker on the plate, the purple wrapper, the bit of family politics over who got the last one. People search for this because it brings that whole sofa scene back in one go.

It is a cracker-shaped pack, so it sits nicely on a dinner plate, under the tree or in the top of a stocking. Keep it somewhere cool and away from the radiator until it is needed, which, realistically, will not be long.

It goes well alongside a full Quality Street tin for the rest of the household, or with the other bits of British Christmas food that make the day feel right: the selection boxes, the crackers, the Boxing Day cupboard that never quite empties.