The deep fried Mars bar

Of all the things people have done to a Mars bar, dipping it in batter and frying it in a chip shop fryer is the one the world remembers.

Where it started

The origins are disputed. One claim is that John Davie invented the deep fried Mars bar in 1992 at the Haven chip bar, now called the Carron, in Stonehaven, a small town on the north east coast of Scotland near Aberdeen. Not everyone agrees. A former chip shop owner in Banff said he had sold fried Mars bars in the 1980s, copying the idea from a shop in Buckie on the Moray Firth coast that has since closed.

How the story spread

On 23 August 1995 the Aberdeen Evening Express reported that deep fried Mars bars had become the summer's hit at the Stonehaven chip shop, snapped up by teenagers during the school holidays. A Mars spokesperson told the paper it was the most unusual way the company had come across of enjoying a Mars bar. The next day the Daily Record ran the story too, and called it Scotland's craziest takeaway.

From there it went everywhere. Newspapers across Britain, and then the world, used the deep fried Mars bar as shorthand for an unhealthy Scottish diet. In 1998 a Canadian newspaper joked that Britain's motto was out of the frying pan and into the deep fryer.

The Lancet investigates

After the American chat show host Jay Leno mentioned it in 2004, the medical journal The Lancet asked the University of Dundee to find out whether the deep fried Mars bar was a real Scottish habit or a myth. The researchers telephoned 627 fish and chip shops in Scotland. Of the shops that answered, 22% sold deep fried Mars bars, and another 17% had sold them in the past. The average shop sold 23 a week, although ten shops sold between 50 and 200. The average price was 60p, and 76% were bought by children. Many shops that did not sell them said the chocolate turned their frying oil black.

Mars is not amused

In 2012 the Carron applied for protected food name status for the deep fried Mars bar. Mars wrote to the shop asking it to make clear that deep frying its bars was not authorised or endorsed by Mars, and an agreed disclaimer went up in the shop and on the menu. That year the Carron estimated it was selling 100 to 150 a week, 70% of them to visitors who had come because of the dish's reputation.

The fried chocolate family

The idea spread. A Scottish chef put deep fried Mars bars on the menu of a restaurant in Paris in 2000, a chip shop in Duns offers deep fried Creme Eggs at Easter, deep fried Snickers turn up at American state fairs, and Nigella Lawson published a recipe for a deep fried Bounty in 1999.

If you would rather keep your Mars bar out of the fryer, see how to melt Mars bars for gentler ideas, and Forrest Mars and the Mars bar for how the bar itself began.

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