Silver foil

Tin foil?

gold foil?

gold leaf, sold in sheets (?)

Makes you wonder if they have Google in the UK.

Have to (reluctantly) agree with the OP here. The foil (often tissue backed aluminium?) in cigarette packets and chocolate bars was commonly known as silver foil by my parent's generation at least. I doubt it was ever anything but a description of the colour.

That's a reasonable question, though perhaps possible to answer for yourself with a bit of Googling.

Silver foil made of real silver was the third hit for "silver foil" on Google for me:

It seems highly unlikely that real silver foil was every used in normal circustances for wrapping or cooking food because of the high cost for a thickness strong enough to be useful. This does not rule out its use for decoration in the way that gold leaf can be used. Indeed, this is apparently what vark is.

"Silver foil" in BrE seems similar to AmE "tinfoil" (though perhaps less common), including the understanding that the metal is really probably aluminium. I normally just say "foil".

WIWAL we used to say "silver paper" for the stuff sweets like Easter eggs were wrapped in. Perhaps this was, by rights, reserved for the version that had a paper backing, but we used it for thin unbacked foil as well.

To me, it just refers to the colour.

When thin sheets of actual silver are used for decoration it is known as "silver leaf". Similarly with "gold leaf".

I didn't know, or had forgotten, this:

Vark (Redirected from Silver foil)

Vark, also called varak (also silver leaf, German paper), is any leaf composed of pure metals, typically silver but sometimes gold, used on South Asian sweets.

We called it 'silver paper' but as you say it was just down to the colour.

I can remember separating the foil from the paper and rolling the foil into balls for the war effort (WWII). The foil-on-paper came from cigarette packages, and almost everyone smoked in those days.

A fingernail could start the separation and the foil could be easily stripped off the paper. You can't do that with the foil-on-paper now used.

Foil balls, flattened cans, and string were all saved until collected for the war effort.

"Silver paper" is the more common British term for aluminium foil, as used to wrap chocolate bars, and has never been made of silver.

Here in US I once found a small unopened bottle of liquor containing flakes of gold foil. I drank it and don't recall anything special except the sparkly appearance.

The local supermarkets sell Vodka with gold leaf pieces in.

SteveW

Ooh, sparkly puke. :-)

Absolutely right! I misremembered - silver paper it was.

Also, sparkly poo, too ;)

That was before my time.

The single use that I remember for silver foil was to make a tiny rocket.

You would wrap the silver tightly around the head and top of a paper match, with a pin laid along one side of the match; withdraw the pin to leave an exhaust channel; balance the rocket somewhere; hold a lit match under the wrapped matchhead and watch it zip away when the wrapped match ignited.

That was probably safer as an outdoor sport. In my case, it was mainly worth doing to see if it worked.

On Wed, 08 Nov 2017 00:19:33 -0000, "James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in

It refers to the color. Here in the U.S., it's actually made aluminum.

We use the superior aluminium.

Prick.