From Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone · 2001 · Reconstructed
Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans
Serve when
Serve a full mixed handful, no peeking at the colours — the whole point is not knowing if you've got chocolate or tripe until you bite down.
In the movie
Theatrical
- 00:37:16 On the Hogwarts Express, Ron warns Harry that Bertie Bott's beans really do mean every flavour — 'chocolate, and peppermint, and also spinach, liver, and tripe' — before they tuck into a box together. Later, in the hospital wing, Dumbledore tries his luck with one hoping for toffee and gets a face-full of earwax instead.
Bertie Bott's is the joke that keeps giving across the whole series, and this film sets it up perfectly: Ron's deadpan warning ("they mean every flavour") on the train pays off when Dumbledore himself, of all people, gets caught out by an earwax bean at Harry's bedside. It's wizarding candy at its funniest — a treat that's genuinely a gamble every time, and the film trusts a hundred-year-old headmaster to sell the punchline just as well as an eleven-year-old would.
Ingredients
- For the 'normal' flavours:
- For the 'unfortunate' flavours:
Method
- Cook the sugar, corn syrup, and water to soft-ball stage — 235–240°F on a candy thermometer — then divide the syrup into small batches, one per flavour you're making.
- Flavour and colour each batch separately: bright, obvious colours for the pleasant flavours, and deliberately ordinary or misleading colours for the unfortunate ones — the whole gag is not being able to tell from looking.
- Drop small rounds onto parchment or into bean molds and let them firm up.
- Once set, mix all the flavours together in one bowl so nobody can sort them by sight.
- Serve in a proper box, and make whoever's eating call out the flavour after each one — dignity optional.
Beyond the recipe
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