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4051
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Social Responsibilty
Mrs Ball's Foundation
Mrs Ball's is deeply committed to the South African democracy and good corporate citizenship. Core to the brands philosophy is a desire to improve the quality of life of all South Africans. The Mrs Ball's Foundation, established in 1995, is the dedicated legal vehicle through which the brand and its major associates direct their social giving to sound development initiatives. The Foundation gives Unilever the opportunity to have a formal and co-ordinated programme of purposeful and effective corporate social investment. It responds to development needs in an informed and considered way, applying Unilevers value-driven approach and commitment to excellence in community investment.
Unilever contribute 1% of their after tax profits to the Mrs Ball's Foundation. This is supplemented by income from certain investments held by the Foundation. A Board of Trustees that includes company executives and community representatives governs the Foundation. Its activities are administered by a not-for-profit corporate social investment consultancy which reviews each request made to the Foundation, puts forward recommendations for consideration to group company Fund Committees and Trustees and ensures that proper accounting and reporting is adhered to by projects once assistance has been approved.
Recipe - Bobotie
Serves 6
Cooking time: +/- 45 minutesIngredients
65 ml butter or margarine
3 onions
30 ml ground ginger
30 ml soft brown sugar
15 ml mild curry powder
15 ml turmeric
200 g soya mince, mutton flavour
1 litre water
15 ml minestrone soup powder
150 ml seedless raisins
60 ml Original Mrs Balls Chutney
30 ml smooth apricot Jam
30 ml grape vinegar
30 ml Worcestershire sauce
4 slices bread, crumbled
Topping
375 ml milk
2 extra-large eggs
fresh lemon leaves(garnish)
Method:
Melt the butter and fry the onions until soft and fragrant.
Add the ginger, sugar, curry powder and turmeric and fry for another minute.
Add the soya mince, pour over the water and add all the remaining ingredients except the breadcrumbs and topping ingredients.
Bring to the boil, reduce the temperature slightly and simmer for about 15 minutes until the soya mince is cooked. Stir occasionally.
Cool slightly before adding the breadcrumbs.
Season to taste with salt and pepper and spoon into an ovenproof dish. Spread evenly.
Preheat the oven to 180 ºC.
Beat the milk and eggs together and pour over the mince mixture.
Arrange the lemon leaves on top and bake the bobotie for about 45 minutes until set.
Serve with yellow rice and banana and coconut sambals.
Recipe - Potato Treats
Ingredients
2 x 200 g potatoes, washed
STILTON FILLING
85 g Stilton cheese, crumbled
1 handful of fresh watercress, coarsley chopped
25 ml Mrs Balls Peach chutney
Method:
Prick the potatoes with a fork twice and place on paper towels in a microwave oven.
Microwave on HIGH for eight minutes and let the potatoes rest for one minute before touching them.
Cut a cross in the top of each and squeeze to open them up.
Add the filling.
Recipe - Basic Burgers
Serves 4
Ingredients
flour for dusting (optional)
500 g minced chicken or turkey or lean beef mince
1 large onion, very finely chopped
125 ml rolled oats or crumbled wholewheat bread (crusts removed)
salt, milled pepper and garlic powder
15 ml each tomato and Worcestershire sauce
30 ml Original or Chilli Mrs Balls Chutney
oil for frying (optional)
Method:
Mix all ingredients together and shape into patties. Heat grill or, if frying, heat oil. If frying, dust burgers lightly with flour just before cooking. Fry or grill on both sides, until done to taste. Serve immediately.
TOTAL KILOJOULE COUNT: 4 940 kJ (1 180 Cal). A portion: 1 235 kJ (295 Cal).
National Skirt Extension
If the length of skirts on ladies toilet signs had you hot under the collar, don’t fret - its part of a viral advertising campaign for Mrs. Balls Chutney.
Julie Maunder, an art director at advertising firm DDB SA, said the campaign has elicited 6,000 disgruntled voice messages left on a fake call centre number, 360,000 clicks on the campaign website www.n-s-e-p.co.za, thousands of incredulous emails and 4000 hits on their Youtube video in a matter of days. The campaign has featured on over 200 blogs in 23 countries and is rumoured to be googled more than the Joost van der Westhuizen sex tape.
"We wanted to create a community of interest around the product. People are so sensitive about change these days - changing street names, changing government. The idea was to get people riled up about changing something for no reason.
Check out the t.v advert played earlier this year that created this huge uproar!
Click here!
Media
Click here!
Products
- Original Recipe
- Peach
- Chilli
- Light
History
For South Africans abroad, there’s nothing quite like the taste of the mother country to bring on a wave of homesickness. Ouma rusks, Chappies bubble gum, biltong and boerewors are all sold in speciality shops across the world for the South African expat community. And probably the most iconic taste of all is that of Mrs HS Ball’s Chutney.
Manufactured in Johannesburg and exported to the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Germany, the chutney is a slightly sweet and spicy sauce made from apricots and peaches.
It’s an essential accompaniment to a good curry or braai, it’s great on cheese sandwiches, and bobotie is unthinkable without it.
Like many icons, it has its mythology, not all of which is true. According to Desmond Ball, the great-grandson of the original Mrs HS Ball, the real story is a little different from the version to be found on Unilever’s website.
According to Ball, it all started in 1852 when Henry James Adkins married Elizabeth Sarah Spalding in King William’s Town, settling in the nearby village of Fort Jackson to run a general dealership. He was a pretty humble man, Desmond says, not a ship’s captain, as the Unilever website claims, and the couple were never romantically shipwrecked together.
Sarah Adkins started making chutney commercially in about 1870. But she was no great shakes at brand-building, burdening her delicious condiment with the label, “Mrs Henry Adkins Senior, Colonial Chutney Manufacturer, Fort Jackson, Cape Colony.”
The Adkinses had seven sons and four daughters, one of whom was Amelia. Amelia married Herbert Saddleton Ball, a superintendent on the railways, and they moved to Johannesburg - taking her mother’s chutney recipe with her.
On HS Ball’s retirement the family moved to Cape Town, where Amelia started producing her mother’s chutney on a home-industry scale.
“She was a tough old cookie,” says Desmond. “She had seven children, Herbert Saddleton Junior, Thomas, Clemm, Henry (who was called Harry), Harold (who was not called Harry), Ernest, and Mildred – the only daughter. Thomas died young.”
The Balls moved to the pretty coastal town of Fish Hoek, building or buying four houses within walking distance of each other. Mr and Mrs Ball senior lived in one, and sons Harold, Harry and Ernest in the others with their families. Here Mrs Ball started increasing her production. Meanwhile, her sister Florence and brother Harold carried on making Adkins Chutney, which they had inherited from their mother.
“It caused quite a lot of strife,” says Desmond. “Here were these two sisters, both making chutney, in direct competition with each other.”
The power of marketing
Amelia’s husband would take a few bottles every day by train into Cape Town to sell. It was on one of these sales trips that he met Fred Metter, a food importer. Metter started marketing the chutney, and improved sales so much that production could not be accommodated in the Fish Hoek house. The factory was moved three times, each time to bigger premises, eventually ending up in Diep River.
The youngest son, Herbert Saddleton Junior, sold his share of the business to Metter, who again increased sales to such an extent that the factory moved for the last time to bigger premises in Retreat. But it remained a family business, with the three brothers Harry, Harold and Ernest retaining their share.
“I used to go to the factory and work in the holidays,” says Desmond Ball. “Edward Ball, my uncle, was the manager. He is now 82. And he made chutney from the time he left school. That’s all he ever did.
“In those days we only made the original recipe. There was only one flavour. But my uncle Harry liked things with a bit of a bite. I remember him crushing a chilli and putting it into the chutney to make it a bit hotter and that’s how Mrs Ball’s Hot Chutney came about.
“Then Fred Metter decided that peach chutney would sell,” says Ball. “So we added that to the line-up. It’s milder and sweeter.
“When the main shareholders started getting on a bit, they sold the business to Brooke Bond Oxo, who later sold it to Unilever Foods, who still own the brand today.”
Meantime Florence and Harold had sold Adkins Chutney to Warne Bros, who later sold it to Iona Products, and it finally went out of production in the 1970s. It was all a question of marketing. Same recipe, same chutney, but different brands. Adkins has been lost to memory, and Mrs Ball’s is a household name across the world.
Amelia Ball died on 11 November 1962, at the age of 97. But her name lives on – on the millions of Mrs HS Ball’s Chutney labels. Her descendants are determined to keep the legend alive.
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