Mantecol
Mantecol is the brand name of a typical dessert of the cuisine of Argentina, a sort of semi-soft nougat made from peanut butter. It was originally created and marketed in the 1940s by the confectionery company Georgalos, founded by a Greek immigrant, Miguel Georgalos, who took the inspiration in a dessert of Greek cuisine, the "halva". Mantecol is very popular in Argentina, where it is used as daily candy (especially between the months of December and February), as well as classic dessert of the Christmas table. Mantecol is manufactured by Mondelez at the Cadbury plant in Victoria, Buenos  Aires. History. Roots of the dessert can be traced to 1882 in Istanbul, where Juan Georgalos elaborated bread and traded cereals. His son Miguel was expelled (like many other Greeks) from Istanbul in 1921 after a Turkish Government decree, arriving in Poland where he had some relatives. Those people manufactured and sold halva and taught Miguel Georgalos how to prepare it. Before World War II started, Georgalos emigrated to Argentina, where he opened a factory in Floresta, Buenos Aires, in 1941, on the same land where the former All Boys venue was located. Miguel named his business "La Greco Argentina  (The Greek-Argentine"), being renamed to "Georgalos Hermanos" when the rest of the family arrived in the country. Miguel made some changes to the original halva recipe to suit the local customers' taste. As he was not able to find sesame in Argentina, he replaced it with peanuts. The name "Mantecol" came after a neighbor of Georgalos gave her opinion about the dessert, saying that it "tasted like butter" ("manteca" in Spanish). At first, Mantecol was sold in 1 and 3kg packages, then being marketed in smaller packets. After the Argentine economic crisis of 2001, the company sold the  rights of the candy to Cadbury Stani (Argentine subsidiary of Cadbury Schweppes) for US$22.5 million who modified the recipe adding glucose syrup, hydrogenated vegetable oil, egg-white, and vanilla. When U.S.-based company Kraft Foods Inc. acquired Cadbury in 2010, Mantecol became one of its brands. Two years later, Kraft split its business into two new companies, one of them, Mondelez International, took over Cadbury and subsequently the Mantecol brand and products. On the other hand, when in 2008 the "non-competition clause" expired, Georgalos begun, once again, production with the original recipe under the brand "Nucrem". Three years after  the launch, it helped Georgalos to own 30% of the confectionery market. Composition. The original recipe requires the following ingredients: Advertising. Since its inception, Mantecol was strongly advertised to promote the product. Georgalos joined forces with artist and animator Manuel García Ferré to make the advertisements. The company also launched several campaigns to promote Mantecol focusing on students, where the confection became popular.