See sugars, unrefined.
See zalabiya.
See fruit preserves.
Japan is the largest confectionery market in Asia, famous for its traditional “Japanese sweets” (wagashi). It is also the largest consumer of chocolate in Asia. The perception that Japanese prefer confections that are less sweet than Western varieties is supported by the country’s relatively low rate of sugar consumption.
Historical Overview
The history of Japanese confectionery begins with the “cookies” made in the prehistoric Jōmon period (10,000–400 b.c.e.). Walnuts, chestnuts, acorns, and horse chestnuts were important to the diet of the hunter-gatherer Jōmon people. Their “cookie” recipes entailed pounding nuts, kneading in meats, and grilling the confections on hot rocks near fire pits. The Jōmon cookie has disappeared, but the Japanese word for “sweets” (kashi), designating all types of confections today, literally means “nuts and fruits,” which were the only “sweets” available to most of the population until the seventeenth century.
Fundamental ingredients for traditional Japanese confectionery, namely, rice, azuki beans, wheat, and millets, arrived from the continent in the Yayoi period (400 b.c.e.–300 c.e.). See azuki beans. Steaming proved the best way to prepare glutinous varieties of rice and millets, which could be formed into small cakes (mochi) either by hand or by mashing in a mortar with a pestle. See mochi. A more labor-intensive process involved pounding grains into flours and using the dough to make dumplings. See dango.
Production of flour foods advanced in the seventh through ninth centuries with the arrival of “Chinese sweets” (tōgashi) made from dough of rice and wheat flour formed into shapes and fried in vegetable oil. Documentation from the Heian period (794–1185) suggests that tōgashi had curious names and fanciful designs, such as Tied Rope, Fat Worm, Plum Branch, Taro Bud, and one sweet resembling a bellybutton. Some were flavored with cinnamon; others had stuffings of duck and vegetables. Tōgashi were occasionally sweetened with honey or with a decoction made from the sweet arrowroot vine (amazura). One tōgashi called sakubei may have been the first noodle made in Japan: it was eaten boiled and topped with vinegar, miso, or azuki. Tōgashi were served at courtly banquets with other dishes rather than as a separate course. They were also used as religious offerings to deities, and a few Shinto shrines continue to make the ancient confections that are otherwise unavailable today.
Another wave of continental foods arrived in the Kamakura period (1185–1333) when Buddhist monks introduced snacks (tenshin) into the monastic diet, such as steamed buns stuffed with vegetables (manjū) and yōkan, a vegetarian substitute for mutton made from mashed azuki beans, flour, kudzu starch, and flavorings. Popularized during the Muromachi period (1336–1573), manjū and yōkan became confectionery with the addition of sugar by the early modern period (1600–1868). See manjū. The Portuguese, who arrived in 1543, imported sugar to Japan, as the Chinese and Dutch later did. The Portuguese also introduced cooking methods vital to the development of Japanese confectionery, including how to make candies and baked treats. See nanbangashi. However, the real surge in baking and Western-style confectionery occurred in the Meiji period (1868–1912). See japanese baked goods.
This mulberry-paper print by Utagawa Shunsho (1830–1854), from the late Edo period, depicts a rustic woman carrying a tray of rice cakes, with the rest of a meal wrapped in a decorative cloth. The tool on her back is used to cut mature rice stalks. gift of justine lewis keidel, 1991. the walters art museum
By the late 1600s sweetened versions of rice cakes, dumplings, and manjū were becoming normative, and varieties of traditional confectionery reached their current form. See wagashi. Confectioners, who were purveyors to the imperial court in Kyoto or to the warrior government in Edo (Tokyo), cornered the market for imported sugar, using it for sweets that became the preferred refreshments for the tea ceremony. Catering to a more popular audience were sweet makers who employed domestic brown sugar and made rice crackers (senbei).
The shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune (1684–1751) recognized that imported sugar contributed to Japan’s trade deficit, so he encouraged domestic cultivation, even planting sugarcane in Edo Castle as an example. By 1800 domestic sugar production was able to meet the country’s demands. The island of Shikoku became famous for its high-quality refined sugar used in elite confectionery. See wasanbon. The Ryūkyū Islands (Okinawa) and Amami Ōshima produced brown sugar. Sugar was not used much in cooking until the Meiji period, when Japanese colonial policies led to the development of sugar plantations in Taiwan, and domestic consumption of sugar subsequently doubled in the last decade of the nineteenth century. By 1935, 90 percent of Japanese sugar came from Taiwan.
Confectioners became ubiquitous in Japan’s early modern cities such as Kyoto and Edo. See kyoto. One list dating to 1787 records in Edo more than 200 confectioners specializing in manjū, senbei, mochi, and dumplings. By 1811 the number of sweet makers in the city grew to more than 2,866 establishments. The development of the confectionery trade is also evidenced in the publication of confectionery cookbooks, of which about a half dozen examples survive dating back to the early eighteenth century. In 1841 sweet maker Funabashiya Orie popularized the treats sold in his shop in Edo with his recipe collection Kashiwa Funabashi (For Sweets, It’s Funabashi).
The Modern Confectionery Industry
Chocolates arrived in Japan in 1878, and today chocolate products constitute the largest category of confectionery in terms of domestic sales, with annual per capita consumption reaching 1.67 kilograms. Dark chocolate has become popular in recent years, but the wide range of fillings and flavors—which include fruits and vegetables such as sundried tomatoes—distinguishes Japan’s confectionery market, and foreign companies have taken notice. Nestlé markets Kit Kat candy bars in Japan in more than 80 varieties, including wasabi and soy sauce. Domestic confectioners have experimented with cookies that blend chocolate, pumpkin, and onion. The major chocolate companies in terms of sales are Lotte, Meiji Seika, and Ezaki Glico, which launched Pocky, its famous stick-shaped, chocolate-covered cookie in 1966.
Beyond chocolate, the second most popular sweets are sugar confectionery such as candies, mints, chews, and toffees. See toffee. Morinaga, which pioneered selling domestically produced chocolate, dominates the sugar confectionery market with such products as its gummy Hi Chew, which debuted in 1975. Founder Morinaga Taichirō (1865–1937) worked for his uncle’s ceramic retailing business and traveled to America in 1888 to expand his trade. When his business dealings soured, Morinaga found part-time work as a dishwasher and converted to Christianity. After briefly returning to Japan in hopes of missionary work, Morinaga opted to go back to America in 1892 to study Western confectionery. He worked in bakeries and with candy makers in San Francisco and Oakland, learning to make chocolates, gingerbread, nut cakes, angel food cakes, and candies. Morinaga returned to Japan in 1899 to open a small shop in Tokyo, where he initially tried to sell Western confections to other confectionery shops, but no one wanted to purchase his products until he began producing marshmallow confections, which were popular imports. His fame as a “Christian confectioner” spread among the Western diplomatic community and subsequently among Japanese government officials. Business flourished, and the company was incorporated in 1910, the same year Morinaga introduced chocolate bars to the Japanese market.
Ranking third in domestic sales is chewing gum, with sugarless gums the most popular by far. See chewing gum. “Functional” gums that contain caffeine or claim to boost brainpower are also well liked among office workers and students. The leading manufacturer of chewing gum is Lotte, established in 1948 by Shin Kyuk-ho, a Japanese of Korean ancestry, who took the name for his company from Charlotte, the object of the protagonist’s unrequited love in Goethe’s novella The Sorrows of Young Werther (Lotte’s company trademark is the “Sweetheart of Your Mouth”). Lotte sells the popular Crunky chocolate bar. The parent company, Lotte Holdings, includes Mary Chocolate, Ginza Cozy-Corner (a chain of cafés selling Western-style baked goods), and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. Krispy Kreme arrived in Japan in 2006, bringing competition to Mister Donut, which has some 1,300 stores in Japan and has been headquartered in Osaka since 1983. See krispy kreme. Convenience stores, which are ubiquitous in Japan, have their own lines of sweets, such as Lawson’s Our Café Sweets.
Sweets and Popular Culture
The introduction of a coin valued at 4 coppers in the late 1700s prompted vendors to switch from selling five dumplings on a stick to just four; some 200 years later, many changed to three dumplings in response to the popularity of the 1999 children’s song “Three Dumpling Siblings” (dango sankyōdai). Two decades earlier, the kids’ tune “Swim Mr. Grilled Sea Bream!” (oyoge taiyakikun), which describes how a small sea bream–shaped confection escapes to the ocean, had boosted that sweet’s sales. Other sweets also have animated mascots. The hero Bean-paste Bread Man (Anpanman) debuted in 1973, showing what happens when a bun stuffed with sweetened azuki paste comes to life. Anpanman joins with other personifications of Western-style confections, including Meronpanna (Melon Bread, meron pan), to defeat the plans of Germ Man (baikinman) and his henchmen. Anpanman’s cherubic persona appears on a variety of consumer goods, and there is a museum dedicated to him in Kōchi prefecture, where local trains display his face and play his theme song. Also heavily marketed is the chubby blue cat Doraemon, who first appeared in comic books in 1969 and subsequently became a television cartoon regular. Doraemon’s namesake and favorite food is the Gong Cake (dorayaki), two pancakes sandwiching sweet azuki paste.
Responding to perceptions that men dislike sweets, Japanese confectioners tried in 2009 to market sweets with “masculine” names, such as Morinaga’s Men’s Ideal Pudding and a chocolate mousse-filled ice cream that Ezaki Glico’s market research said men would crave for its fluffy texture. In 2010 Family Mart, Japan’s third-largest convenience-store chain, sold My Sweets (ore no suitsu) for men, with blue rather than pink packaging. Puddings in the shape of breasts and buttocks have also debuted in attempts to appeal to other male sensibilities. On Valentine’s Day, women purchase chocolate and other confections for male co-workers and friends; men are supposed to reciprocate on 14 March, “White Day.”
Japanese baked goods merge Western influence with indigenous taste. The Portuguese introduced baking to Japan in the late 1500s, and the earliest Japanese baked goods are adaptations of Portuguese recipes, called in Japanese “Southern Barbarian Sweets.” See nanbangashi. The Japanese word for bread, pan, reflects baking’s Western origins. Recipes for baking bread and constructing ovens are found in a few early modern (1600–1868) culinary publications, but many Southern Barbarian Sweets, such as the golden Castilian Cake (kasutera), were adapted to be prepared without an oven by using a specially designed metal pan that could be set over a fire, with hot coals placed on top of the lid. Dutch merchants, who were the only Westerners allowed to live in Japan in the early modern period, maintained baking ovens in their enclave in Nagasaki. When the warrior government contemplated provisioning troops with bread, Egawa Tarōzaemon (1801–1855), a magistrate in charge of coastal defenses, summoned a Japanese cook who had served the Dutch to learn the craft of baking. In 1842 Egawa baked the first army-ration bread (hyōrōpan) and posthumously earned the title “Founding Father of Bread.” The day Egawa baked his first loaf, 12 April, is dubbed Bread Day—a holiday known mostly to professional bakers today.
In 1858 the warrior government agreed to open up more ports to other Western governments, and within a few years Westerners established bakeries in these cities. By the time of the Meiji Restoration in 1868 that brought an end to the warrior government and ushered in a new regime eager to adapt Western reforms and culinary habits, Yokohama had four foreign-operated bakeries. Within a few years after the Restoration Japanese shopkeepers, many of whom had apprenticed to foreign bakers, opened their own stores. Prominent among them was Nakagawa Kahe’e (1817–1897), who sold baked goods and cookies (bisuketto) from the butcher’s shop he opened in 1866.
Western-Style Sweets
The term “Western sweets” (yōgashi) was coined in the early 1870s to refer to recipes inspired by American and European confectionery. It was meant to distinguish foreign imports from native sweets (wagashi), but several Japanese sweet makers began creating European- and American-style pastries. Fūgetsudō, a confectionery company founded in the mid-1700s, sold bonbons and cookies in Tokyo beginning in 1874; in 1896 it offered éclairs and was the first confectioner in Japan to sell cream puffs (shūkurīmu), an adaptation of the French choux à la crème. Other entrepreneurs saw the opportunity to specialize in Western desserts. Fujii Rin’emon (1885–1968) opened his store Fujiya in Yokohama in 1910; it was the first bakery to sell British-style fruitcake at Christmas. In 1912 Fujii traveled to the United States and spent a year working in the food industry in Los Angeles. As of 1922, in addition to selling shūkurīmu and éclairs, Fujiya was the first bakeshop in Japan to offer “shortcakes” (shōtokēki)—layered sponge cakes with whipped cream. Fujiya’s shortcakes decorated with strawberries became popular Christmas treats from the 1950s on. Bakery DONQ (pronounced donku) opened in 1905, introducing French bread and confectionery to Japanese consumers in Tokyo. Today, Fujiya and DONQ have outlets throughout Japan.
Confectioners frequently adapted Western sweets to native tastes. Kimura Yasube’e (1817–1889) opened his bakery Kimuraya in Tokyo in 1869; instead of using yeast as a starter for his baking, he added kōji, the mold-inoculated grain used in making sake. Yasube’e also experimented with using sweet azuki bean paste (an) as a filling, inventing Bean-paste Bread (anpan) in 1874. See azuki beans. Anpan quickly became well liked, and Kimuraya debuted a jam-stuffed bread (jamupan) in 1900. Equally as popular as anpan is Melon Bread (meron pan). The name suggests that this bun made of bread dough topped with cookie batter should also contain fruit, but it does not; the appearance of the bread most likely accounts for its name, since the surface looks like the skin of a golden muskmelon. The bun’s yellow color from the cookie dough topping also justifies its alternate name, Sunrise Bread. Melon Bread is not to be confused with pastry containing chestnuts (maron, the Japanese cognate of the French marron), which are often used in confectionery in Japan.
Grilled Sweets
The Japanese word for baking (yaku) can also mean grilling, and many Japanese baked goods are actually grilled. A batter of flour, sugar, egg, and milk poured into heated metal molds around lumps of sweet azuki bean paste makes Grilled Dolls (ningyōyaki), bite-sized treats in the shape of puppets. Pouring the same mix into a mold shaped like a fish yields Grilled Sea Bream, a sweet invented by vendors in Tokyo in 1909, and one that remains a favorite sold at festivals. Gong Cake (dorayaki) consists of two round pancakes sandwiching a lump of sweet azuki paste. This sweet dates to the early modern period; eggs were added to the recipe in the late 1800s. In the area around Kyoto, Gong Cakes are called Mikasa, in reference to a famous poem about viewing the moon from Mount Mikasa in Nara City.
Baked goods, whether Southern Barbarian Sweets, Western-style pastries, or grilled confectionery, are widely available in Japan today. French and Danish pastries, cheesecake, chocolate cakes, and decorated cakes have been especially popular since the early 1970s.
See also japan.
Jarrin, William Alexis (1785–1848), also called Guglielmo, was a confectioner and author of The Italian Confectioner, first published in 1820.
Born in the small town of Colorno, near Parma in northern Italy, Jarrin became a confectioner at a young age. The turbulent political background of the Napoleonic wars may have given him opportunities, and he was evidently ambitious. By 1807 he was working in Paris, where he made at least one elaborate sugar sculpture in honor of Napoleon Bonaparte. Jarrin claimed to have been attached to the emperor’s household, and high-quality work in such an environment must have brought him into the same milieu as the famous chef and confectioner Carême. See carême, marie-antoine. In 1817 Jarrin moved to London, following in the footsteps of many skilled continental European craftsmen displaced by the political climate. The portrait frontispiece of the first edition of The Italian Confectioner states that Jarrin was “confectioner and ornament-maker” at Gunter’s, a famous London confectioner. He subsequently opened his own shop on New Bond Street, in the heart of fashionable London.
William Alexis Jarrin was a worldly London confectioner whose book The Italian Confectioner was notable for its level of detail and accuracy. This portrait is from the third edition of the book, published in 1827.
The Italian Confectioner stands as the main monument to Jarrin’s work and knowledge. Although the author’s first language was French, he wrote in clear and expressive English. The book was reprinted in a number of editions over 40 years, often with revisions by the author, most of which were relatively small, although still useful. The 1844 edition, however, was significantly reorganized, with new material added to make it more useful as confectionery reached a wider market and mechanization began to make an impact.
The book takes its place in a wider tradition of European publishing on cookery and confectionery, but, at least in English, it remains unique in its level of detail and accuracy. In common with many confectionery texts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, The Italian Confectioner follows a relatively standard format, giving information about sugar boiling and recipes for specific candies, plus chapters on other important confections: syrups; fruit compotes, pastes, and preserves; comfits; creams; ices; biscuits; and distilling liqueurs and infusing ratafias.
Several chapters discuss making ornaments, including recipes for sugar-based pastes of the pastillage type, edible or otherwise. See pastillage. This information represented the culmination of centuries of practice and influenced the development of European porcelain, both in the form of decorative ornaments and in the tableware itself. Although Jarrin was not the only confectioner to discuss this material, he provides a depth of detail unrecorded elsewhere, capturing on paper techniques developed from the time of medieval sotleties and Italian trionfi. See sugar sculpture. His rival Carême expressed ideas with more panache but was far less meticulous in detailing mixtures and processes. Jarrin’s book is especially valuable to historians wishing to know more about the construction and presentation of ornamental desserts at the table, an important aspect of dining rituals.
Like Carême, Jarrin clearly regarded this branch of confectionery as an art closely related to sculpture, carefully explaining how to make molds from various materials, and how to gild, burnish, and varnish. A wooden confectionery mold signed by Jarrin, made by a skilled wood carver and displaying a then trendy Egyptian-influenced design, has recently come to light in a private collection. As a craftsman living by his skill, Jarrin took an interest in fashion and newsworthy events and made sure to flatter important patrons. Like many of his contemporaries he was also interested in innovation, and he improved and invented confectionery equipment.
In common with many tradesmen pursuing a fashionable clientele, Jarrin experienced financial problems and was declared bankrupt, first in 1828 and again in 1834. The 1828 files provide a wealth of information about his business. Valuations of shop fittings mention mirrors and fancy woodwork; molds made from copper, pewter, and tin; and the use of newly available “gas apparatus,” evidently used for both lighting and fuel in the workshop. The accounts also allow a glimpse of an underresearched area of the confectioner’s skill, that of outside catering for large parties and events at which he provided food of all types, not just sweetmeats.
Some details suggest a character that was touchy, concerned with providing a good appearance, and proud of his professional skills, but with little notion of financial control. In addition to bankruptcy, the more sombre side of Jarrin’s life included friction with important clients when his ideas evidently did not coincide with theirs and family problems; his will mentions little beyond an estrangement between his wife and one of his daughters. Despite all these difficulties, Jarrin’s book stands as a testament to a confectioner who was alert, inquisitive, and observant, full of enthusiasm for his craft, and possessed of an important vision.
See also confection; confectionery equipment; and confectionery manuals.
See fruit preserves.
jelly beans, a traditional “penny candy,” became famous in the 1980s as U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s favorite candy treat. Yet this all-American candy traces its origins to distant lands. In the mid-nineteenth century, immigrants from the Near East introduced Americans to lokum or Turkish Delight, a delicate candy flavored with rose and bergamot. See lokum. Local candy makers learned the secret of boiling sugar with cornstarch to produce the particular texture, a soft and slightly sticky gel that melted easily on the tongue. The candy syrup was poured into a pan, allowed to harden, and cut into squares dusted with fine sugar.
This simple candy evolved into the modern jelly bean with the rise of confectionery manufacture in the second half of the nineteenth century. Jelly beans are made in two stages. First, the soft center is poured and formed in cornstarch molds. Then these pieces are coated with sugar syrup in rotating heated pans to create the crunchy outer shell. See panning. The automation of the starch molding process in the “starch mogul,” and the use of steam heat and power to automate the panning process, made it possible to manufacture jelly beans in quantity and to sell them cheaply. Although it is not known who originated the idea, references to jelly beans begin to appear in the popular press in the 1890s, and by 1905 the phrase “jelly bean” had been added to Webster’s American Dictionary. Jelly beans quickly became a year-round penny favorite and—due to their egg-like shape—an Easter staple.
The inside of most jelly beans today is made with a cornstarch-based gel, which produces a firm, slightly sticky interior core. More tender jelly beans made with pectin are less common; they were popular some decades ago and are therefore considered “old-fashioned.” The outer sugar shell of the jelly bean is typically infused with artificial flavors and colored with bright food dyes to create vibrant and appealing candies. Until recent decades, the center gel of jelly beans was not flavored.
The jelly bean was revolutionized in 1976 with the introduction of Jelly Belly, a new style of small, intensely flavored beans created with natural flavors. David Klein, a small candy entrepreneur, developed the name and the idea and teamed up with the Herman Goelitz Candy Company to manufacture the product. Klein’s innovations included selling the beans in individual flavors and charging a premium price for what was once humble “penny candy.” The Goelitz Company purchased the rights to Jelly Belly in 1980 and subsequently changed its name to the Jelly Belly Candy Company—a reflection of the huge success of the product.
See also penny candy.
See sprinkles.
See confetti.
Judaism, the religious and cultural tradition that traces its lineage back to ancient Israel and the scriptural authority of the Hebrew Bible, has a long and varied engagement with sweets. The paradigmatic sweet of ancient Jewish tradition was honey (in Hebrew, dvash), which in the Bible refers both to the product of bees and to juices or pastes derived from dates, grapes, and figs. See fruit pastes and honey. Honey is one of the two defining features of the promised land of Canaan (“a land flowing with milk and honey”) throughout the story of the exodus and wandering of the Israelites (e.g., Exodus 3.8; Numbers 14.8). The mysterious natural process that produces honey resonates strongly with themes of revelation and preservation. Thus, the Bible describes manna, the magical food that sustained the Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years, as tasting like “wafers in honey” (Exodus 16.31). See manna. In subsequent rabbinic literature, dvash refers specifically to bees’ honey, which highlights the remarkable status of the sweet substance in Jewish thought. According to the rabbinic interpretation of the biblical dietary code, honey is the only food product of a ritually unclean animal that is considered clean or kosher.
Honey is regularly associated with illumination. In the Bible, it is used as a metaphor both for the divine teaching or law (in Hebrew, torah) and for human wisdom (Psalms 19.8–11; 119.103; Proverbs 24.13–14). When Jonathan, son of King Saul, tasted wild honey in the woods, “his eyes lit up” (1 Samuel 14.27). The prophet Ezekiel recounts a vision in which he is commanded to eat a scroll inscribed with divine words, saying, “I ate it, and in my mouth it was as sweet as honey” (Ezekiel 3.3). This ingestion of words is echoed in a medieval European ritual of initiation for young students into the world of Torah study. On the first day of school (often coinciding with the festival of Shavu‘ot, the traditional date of the revelation of the law on Mount Sinai), a slate with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet would be covered in honey, and the child would lick it off to ensure that the words of the Torah would remain sweet on his lips. He would then be presented with fruits, hard-boiled eggs (a symbol of renewal), and a honey cake inscribed with biblical verses or made in the shape of Hebrew letters. The Yiddish word for honey cake, lekakh (from the German lecken, “to lick”), provides a further association with learning through a pun on Hebrew lekaḥ, “instruction,” as in Proverbs (4.2): “For I have given you good instruction (lekaḥ); do not forsake my teaching (torah).”
Rosh Hashanah and Passover
These connections to initiation and renewal also underlie the central role of honey in the meals for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which commemorates the creation of the world at the beginning of the harvest season. See rosh hashanah. The consumption of sweets during the joyous celebration is already ordained in the Bible (Nehemiah 8.10), and honey cake is one of the most familiar desserts. Moreover, challah, the traditional bread of festive meals, is usually dipped in salt, but during Rosh Hashanah it is dipped in honey. The popular custom of dipping apples in honey, which originated in medieval northern Europe, connects the first fruits of autumn with the themes of sweetness and rebirth. Given the illuminating qualities of honey, this custom may also symbolize the opening of the eyes of the first humans in the Garden of Eden after they tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge (Genesis 3.7). Ancient rabbinic sources speculated that the forbidden fruit was a fig, grape, or pomegranate, but the ubiquitous Christian identification with the apple may have influenced the medieval Jewish custom (though with a decidedly positive connotation), and apple desserts are common throughout the world during Rosh Hashanah, from European and Middle Eastern strudels, tarts, and compotes to apples cooked in honey and rosewater among Jewish communities in India.
The role of sweets during Rosh Hashanah is further highlighted by the banishment of bitter or sour foods from the festive meal, and in North African Jewish communities the tradition of avoiding all black foods even exists, since the color is associated with death and mourning. Other holidays, however, explore the interplay between sweetness and bitterness. Passover, the spring festival marking the liberation of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, features a ritual meal called the seder (Hebrew for “order”), during which the exodus is retold and reenacted. See passover. The Bible identifies the meal’s required components as roasted meat, unleavened bread (in Hebrew, matzah), and “bitter herbs” (Exodus 12.8). The bitter herb (in Hebrew, maror) broadly represents the hardships of slavery, but rabbinic sources debated which vegetables could be used, and many preferred lettuce, because it first tastes sweet and then becomes bitter, just as the Egyptians first treated the Israelites well and then “made their lives bitter” (Exodus 1.14).
A related symbolic Passover food is the sweet mixture of fruit and nuts called ḥaroset. The name derives from the Hebrew word for clay (ḥeres), which interprets the texture and color of the mixture as representations of the mortar used by the Israelites in their forced labor. Rabbinic sources specifically link the fruits in ḥaroset to Song of Songs (8.5): “Under the apple tree I awakened you; there your mother was in labor with you.” According to rabbinic tradition, this refers to the enslaved Israelite women who, in order to circumvent Pharaoh’s command that all male Israelite newborns be killed (Exodus 1.16), would give birth secretly in apple orchards. In Jewish mystical texts, the apple orchard is also a common symbol of divine presence. Thus, the bitter hardship of enslavement is tempered by the joyous knowledge of the divine role in the salvation of the children of Israel and their eventual liberation. This tempering is literally enacted during the Seder when a sandwich (in Hebrew, korekh) made of the bitter herbs and matzah, the bread of freedom, is dipped in the sweet ḥaroset.
Purim and Hanukkah
The sweetness of deliverance is also emphasized during Purim, which falls in late winter or early spring and commemorates the salvation of Jewish communities in the ancient Persian Empire from a plot to annihilate them. See purim. The biblical book of Esther recounts how the vizier Haman’s evil plan was defeated by the Jewish queen and her wise cousin Mordecai. The appointed day of destruction was transformed into one of unbridled celebration: “a day of happiness and feasting, and a holiday, and [a day] of sending portions to one another” (Esther 9.19). The sending of portions to friends (in Hebrew, mishloaḥ manot) is restricted by rabbinic sources to foods that are ready to eat, and the most common items are pastries, candies, and fruits. Sweets are also central to the festive meal, both as symbols of deliverance and as good wishes for the future. Indeed, in many of the Muslim communities amid which Jewish people historically lived, the holiday was known as “the festival of sugar” (in Arabic, eid al-sukar).
The classic Purim sweets are figurative representations of Haman, which emphasize the dramatic reversal of fortune in the story. These range from Dutch and German gingerbread Haman figures to fried strips of dough called “Haman’s ears” (in Hebrew, ’oznei haman) around the Mediterranean. The most popular European and American treats are filled triangular pastries called hamantaschen (Yiddish for “Haman’s pouches”), which likely derived their form and name from medieval German poppy-seed pastries called Mohntaschen. See hamantaschen. The triangular shape has been variously interpreted in rabbinic sources as a representation of the pocket or purse from which Haman paid to secure the edict of destruction (Esther 3.9), his tri-cornered hat (likely an eighteenth-century anachronism), a variation on Haman’s ears, or even the trio of patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) before whose righteousness Haman lost his strength when he allegedly encountered them in a vision (which also offers a Hebrew pun on the name of the treat: haman, tash kokho, “Haman, his strength waned”).
The themes of deliverance, preservation, and illumination are brought together in the celebration of Hanukkah, the winter festival of lights commemorating the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after the revolt of the Maccabees against their Greek oppressors. See hanukkah. According to rabbinic sources, the priests sought out unpolluted oil to light the sacred lamp in the Temple. They found only enough to last a single night, but the lamp miraculously burned for eight nights, providing enough time to prepare a new supply of pure oil. This miracle is commemorated by lighting candles for eight nights and eating foods fried in oil. In Spanish and Middle Eastern communities, these are typically pastries with sugar or honey coatings, such as bimuelos, dough fritters drizzled with honey. In northern European traditions, the chief representatives are latkes, potato pancakes often served with applesauce. The quintessential choice in Israel is the sufganiyah, which transforms sufganin, a spongy dough mentioned in ancient rabbinic sources, into a modern jelly doughnut. See doughnuts and fried dough.
Another reconfiguration of older traditions is the widespread practice of distributing chocolate coins wrapped in foil, known as gelt (Yiddish for “money”). See gelt. A replacement for the real coins presented to children during Hanukkah in the nineteenth century, the custom grew out of an older practice of giving small amounts of money to religious teachers during the holiday, which may have been inspired by the etymological connection between the Hebrew words ḥanukkah (dedication) and ḥinukh (education). Once again, sweets are curiously entwined with the central Jewish themes of learning and preservation.
See also symbolic meanings.
See gummies.
junket is a dish of curdled milk with a soft-set texture and mild flavor, sweetened as a dessert. The milk is usually “turned” or “set” with rennet, although other agents can be used, including various plant juices, lemon juice, and buttermilk. In the United States it is made from packaged mixes that contain the rennet, sweeteners, and flavors such as strawberry or chocolate. In Britain, it is made with liquid rennet and sugar, and is sometimes flavored with vanilla or brandy or sprinkled with grated nutmeg or powdered cinnamon; clotted cream may be served on top. In Spain, a version traditionally made from ewe’s milk is sold in small pots as cuajada; it is eaten with honey and walnuts. Icelandic skyr is also a junket-type product made with rennet combined with bacterial cultures similar to those used for yogurt.
An English recipe for junket from the seventeenth century made an appearance under the name of trifle, and rich versions of it could be made with cream; they may have been similar to the Italian cream cheese mascarpone, which is cream turned with rennet but then drained of whey. See trifle. Popular in Britain well into the twentieth century, junket is now an unusual dish.
Originally, the name indicated soft, fresh cream cheese, and Elizabeth David considered that “junket” derived from the French word for rushes, the material used for making baskets to drain the curds. Junket also has an obsolete meaning as a sweet delicacy of any sort. Thus, the English phrase “going on a junket” came to mean a frivolous outing, especially one involving eating and drinking.
See also buttermilk and milk.