Turkish Delight--Not So Delightful After All?

I smiled as I was reading the article "The Lion, the Witch, and the Really Foul Candy" and the writer's reaction to her first taste of Turkish Delight:

"And so, with anticipation, I took a bite of the Turkish Delight. And a second later, spat it into my hand. It tasted like soap rolled in plaster dust, or like a lump of Renuzit air freshener: The texture was both waxy and filling-looseningly chewy. This … this? ... was the sweetmeat that led Edmund to betray his siblings and doomed Aslan to death on a stone slab?"

This must be the reaction of 99% of Americans who rhapsodized over the thought of Turkish Delight as children reading C.S. Lewis, only to finally try Turkish Delight as an adult and find it less than impressive! But I think it's pretty much an inevitable response, because every child who read The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe projected onto that mystical candy the penultimate taste she could imagine. (For example, being the chocaholic I am, I always assumed as a child that Turkish Delight must be made of chocolate.) In the end, it's less about how Turkish Delight actually tastes and more about how we expect it to taste.

It was only years and years later, when I was having tea with a friend who had lived in Turkey and married a Turkish man, that I actually tasted authentic Turkish Delight. And it was...well, it wasn't made of chocolate! Nevertheless, I liked it. Oddly chewy, dusted with powdery sugar, and made of an array of peculiar flavors (rosewater, dates, mint, lemon, almond, hazelnut, etc.) it was--for all its strangeness--the perfect accompaniment to afternoon tea.

I still like it and buy it whenever I go to the Middle Eastern grocery store/bakery. But pretty much every other person I've introduced it to has had the "Renuzit air freshener" reaction! Oh, well...to each his own!