Falsely Minted

What? says Pliny, sharply. The sweets? Falsely minted ? How so?

It's just a theory, I say, placatingly. I'm formulating it right now while I'm talking. Humbugs are generally thought to be flavoured with peppermint. Correct?

Or aniseed, says Pliny.

Or aniseed, you're right! Now say the original boiled humbug sweets were flavoured with aniseed.

Perhaps they were, says Pliny.

And everybody liked them and got really used to them being flavoured with aniseed.

Alright, yes, says Pliny. What then?

Well, then some enterprising sweetmaker starts making humbugs with peppermint flavouring, I say, thinking fast. And some people really like them, and some people don't, and the ones that don't start calling them Hamburgs because they're falsely minted, like the Hamburg coins that are flooding into the country because it's the time of the Napoleonic Wars.

No, says Pliny, that is bad psychology. The popular name of a sweet would not be the name given to it by the people who do not like it. And if your theory is correct, why aren't only the peppermint ones called humbugs?

You're right, I say, crestfallen. And if you think about it, what would the original aniseed ones have been called if they weren't called humbugs? We need to do more thinking.

Thinking? says Pliny. We need to do more research.