Certs

[Lorelai sits on the bed looking through her purse while Rory is in the bathroom.]
LORELAI: Ohh, ahhh, I struck gold! [pulling something out of her purse]
RORY: What is it?
LORELAI: Certs.

Certs is a brand of breath mint and candy made by Mondelēz International since 1956. One of the first mints to be marketed in the US, they are a fixture at drug stores and convenience stores. Despite being mints, they don’t contain any actual mint, just artificial mint flavouring, with their green colour coming from copper.

Cantaloupe

[Lorelai and Sookie are sitting down drinking coffee.]
LORELAI: I think I know what an aneurysm feels like before you have it.
SOOKIE: Like a baseball the size of a cantaloupe in your head.

The North American cantaloupe (C. melo var reticulatus) is actually a muskmelon; it has orange flesh and a light grey rind with a “net like” appearance. It is different from the European cantaloupe (C. melo var cantalupensis), whose rind is grey-green and ribbed. Cantaloupes are also known as rockmelon, sweet melon, or spansek in different part sof the world.

This is the second time that aneurysms have been mentioned – Emily said she thought Lorelai might have given her one in Cinnamon’s Wake.

Queen Victoria

MICHEL: This is a drag club.
SOOKIE: It’s called the Queen Victoria. What did you expect, tea and crumpets?

Victoria, born Alexandrina Victoria (1819-1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1837 until her death. She became a national icon, and is identified with standards of strict morality that we still refer to as “Victorian”. Hr reign of more than 63 years was longer than any other of her predecessors, and is known as the Victorian Era, a period of industrial, scientific and cultural change in the UK, coupled with a great expansion of the British Empire.

Michel seems put out that he has been taken to a drag club, perhaps another signal that he was originally not presented as a gay character. Sookie mentions tea and crumpets as a favourite afternoon snack of the Victorian era (and still popular today).

The Queen Victoria is a fictional drag club. In real life there is a gay bar in Hartford where you can see drag shows, but it is not actually a drag club per se. The sign outside the Queen Victoria identifies it as a “bar and grill” (unless that is the place next door) and in real life, Hartford has a couple of bars and cafes that have regular drag shows.

Mocha Crunch Cream

The cake which Fran brings out, apparently helping Rory to decide that stealing from little old ladies is a good thing.

Mocha is a combination of chocolate and coffee, and this cake is a chocolate one filled with mocha buttercream, and decorated with nuts to give it the necessary “crunch”. No wonder that a caffeine-laden cake filled with coffee is what finally convinces Rory to abandon any thoughts of ethical behaviour when it comes to free cakes.

Worcestershire sauce

LORELAI: But in spite of all that, I was kind of thinking, and you don’t have to, that maybe you could pull yourself away for a second.
LUKE: Ah, well I …
LORELAI: I mean, you know, finish the ketchup tonight, but maybe leave the Worcestershire sauce for tomorrow.

Worcestershire sauce, often just called Worcester sauce, is a fermented liquid condiment first created in the 1830s by English chemists John Lea and William Perrins, who went on to form the company Lea & Perrins, with the sauce first being sold to the public in 1838. Similar fermented anchovy sauces had been made since the 18^th century in England, and fermented fish sauces go back to the Roman Empire. Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce is now owned by Heinz, and other companies make it as well.

Non-Americans may be bemused by Lorelai’s pronunciation of the sauce’s name, as she says each syllable phonetically: war-SESS-ter-shy-er sauce, rather than the more usual WOOS-tuh-sheer sauce, or just WOOS-tuh sauce.

Heinz

LUKE: Ah, well, I just got kinda busy here.
LORELAI: Oh, yes, I can see that. Boy, they keep making that ketchup slower and slower, huh?
LUKE: It’s the Heinz family’s little joke.

The H.J. Heinz company, usually just known as Heinz, is an American food processing company founded by Henry John Heinz in 1869. They merged with Kraft Foods in 2015. The company makes thousands of products and sells them in over 200 countries around the world. Heinz makes the most popular ketchup (tomato sauce) in the US, with more than half the market share.

Kit Kat Bar

RORY: But I don’t want you to feel unimportant, because believe me, you’re not.
DEAN: I’m glad.
RORY: I mean it. The only way you could be more important to me is if you had a Kit Kat bar growing out of your head.

Kit Kat is a chocolate covered wafer bar that comes in several “fingers” of wafer that you break off. It was created by Rowntree’s, a UK comapny, who had several chocolate products called Kit Cat or Kit Kat, until a worker suggested making a snack that a man could take to work in his lunch box.

The Kit Kat as we know it was first made in 1935, and it has been produced by Nestlé since 1988. In the US, Kit Kat is made by the H.B. Reese Candy Company, a division of The Hershey Company.

Boca Burger

MICHEL: Go back to the cooking room.
SOOKIE: Not until you eat these and tell me what you think!
MICHEL: Sookie! I only eat fifteen hundred calories a day. If I eat that, I cannot have my Boca Burger later.

Boca Burger is a vegetarian burger patty made from soy protein and wheat gluten, first manufactured in 1979. Boca Burger products have been owned by Kraft Foods since 2000.

We learn here that Michel eats only 1500 calories a day. One Boca Burger has around 70 calories, while macaroon has over 400 calories and a chocolate praline cookie over 300. Clearly if Michel eats both cookies, as Sookie wants him to, he’s going to have to give up more than a Boca Burger – he will have eaten around half of his daily calorie intake on just two cookies!

Maybe he’s including the bread and salad to accompany the patty, although even that would only be around 400 calories. Or maybe he is calculating the calories of just one bite from each cookie, since he would only need a taste of each to decide which one he prefers.

1500 calories a day is about the lowest amount of food recommended for a man, and it probably wouldn’t be recommended long term, especially for someone who’s already a healthy weight. Even men on calorie restriction diets usually eat around 1800 calories a day, and still lose weight doing so. We never actually see Michel lose much weight on his strict diet, so maybe he’s having a few cheat days.

Lorelai seems to eat as much as she wants while remaining slim, while poor old Michel apparently starves himself just to maintain a normal weight.

Macaroons and Chocolate Pralines

SOOKIE: Just pick a cookie.
MICHEL: I don’t want to.
SOOKIE: Michel, for the rest of their lives, Lorelai and Max are gonna think back on their engagement party and they’re gonna talk about three things. They’re gonna talk about the friends who came, and that special song they danced to, and the cookies that they ate.
MICHEL: Their world is very small, isn’t it?
SOOKIE: Macaroons or chocolate pralines?

Macaroons are small biscuits originating from Italy, and made since medieval times. They are typically made from ground almonds and egg whites, and are light and fluffy with a crisp outer coating. Macaroons made with coconut are common in both the UK and US, and they are a favourite treat for the Jewish holiday of Passover.

Chocolate praline cookies are chocolate biscuits that are often filled with nuts such as pecans, walnuts, or almonds, and may be covered in a rich chocolate icing or filled with chocolate paste.

We learn later in the episode that Sookie decided on the macaroons. The one she is showing Michel does not look like the standard Italian macaroon, as it is very large with pink icing on it. These massive decorated macaroons are an American interpretation of the Italian biscuit.

Froot Loops

LORELAI: Okay, well, I’m not gonna be home late. And listen, I would reconsider calling Dean. It’s not his fault that you’re so fabulous he can’t think about anything else.
RORY: Bye Mom.
LORELAI: I mean, he just sits in his room, eating Froot Loops out of the box, saying your name over and over and over.

Froot Loops are a brand of breakfast cereal made by Kellogg’s since 1963, consisting of sugary, flavoured and coloured ring-shaped cereal pieces. They don’t actually have any fruit in them.