That's such a common one! It's even worse that there's a chocolate bar in the UK called "Turkish Delight" which is nothing like the proper "Lokum". It's not very pleasant :)
Turkish delight (not Cadbury's chocolate bar) is delicious.
The chocolate bar is just crap mass-produced Turkish delight wrapped in chocolate. I agree it's not very pleasant, but I don't know what else one could expect.
It's not that real-world Turkish delight is bad, per se, so much as that Lewis makes it sound so life-changingly incredible that the real-world version is bound to disappoint by comparison.
On the one hand, it was mind-numbingly delicious because of the White Witch's magic making it incredibly addictive, rather than simply the virtue of being Turkish delight.
But why the choice of Turkish delight? A combination of status-signalling and unavailability [1] (post-WW2 sugar-rationing was still in effect when the book was written).
When my wife's parents come visit us from Moldova they usually bring over a box of Turkish Delight; it's always unveiled with cries of "Turkish Delight for the young prince! Ha ha ha!"
I have a strong memory of Harry being banished to his room and he only manages to get some stale bread and cheese. I can't remember which book it was, but thinking maybe Chamber of Secrets (or at least one of the first three). I remember at the time going and getting some stale bread and cheese. (it wasn't necessarily presented as a good thing in the book, but somehow I found it appealing).
Because Harry was forced into eating that by the Dursleys! Why would you want to eat something Harry didn't even want to eat? If you had an obsession with treacle or coffee cake or one of the many other delights Harry enjoyed at Hogwarts are at the Weasley's, I'd understand your motives better!
