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, although Hershey’s process is a closely guarded secret, “expertsspeculate that Hershey’s puts its milk through controlled lipolysis,” causing the fatty acids in the milk to break down. This produces “butyric acid, also found in Parmesan cheese and the spit-up of babies . . . a distinctive tang that Americans . . . now expect in chocolate.” To each his own.
    For most people, the preference for one brand or snack over another comes down to childhood tastes and the memories associated with them. The English may never become converts to Hershey’s chocolate, and Americans may never embrace Marmite. But Americans might want to make a habit of
moreish
. I promise not to make fun of anyone borrowing this Britishism—as long as you save some M&M’s for me.

Mufti
    In which we find out why the English love uniforms so much.
    M ama, that girl has a red cardigan! And that one, and that one . . .” I explain why most of the children in our neighborhood always seem to be wearing the same outfit: It is their school uniform. My three-year-old looks quizzical. “But what’s ‘uniform’?” As we keep walking toward Edgware Road—past the children in their red jackets and cardigans; past the policemen in their helmets and the street cleaners in yellow reflective vests; past the grocery store where the workers all wear green smocks; past the
shisha
cafés where women in hijab sit drinking tea—I realize that almost everyone is wearing a uniform. Around here, you need a word to describe the state of
not
being in uniform. And the English have one:
mufti
.
    Mufti
has been the slang term for plain clothes in the British Army for more than two hundred years. Army officers, in their downtime, often wore dressing gowns, smoking caps, and slippers that resembled the traditional dress of a Muslim cleric. A mufti is an expert in Islamic law who is entitled to rule on religious matters, for example issuing a fatwa. This is an odd juxtaposition, to say the least, but
mufti
is just one of many words the English borrowed from India. A comprehensive list can be found in Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell’s
Hobson-Jobson
:
Being a Glossary of Anglo-Indian Colloquial Words and Phrases and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive
(1886). Other
Hobson-Jobson
words include
khaki
,
pyjamas
,
veranda
,
loot
,
pukka
(genuine),
shampoo
,
doolally
(crazy), and
jungle
.
    Many
Hobson-Jobson
words are used by Americans, too, often without any idea of their history.
Hobson-Jobson
’s authors spent fourteen years compiling their book, and, as Kate Teltscher notes in her introduction to the latest edition, they were in close correspondence with James Murray, the editor of the ten-volume
New English Dictionary
(later to be renamed the
Oxford English Dictionary
). Many of Yule and Burnell’s definitions went straight into Murray’s masterwork, with the result that there are around five hundred citations of
Hobson-Jobson
in today’s
OED
. So transformed has English been by these loaned words from India that it is possible to make a game of it, as two characters (Flora Crewe, an English poet, and Nirad Das, an Indian artist) do in Tom Stoppard’s play
Indian Ink
.
    FLORA: While having tiffin on the veranda of my bungalow I spilled kedgeree on my dungarees and had to go to the gymkhana in my pajamas looking like a coolie.
    DAS: I was buying chutney in the bazaar when a thug escaped from the choky and killed a box-wallah for his loot, creating a hullabaloo and landing himself in the mulligatawny.
    FLORA: I went doolally at the durbar and was sent back to Blighty in a dooley feeling rather dikki with a cup of char and a chit for a chotapeg.
    DAS: Yes, and the burra sahib who looked so pukka in his topee sent a coolie to the memsahib—
    FLORA: No, no. You can’t have memsahib
and
sahib, that’s cheating—and anyway I’ve already said coolie.
    DAS: I concede, Miss Crewe. You are the Hobson-Jobson