Crosse & Blackwell is the original mayonnaise with the rich heritage and tangy taste that has endeared itself to consumers for over 100 years. Recently voted number 3 in SAARF survey of the Top 10 brands personally consumed by South Africans - Crosse & Blackwell is deeply entrenched in the consumer's kitchen as a trusted friend to the potato or Sunday lunch. Cross & Blackwell holds fairly traditional values and believes in the importance of families and community.

 

Crosse & Blackwell is the original mayonnaise with the rich heritage and tangy taste that has endeared itself to consumers for over 100 years. Recently voted number 3 in SAARF survey of the Top 10 brands personally consumed by South Africans - Crosse & Blackwell is deeply entrenched in the consumer's kitchen as a trusted friend to the potato or Sunday lunch. Cross & Blackwell holds fairly traditional values and believes in the importance of families and community.

According to Mrs HS Ball's great-grandson Desmond Ball, it all started in 1852 when Hanry 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. 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. The Balls moved to the pretty coastal town of Fish Hoek, where Mrs Ball started increasing her production. Over time the sales improved 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. 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.