sablé is a French butter cookie in the shortbread family that may have originated in Normandy. The cookie or biscuit is usually sweet and may be sandwiched in pairs with a filling. Normandy lies on the northwest coast of France, where the Atlantic provides a mild, even climate with ample rainfall, leading to a long tradition of dairy farming. High-quality butter is a key ingredient of the sablé, along with flour, egg yolks, and sugar. A little salt and vanilla, or perhaps lemon, almond, or chocolate, are the only other flavorings. For a savory sablé, grainy Parmesan or similar hard cheese is grated and mixed into the dough.
The name “sablé” derives from the French word for sand, sable, referring to the cookie’s tender, crumbly texture; it likely derives from pastry that used to be known as pâte sablée. Describing this pastry in La Bonne cuisine française (ca. 1890), Émile Dumont notes, “Pâte sablée is called this because as one eats, it breaks into little particles like grains of sand.” To produce the desirable texture, cooks and pastry chefs have various techniques for achieving that graininess, such as using large-crystal “sand” sugar, adding the sugar or flour in two separate stages, using part confectioner’s sugar and part granulated sugar, chilling the dough before cutting it, and so forth.
Besides giving the sablé a rich flavor, a high butter content with minimal handling inhibits the formation of gluten strands in the flour, which would make the dough tough or elastic. The butterfat shortens the dough by breaking up the gluten, hence the terms “shortbread” and “shortening.” “Simple as this dough is to prepare,” writes Madame E. Saint-Ange in La Bonne Cuisine (1927), “it nonetheless has one essential requirement: that it be worked rapidly with a rather cool hand. If the work takes a long time, the dough loses its sandy character; and there is quite a lot of butter, so if your hand is warm it will melt as you work and mix badly with the flour.”
See also shortbread.
saccharimeter is a scientific instrument used for sugar analysis that evolved from the simpler polariscope used by the French savant Jean-Baptiste Biot (1774–1862). From his experiments in light reflection in the second decade of the nineteenth century, Biot found that when he passed polarized light through some substances, the plane of polarization would rotate. He also found that cane sugar and beet sugar act the same in this regard, while other substances do not. Thus, a polariscope would enable him to distinguish sucrose from other sugars (such as glucose) that rotate the plane of polarization in the opposite direction. When Biot found that the strength of the sugar solution determines the extent of optical rotation, he realized that a polarimeter (a polariscope that measures this rotation) could be used to determine the quality of sugar for commercial or tax purposes. In the 1840s a French optical instrument maker named Jean-Baptiste François Soleil designed a polarimeter specifically for sugar analysis and termed it a saccharimeter. As subsequent improvements made saccharimeters more reliable and user friendly, these optical instruments came into widespread use in countries around the world.
The Carwardine Saccharometer was invented around 1894 by Thomas Carwardine, a physician at Middlesex Hospital in London. Saccharometers and saccharimeters both test for the presence of sugar in urine, an indicator of diabetes, but saccharometers measure the specific gravity of a solution, while the more modern saccharimeter measures its light polarization. wellcome library, london
Saccharimeters are still used today for sugar analysis. They are also used to determine the sugar content of wines and other vegetable products. And they are used by doctors who diagnose diabetes by determining the sugar content of urine.
Sachertorte, Vienna’s famous chocolate cake, is easily that city’s most storied confection. The cake is almost the personification of the sweet—and perhaps somewhat staid—elegance that still hovers over the old Habsburg metropolis. As described by the authors of the comprehensive Appetit-Lexicon (1894), the pastry is “a superior sort of chocolate cake, distinguished from her rivals primarily by the chocolate gown she wears over her blouse of apricot jam.” Poetic hyperbole aside, the definition of what can legally be called a Sachertorte in Austria is very specific. The Österreichisches Lebensmittelbuch (the Austrian food codex) devotes six pages to a precise definition of cakes and related confectionery, starting with the celebrated Sacher. To summarize, the cake itself needs to be a chocolate sponge (minimum 15 percent chocolate solids); nuts can be added, as long as the name reflects the addition. The cake must then be covered with apricot preserves, and finally with a fudgy glaze containing chocolate and sugar. Forgeries that contain such verboten additions as buttercream, ganache, or raspberry jam may be perfectly delicious, but they are not a Sacher.
The original is named after Franz Sacher, a caterer who worked in Vienna and nearby Bratislava (then Pressburg) in the middle years of the nineteenth century. According to a story recounted by his son Eduard, the elder Sacher began his career as an apprentice in the kitchens of Prince Metternich, then the most powerful politician in the Habsburg Empire. One day in 1832 the 15-year-old Franz was apparently asked to make dinner for the great statesman and three of his friends. It was supposedly for this intimate fete that the culinary prodigy whipped up that first Sachertorte. The story is a good one, and it has been repeated so often that it has the ring of truth (not least by Eduard Sacher, who used it to good effect to promote his five-star hotel). The trouble is that Franz Sacher himself told a different tale. In a 1906 interview for the Neues Wiener Tagblatt, the 90-year old recalled first making the cake in the 1840s when he ran a restaurant and catering business in Bratislava. There is a certain logic to this. The cake is custom built to hold up to the stresses of catering. It need not be refrigerated, and the apricot glaze keeps it from drying out—the main reasons that the Hotel Sacher has been able to maintain a flourishing mail order business in the confection ever since the 1900s. Since there are no documents confirming either story, the question arises of which to trust: the memory of the nonagenarian inventor or the promotional efforts of his hotelier son?
If there is controversy regarding the cake’s birth date or place, it is nothing compared to the legal storm unleashed in the twentieth century when new owners took over the Hotel Sacher and decided to assert their ownership of the Sacher trademark. In the 1920s, like Vienna itself, the hotel and family had fallen on hard times. This circumstance led to the sale of the hotel to one set of owners and the recipe to another. As of 24 July 1934, Demel’s, Vienna’s most famous pastry shop, put the “Eduard Sacher-Torte” on its menu. Meanwhile, at the hotel, the “Original Sacher-Torte” took pride of place. Hans Gürtler, one of the hotel investors and a lawyer, took Demel’s to court and eventually won the trademark dispute in 1938—even as the Nazis were marching into town. But that wasn’t the end of it. The suit resurfaced after the war and eventually made its way to the Austrian Supreme Court. At each stage of the appeals process, culinary experts and famous chefs stood on the witness stand, testifying about the dueling recipes. The point of contention was whether Franz Sacher’s original cake had one layer (Demel’s recipe) or two (the hotel’s). The judges, however, were more interested in the intellectual property aspect of the case rather than the fine details of baking. They ruled that while the original cake indeed had a single layer (the hotel’s cake was apparently split in the 1920s), the Hotel Sacher retained the right to call its bilevel confection “the original.” As a result, we have the Original “Sacher-Torte” and all the other Sachertortes. It is easy enough to taste the hotel’s version, as their kitchens make over 360,000 of them a year and ship them worldwide. The Original Sacher-Torte needs no more refrigeration than it did when Franz Sacher ran his catering business over 150 years ago.
See also austria-hungary; layer cake; and vienna.
salon de thé is a French food-service establishment that focuses on serving tea and coffee accompanied primarily by pastries and other sweet foods. Many exist as part of a pastry shop, though it is now not uncommon for cafés and restaurants to offer this same sort of service and describe themselves as a “restaurant, café, bar, salon de thé.” The salon de thé retains a heavily gendered and class association as a respectable gathering spot where bourgeois women would congregate in the afternoon, and its design reflects a certain propriety. As opposed to the French café, which is often on a street corner or a square, open to the street, and with tables oriented so that the clientele and passersby can stare each other in the face, the typical salon de thé would be located on the second floor, removed from the potentially prurient gaze of the pedestrian, yet often hung with mirrors so that the women patrons could gaze at and assess one another.
The term is a literal translation of “tearoom” and is an adaptation of the British original. According to the author of Les consommations de Paris (1875), the habit of eating meals in pastry shops was also a trans-Channel import. The first actual tearoom in Paris was opened in the 1880s by the brothers Neal, who ran a stationery and book store, the Papeterie de la Concorde, on the Rue de Rivoli. Initially, their salon de thé was no more than a couple of tables behind the counter, and its menu was limited to tea and cookies (biscuits); eventually, the brothers set up a proper tearoom upstairs. By 1900 five o’clock tea was all the rage, taken at pastry shops but also at the tearooms of swank hotels like the Ritz. Just how much actual tea anyone drank is questionable. Parisian women were more likely to prefer coffee or (hot) chocolate. However, neither the beverage nor the generally sweet food that accompanied it were the point for the French woman of leisure, as novelist Jeanne Philomène Laperche (writing under the pseudonym Pierre de Coulevain) noted in 1903: “The tea-room … makes a pleasant halting-place between her shopping and her trying-on [of clothes]. It answers two purposes—her wish to be sociable and at the same time exclusive.” In the early part of the twentieth century, the salons spread across France and eventually lost most of their English associations; drinking tea remained a largely bourgeois affectation.
A salon de thé, or tearoom, was a fashionable British import to France. This lithograph of The Tea Shop by Francis Donkin Bedford appeared in The Book of Shops (1899). © the estate of francis donkin bedford. private collection / the stapleton collection / bridgeman images
Today, the traditional salon de thé has a decidedly old-fashioned, stuffy quality, perceived as a gathering place for women of a certain age or, in the case of marquee tearooms such as Ladurée, as a tourist trap. For a younger crowd, a more contemporary, informal version (still called a salon de thé) has taken its place. The purpose remains the same, even if rooibos and brownies have replaced lapsang souchong and a réligieuse, the mirrors now sport frames from Morocco, and the socializing takes the form of tweets and Facebook updates.
See also café; france; and tea.
salt, technically known as sodium chloride (NaCl), is one of the most important compounds in the human body. The International Journal of Food Science & Technology summarizes salt as a flavor enhancer due to its effect on different biochemical mechanisms. Salt regulates fluids in the body, assists in proper function of the adrenal glands, stabilizes heartbeats, balances sugar levels, aids in muscle contraction and expansion, and helps with communication within the nervous system. In the perception of taste, its role is essential. Without salt, the tongue would detect only the basic flavors of food.
Salt is essential to kitchen methodology, too. Ice cream owes its very existence to the discovery that when salt is mixed with ice, the melting point of the ice is lowered. That allows a mixture—such as that of cream, sugar, flavoring, and a bit of salt—to freeze and become ice cream. Today, most ice cream makers have self-contained freezers that require neither ice nor salt, but the original salt and ice mixture gave birth to the ice creams and ices that the world now enjoys. See ice cream.
There are numerous types of salts. Kosher salt, which originates from the sea or from the earth, is the most widely used in American professional kitchens because it has a larger grain that is easily picked up with three fingers to season dishes; it also disperses quickly and has a mild flavor. Another widely used salt is sea salt. Sea salt can come in crystalline or flaked form. It brings a punch of flavor to food and can also add a slightly briny note. Some specialty salts include black sea salt, pink Himalayan salt, volcanic red salt, seaweed salt, smoked Alaskan sea salt, Japanese sea salt, and cherry-smoked salt.
In bread baking, adding a 1.5 to 2 percent ratio of salt to flour, by weight, can enhance the flavor and texture of all breads. Furthermore, the addition of salt to items such as pretzels and buns after baking adds an entirely new dimension to baked goods. Whole-wheat flour benefits from salt because salt removes water from the wheat and brings the aroma and taste of the flour to the fore. The addition of salt to bleached flour can bring balance to an otherwise alkaline-tasting product. Salt should be used in bread baking to enhance the natural flavor of the ingredients; too much of it will destroy both flavor and enzymatic reactions in the dough.
Gluten development is further assisted by the addition of salt. When the gluten structures start to tighten, the dough holds on to carbon dioxide that has been released by yeast during fermentation. Salt will also control the yeast and prevent too much fermentation, which can lead to over-proofed dough. Starches in the flour are converted to simple sugars that feed the yeast. Salt’s regulatory effects on the yeast allow some of these sugars to remain, causing the dough to form a beautiful golden crust when baked.
Salt also balances sweet, and it enhances nuances of flavor in ingredients such as chocolate and caramel. A small amount of salt added to chocolate can bring out fruit flavors as well as other tangy and spicy notes that would otherwise go unnoticed. While caramel can be overly sweet, the slightest hint of salt will bring out its hidden smoky and buttery flavors. See caramels. In cakes, the presence of salt adds more depth. When egg whites are whipped and then folded into a batter, a small amount of salt helps the egg whites to hold their structure and add volume to the cake batter, which in turn produces a greater yield and a fluffier cake. See cake; eggs; and meringue.
Salt also plays a key role in leavening dough. Cookies, for instance, owe their light texture to chemical leavening with the assistance of an acid salt. See chemical leaveners. When an acid salt, such as baking soda (sodium bicarbonate, or NaHCO3), is added to dough, it releases carbon dioxide, just as yeast does in bread baking, the only difference being that the carbon dioxide is released at a specific temperature during the baking process, instead of before baking.
Dessert lovers especially prize the flavor and complexity of fleur de sel (flower of salt), once traditionally defined as the finest hand-harvested sea salt. In Guérande, Brittany, the chore was entrusted to women because men were considered too rough for such a delicate operation. Fleur de sel de Guérande is still hand-harvested, but some fleur de sel is now gathered mechanically. Today flurries of fleur de sel, whether artisanal or industrial, are sprinkled onto or into all manner of sweets—chocolates, caramels, ice creams, cakes, brownies, and cookies.
An appreciation of salt is paramount for the development of a chef’s career. Great chefs understand the true complexity of salt, even though most people perceive it as a simple ingredient.
sandesh is the Bengali word for “message,” as well as a popular sweet prepared from chhana (fresh curd cheese) and sugar or palm sugar jaggery cooked together to varying consistencies, depending on the desired result, which can be meltingly tender or dense and chewy. Sandesh is often pressed into decorative wooden molds and is sometimes filled or flavored with essences both native and exotic. Its preparation requires synergy between a ununer karigar (an artisan skilled at cooking the mixture), his skill with a tadu (a long ladle with a wooden blade used to prepare the sweetened mixture), and a patar karigar, an artisan who sits near a wooden board (pata) and magically rolls out sweets with his fingers.
In an occupation that seems to breed invention, regional sweet makers have developed numerous local specialties. For instance, in Chandannagore (part of the former French colony of Hooghly), in the early nineteenth century, Lalit Mohan Modak, grandson of Surjya Kumar Modak, created a wooden mold shaped like a palm kernel (talsansh in Bengali). A denser chhana was added to molded sweets with a rosewater-scented filling to meet the request of a local strongman who wanted to surprise his son-in-law on the occasion of Jamaishasthi, the feast honoring sons-in law. Popularly known as Jalbhara talsansh sandesh, this nineteenth-century creation from Surjya Modak’s humble establishment still draws many sweets lovers to the two shops run by his descendants.
Over time, sandesh flavored with kiwi, strawberry, mango, vanilla, and chocolate have been introduced. Low-calorie sandesh and diabetic sandesh prepared from chhana and sucralose are popular among weight watchers. While sandesh is just one of many sweets made and sold in most business establishments, Kolkata’s renowned Girish Chandra Dey & Nakur Chandra Nandy prides itself for specializing in selling “only sandesh” throughout the year.
See also india; kolkata; mithai; and palm sugar.
sanguinaccio is a kind of lightly sweetened sausage or pudding made in various ways throughout Italy with coagulated pig’s blood. When prepared in the form of a sausage, it is usually boiled for eating. Sanguinaccio is especially popular in northern Italy, Lombardy, and the Veneto in particular. In Val d’Aosta it is known as boudin, from the French, while in Tuscany it is known as biroldo. There are many dialect versions as well. Typical ingredients, depending on the region, are grape must, pine nuts, walnuts, chocolate, sugar, candied citrus, and milk. In Naples the pudding might be served with ladyfingers. Although sweet, sanguinaccio is not served as an after-dinner dessert; it stands on its own or is perhaps used as a dressing for pasta, as in the lasagnette al sugo di sanguinaccio (laganèdda cu sangìcchja) typical of the Gargano region in Apulia, where it is prepared during the pig slaughter. The pig’s blood is seasoned with lard, sugar, cocoa, cinnamon, tangerine zest, milk, and salt before being tossed with the pasta.
sap is a fluid that moves in either the xylem or phloem vascular system of a plant. Xylem sap is a watery solution of minerals taken up from the soil by the roots. It moves in xylem cells (vessel elements, tracheids) that form long rows of cylindrical pipes. The flow is driven by evaporation from the leaves, and a large tree can easily take up more than 100 liters of water a day in this way. Plants go through the trouble of extracting water from the soil with one primary goal: producing sugar. Most of the water is lost while obtaining carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and in photosynthesis, a process that converts light energy into chemical energy and stores it in the bonds of sugar molecules. Plants use phloem sap to distribute the energetic sugars throughout the organism, where they are used in growth and metabolism, and for producing sweet fruits such as apples. The liquid flows in sieve element cells, which form a channel network running throughout the plant. Phloem sap contributes to many natural sweeteners, such as flower nectar and palm sugar. See palm sugar.
Sap contains a diversity of sugars, including glucose, fructose, sucrose, sorbitol, mannitol, raffinose, and stachyose. See fructose; glucose; and sorbitol. Most plants, however, transport sucrose, commonly known as table sugar. See sugar. Although the sugar concentration varies among species, phloem sap typically contains 20 percent sugar, twice as much as Coca-Cola (10 percent). There are two good reasons why phloem sap contains so much sugar. First, it is difficult for animals and insects to feed directly on the phloem, because their guts cannot process the very high sugar content. Second, while sweet sap has the greatest transport potential, viscosity impedes flow, and 20 percent is the most effective concentration for long-distance transport. Although plants have generally evolved toward this optimum, a number of unusually sweet plants exist. This group consists primarily of crop plants such as corn (41 percent) and potato (50 percent), the sugar junkies of the natural world.
Both xylem and phloem sap can be tapped for use in sweeteners, but owing to the plant’s natural defenses, it is usually only possible to extract miniscule amounts of sap. A notable exception is found in the production of palm sugar, where phloem sap readily flows from cuts made to the inflorescence, or the flowers. A well-known sweetener that originates directly from xylem sap is syrup made from sap tapped from trees in the early spring, when cool nighttime temperatures are followed by days with rapid warming. See maple syrup. Maple and birch xylem sap tapped under these conditions contain a few percent sugar; the sap is subsequently boiled down to produce syrup.
See also native american.
Sara Lee, one of the best-known producers of refrigerated and frozen baked goods in the United States, became famous for such products as pound cakes, coffee cakes, and New York–style cheesecake. See cheesecake; coffee cake; and pound cake. The company’s memorable and long-running slogan, “Everybody doesn’t like something, but nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee,” was written by Mitch Leigh, composer of the musical Man of La Mancha. Operating around the globe and now encompassing far more than baked goods and breads, Sara Lee’s major brand-name products include Ball Park Franks, Chef Pierre pies, Hillshire Farm meats, State Fair foods, and Jimmy Dean foods.
The original company began in 1935 when 32-year-old Charles Lubin and his brother-in-law, Arthur Gordon, bought a small Chicago-area chain of neighborhood bakeries called Community Bake Shops. The company prospered. When Lubin took over sole ownership in 1949, he named his first product, a cream-cheese-based cheesecake, after his then eight-year-old daughter and changed the name of the business to Kitchens of Sara Lee. In 1951 Lubin introduced the soon-to-be famous All Butter Pound Cake, followed by the All-Butter Pecan Coffee Cake. Both were enormously popular.
Most baking companies attract customers by keeping prices low. Lubin’s marketing strategy was to focus on quality first, even though some of his products sold for twice the price of the competition. He demanded fresh milk, pure butter, and real eggs in his baked goods. His cheesecake contained almost a pound of quality cream cheese. The excellence of the ingredients was touted in the company’s advertising. One ad campaign carried the tagline, “Sara Lee Cakes, they’re all better because they’re all butter.” Until the early 1950s, however, because of their perishability, Sara Lee Kitchens had to limit the delivery of fresh-baked cakes to a 300-mile radius of Chicago.
By 1953 Lubin had perfected a line of frozen bakery products that retained the quality he demanded while offering mass-distribution capabilities. The following year, working with the housewares manufacturer Ekco, the company developed an aluminum foil pan in which products could be baked, quickly frozen, shipped, and sold. Sara Lee frozen products would be in all 48 states by 1955. Over 200 frozen Sara Lee products are sold nationwide today, including Cream Cheese Cake, Butter Pecan Coffee Cake, All Butter Chocolate Cake, Banana Cake, Apple’n Spice Cake, and Chocolate Brownies.
Lubin’s aluminum baking pan was a major revolution in the food industry and helped usher in the era of convenience foods. In 1954 Swanson used Lubin’s innovation to introduce TV dinners, and within a year Sara Lee began selling its cheesecake nationally. At this time the dessert was still closely associated with Germans, Jewish Americans, and New York City, but thanks to the company’s wide reach, cheesecake soon lost its ethnic and regional associations.
In 1956 Sara Lee was acquired by Consolidated Foods Corporation, headed by Nathan Cummings, a successful Canadian-born importer of general merchandise whose first venture had been to purchase a small biscuit and candy business, which he later sold for a profit. In 1939, at the age of 43, Cummings had borrowed $5.2 million to buy C. D. Kenny Company, a Baltimore wholesale distributor of sugar, coffee, and tea. He built his new company through acquisitions, a strategy he followed until retiring from active management in 1968. Because Sara Lee was one of Consolidated’s best-known brand names, in 1985 the company adopted Sara Lee as its corporate name, and the Kitchens of Sara Lee was renamed Sara Lee Bakery.
On 4 July 2012, Sara Lee Corporation was split into two companies. The North American operations were renamed Hillshire Brands (makers of Jimmy Dean, Ball Park, and State Fair brands), while the international coffee and tea businesses became D. E Master Blenders 1753. The Sara Lee name continues to be used on bakery products and certain deli products distributed by Hillshire Brands.
sartorial sweets —clothes made with sugar—are surprisingly ubiquitous. Sugar weaves its way into fabrics both synthetic and natural, and clothing made of sweets offers a provocative aesthetic.
Several familiar fabrics are manufactured from molecules of sugar that nature has already stitched together. Cotton and linen consist largely of cellulose, a polymer in which glucose molecules are connected to each other, much like a line of dancers linking arms. Cotton fibers are unbranched, spiraling chains of cellulose, the strength of the fiber being directly proportionate to the length of the chain.
Linen is constituted of a cellulosic polymer derived from the bast fibers of flax plants. More brittle than cotton (think of all those wrinkles), linen consists mainly of glucose and xylose; other sugars are present in small amounts. See glucose.
Seersucker, a lightweight cotton that requires no ironing, is favored for summer suits and tropical climates. The weave is such that the cotton puckers into characteristic squares or rectangles. The puffed shapes, reminiscent, perhaps, of plump rice grains, give seersucker its name, which in Hindustani means “rice pudding and sugar” (kheer aur shakkar), an appellation that originated with the Persian shiroshakar, or “milk and sugar.”
The Japanese company Sugar Cane & Co. produces a sturdy denim from sugarcane. And a vegan version of leather is made by cultivating bacteria in sweetened green tea until a sheet forms, which can then be cut and fashioned.
Rayon, sometimes called “artificial silk,” is a cellulose-based synthetic. Adipic acid, one of the main components of nylon, another synthetic, is produced from sugars extracted from fruit peels. A new manufacturing process for obtaining adipic acid, less costly and more efficient than the original one, may help nylon once again step out in style.
Sweet Crinoline
Starch, a sugar polymer, lends stiffness and shape to fabric, expanding the ways in which it can be fashioned into clothing. See starch. The stiffness of starch should not, however, distract from the more playful—and seductive—ways in which sugar is incorporated into apparel.
Cellulose can be digested only by bovine, ovine, or caprine diners. Insofar as it refers to a straw boater, the expression “I’ll eat my hat” thus cannot be applied literally. Nevertheless, a variety of edible “hats,” mostly cakes shaped and frosted accordingly, have made it possible to swallow one’s words.
The jacket of Herb Albert’s Tijuana Brass mid-1960s record album, Whipped Cream & Other Delights, featured a woman lusciously clothed in whipped cream, licking some off her finger. A fabric called whipped cream came into style at about the same time: the “textured whipped cream mod dress” was made of white fabric with a wavy pattern that looked slightly quilted—and very à la mode.
Hearts Worn on Sleeves, and Melting
More recently, the Ukrainian pastry chef Valentyn Shtefano created for his bride a dress consisting of 1,500 cream puffs; one can only wonder how the wedding feast ended. Shown in Munich in 2010 was a German chocolate bubble dress, so called, apparently, because of the shape of its skirt. More chocolate fashions are displayed at the annual Salons du Chocolat held in Paris, Tokyo, and New York. The gowns, inspired by chocolate, certainly look delicious, though it is not clear whether they are actually edible. Those preferring greater exposure might order, perhaps as a Valentine’s Day special, a chocolate thong.
Designed for a younger crowd are candy necklaces, consisting of small, disk-shaped NECCO-like candies with holes in the middle, strung on a string. If long enough, the necklaces can be worn and eaten simultaneously. See necco.
As this brief glimpse into the sweeter side of the textile and fashion industries indicates, sugars continue to be reconfigured into fabrics and sweets concocted into ready-to-wear marvels.
See also sugar, unusual uses of.
sauce often completes a dessert. Whether served on a plate, in a bowl, or in a glass, dessert gains a punctuation mark from a hot or cold sauce served on, under, or beside it to amplify a principal flavor or provide contrast. There are seven main categories of dessert sauces:
No matter which sauce is used, the idea of providing contrast in flavor, and often in texture, is paramount. For example, a sweet dessert is well complemented by a tart or even acidic sauce, as in a white chocolate mousse served with a tart citrus sauce, either lemon- or lime-based. On the other hand, an only slightly sweet rhubarb tart could be accompanied by a vanilla crème anglaise to achieve an overall mellow sweetness in the dessert. From the point of view of texture and mouthfeel, silky smooth sauces of all kinds provide contrast to a wide range of desserts, from crunchy praline-based ice cream to flaky stacks of puff pastry layered with pastry cream and fresh fruit.
Dessert sauces can also offer temperature contrast. Perhaps the best illustration of this concept is the classic American hot fudge sundae, in which hot and cold coexist in a single spoonful. See ice cream. In a slightly different way, the beloved American dessert apple pie à la mode reveals how temperature variations can elevate the simple to the sublime; as the ice cream melts, it turns into a cool sauce beside the warm pie. See à la mode.
Scandinavia historically refers to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, countries in which sweets are very popular and well integrated into the culture, even though the concept of a formal dessert course is relatively modern.
Before sugar reached northern Europe, Scandinavians relied on honey and fruit extracts for sweeteners. In the Middle Ages, spice cakes made of rye, oats, and honey were enjoyed, as were sweets that could be baked over an open fire with special cast-iron equipment. Sugar changed all that. Like much of Europe, Scandinavia has a dark chapter in its history: in 1672, Denmark established a colony on St. Thomas in the Caribbean, and thus took part in the sugar trade based on slave labor. See slavery and sugar trade. As new methods of baking reached the north from France and Austria, sugar became a sought-after commodity. Scandinavian bakers traveled to Vienna, bringing back new ideas that led to the creation of different kinds of baked goods, in which the bourgeoisie was eager to indulge. What Americans know as “Danish pastry” is one such result; its Danish name of wienerbrød (Viennese bread) reveals its origins. See vienna.
Bakeries were situated primarily in cities and towns, while home baking took place in rural areas, mainly on large farms and estates that had sufficient staff, easy access to dairy, and money to buy sugar. In this way country houses and bakeries throughout Scandinavia were responsible for developing a wide range of cakes and desserts named after famous people. Napoleon cake is a classic mille-feuille made with red currant jelly; Sarah Bernhard consists of a macaron topped with chocolate ganache and coated in dark chocolate; and Prinsesstårta is a beloved Swedish cream-filled layer cake draped with a sheet of pale green marzipan. See marzipan.
In the late 1800s, inviting people for a “cake table” was a popular rural pastime in Sweden. Fifteen to twenty different cakes would be served with coffee, cold milk, and sugar. This tradition soon extended to funerals. People were invited home for cakes and coffee after the church ceremony, or they gathered at the local community center, which was used for gatherings and celebrations. On a more daily basis, coffee breaks, known familiarly as fika in Swedish, have been part of life throughout Scandinavia for the last 200 years. They are an informal way for women to meet and share a cup of coffee, some cake, and the latest gossip. Today, they have largely been replaced by the coffee break at work.
In the early 1800s, in the larger cities, cafés called konditori began to open, and some, such as La Glace in Copenhagen and Sundbergs Konditori in Stockholm, still exist to this day. See café. Konditorier in Copenhagen were particularly famous for their celebrity patrons, including Hans Christian Andersen and the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Throughout Scandinavia these pastry shops offered a public space where people could meet and be seen in society.
Spices
Thanks to trade with the Hanseatic League, spices have been present in Scandinavia since the fifteenth century. They were used mostly in mjød, or mead, a fermented honey drink. See mead. When spices became more affordable around 1700, they began to be used more commonly. In Scandinavia, cinnamon, cardamom, and vanilla have been especially popular in baking for the last 200 years.
Vanilla is a basic ingredient in many cake recipes and is also found in candy and caramels. See caramels. Cinnamon is used in many ways. Arguably most famous is the cinnamon bun, of which commercial and home versions exist, along with regional variations. The kanelsnegle is a Danish pastry for which cold butter is rolled into dough that is coiled around a sweet cinnamon filling. The most widespread cinnamon buns, called kanelbullar, are made with yeast dough, with melted butter added. They are offered by almost every baker throughout Scandinavia. Similar to kanelbullar are kardemummabullar, which use ground cardamom instead of cinnamon. Cardamom is used throughout Scandinavia to enhance the flavor of almost all variations of blødt brød—the soft, sweet, yeasted wheat bread that forms the basis of many buns and cakes.
The most popular Danish Christmas cookies are peperkaker, pebernødder, brunkager, and ingefærkager—and their counterparts in Norway and Sweden—all of which are very thin, crisp cookies aromatic with spices like ginger, cinnamon, and cloves. The original recipes for these gingerbread cookies date back to the 1200s and 1300s. For best results the dough should rest for several weeks before being rolled out, to enhance the flavor of the spices. A cookie cutter cuts the peperkaker into various decorative shapes, while pebernødder are formed into small round balls. No master recipe exists; instead, there are many regional variations, and bakers prize their generations-old family recipes.
Seasonality
In Scandinavia everything is seasonal, even sweets, with different cakes served in winter and summer. Although this tradition historically had to do with a scarcity of ingredients, it continues today. Winter means that nuts, dried fruit, and spices are used for flavoring, whereas summer offers an abundance of berries: strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, red and black currants, and rose hips. In particular, layer cake, variously known as lagkage, blødkage, and tårta, and traditional for birthday parties throughout Scandinavia, is made very differently depending on the season. In the summer a sponge cake is cut into three layers, each of which is spread with cold custard and fresh berries. In the winter, jam or plain whipped cream replaces the berries. See custard; layer cake; and sponge cake. The cake is usually decorated with marzipan, chocolate, or confectioner’s sugar. Layer cakes can be simple or elaborate, baked at home or bought from the local bakery. After World War II, new products like prebaked cake layers and instant custard powder came onto the Scandinavian market. With a jar of jam and whipped cream from a spray can, one could make a layer cake in 30 minutes, not an uncommon practice even today.
In Denmark the first apples of September are baked into the traditional apple cake—thick apple sauce layered with sweet roasted bread crumbs and whipped cream, and served cold. Because Norway and Sweden have much shorter growing seasons, summer is fleeting, making the first berries of the season cause for celebration. They are added to cakes, luscious puddings and pies, and pressed for juice and made into preserves. See fruit preserves. Especially prized in northern Scandinavia are tart lingonberries and golden cloudberries. Elderberries and aromatic elderflowers are also made into refreshing summertime drinks and desserts throughout the region.
Other Baked Goods
Scandinavia has a wide variety of baked goods that are often served together on the afternoon or early evening cake table, a tradition celebrated especially by the older generation, for whom “seven sorts” of cakes were standard. More recently it has become fashionable among young people to invite friends for an old-fashioned cake table in a kind of retro gathering.
The selection of baked goods includes pastry, dry cakes, cream cakes, coffee cake, and, of course, the famous butter cookies. Danish pastry is eaten all over Scandinavia. Danish bakers added remonce, a sweet paste of sugar, butter, and nuts or marzipan, to the wienerbrød dough, and sometimes spices like cardamom or poppy seeds. Seasonal fruits or berries provide an alternative filling. Danish pastry is often eaten in the morning, like a croissant; when served in the afternoon with coffee, it is made larger and called wienerbrødsstang, meaning a “long piece” of pastry. Borgermesterkrans, or “mayor’s wreath,” is another wienerbrød variation.
Cream cakes became very popular in the late 1800s because of the strong tradition of dairy products in Scandinavia. The technologies of the Industrial Revolution allowed for cream and other dairy products to be kept cool in refrigerators, so that cakes could last throughout the day, which gave the bakers an opportunity to be creative. They came up with a range of cream cakes made with puff pastry, short crust, choux pastry, and yeast dough. See pastry, choux; pie dough; and puff pastry. Each type of cake has a distinctive name, such as the medallion, two round pieces of short-crust pastry filled with cream and a little fruit compote and decorated with chocolate or icing. See icing. A favorite type of small cream cake is the semla, a cardamom-scented yeast bun bursting with a mixture of marzipan and cream and topped with whipped cream and a dusting of powdered sugar, traditionally served at Shrovetide, the period of indulgence before Lent. Cream cakes are eaten for an afternoon coffee break, after dinner, or for a special occasion, although they can also be enjoyed simply on a rainy day or for some hygge, a Danish word that describes a special kind of comfort. These cakes are often purchased at a bakery. They must be eaten the same day due to their fresh ingredients.
Dry cakes have a longer shelf life, since they don’t contain any fresh dairy products. A typical dry cake is the so-called Napoleon’s hat, which consists of short-crust pastry and marzipan dipped in chocolate and formed into a shape resembling Napoleon’s hat. Linse is a type of short-crust pastry with a custard filling. Mazarin also has a short crust but is an open tart filled with marzipan, sugar, and butter. One variation includes fresh lingonberries, which in Sweden are often glazed with icing. Another famous dry cake is kransekage, made with marzipan, sugar, almonds, and egg whites. Kransekage became very popular among the aristocracy in the 1700s, when almonds were quite expensive, as a way to show off their wealth.
The horn of plenty—overflødighedshorn, or cornucopia—was created in the 1700s as a reference to Greek mythology. The horn was built out of rings of the kransekage, with small marzipan cakes inside. The idea is to fill the horn so full that the little cakes will spill over in abundance. It is made for special celebrations, weddings, christenings, and confirmations.
Pound cake, called sandkage in Danish, is every housewife’s savior. It is very popular for home baking and always appears on the cake table. The cake stores well and is therefore handy for unexpected guests, for whom the tradition is always to offer coffee and cake.
Småkager are butter cookies, an everyday treat with coffee. Fifty years ago, all housewives kept a store of småkager for unannounced visits. Once private homes were equipped with their own ovens, baking these cookies was easy to do, and they lasted for weeks in an airtight container.
Fried Pastries
The Scandinavian dessert repertoire includes a variety of fried goods, many of which date back to the days before ovens were common. Using cast-iron molds, they could be prepared over an open fire. Today these traditional cookies and cakes are rarely made at home, usually only at Christmas. Klejner or fattigman are crisp, twisted strips of dough often flavored with lemon zest and fried in hot oil. They vary from region to region: in Norway they are made with yeast and frequently decorated with icing after cooling; in Denmark they have no yeast and are served plain. Æbleskiver, with their pancake-like batter, are a Danish Christmas tradition. Traditionally, these plump pancakes are baked with either a slice of apple or prune sauce inside, though that practice is no longer common. They are fried in a little shortening or butter in a special cast-iron pan with round indentations. Sadly, very few Danes make æbleskiver by hand anymore, generally choosing to buy them frozen and reheat them in the oven. Æbleskiver are served with raspberry jam and powdered sugar; a glass of gløgg or mulled wine is the classic accompaniment. See mulled wine.
At Christmas, Norwegians serve krumkake, a thin, crisp waffle pressed in an ornately decorated two-sided iron that leaves its impression on the finished waffle. See wafers. While still warm, the krumkaker are rolled into cones; they are typically served with cloudberry jam. Rosette or struvor belong to an old tradition in Scandinavia. Like krumkaker, they are made with a special iron, often floral in shape, which is dipped into a liquid batter and then into hot oil. Today, rosettes are most often prepared in Scandinavian communities in the United States.
Candy and Licorice
Today, the Scandinavian sweet tooth is visible in worldwide brands of candy and candy stores. Modern Scandinavian candy stores are like supermarkets, where customers help themselves to a variety of candy and pay by weight. These shops have replaced the older style of shops where candy was bought and paid for individually. See penny candy. Such old-fashioned candy shops, called slikbutikker, existed in virtually all Scandinavian cities and towns. They are often described in children’s literature, as in Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking. See children’s literature.
The Scandinavian love of licorice is a big part of the region’s candy tradition. See licorice. Licorice was first used as a cough medicine purchased at the pharmacy. As a nonmedicinal treat, licorice root became very popular in the early 1800s, and Scandinavian candy factories have been producing a range of hard, soft, sweet, and salty licorice for the last 200 years. There are now hundreds of corporate and artisanal brands to choose from.
Bolsjer are small, decorative pieces of hard candy made of pure sugar and fruit concentrates, or of other essential flavors. See hard candy. A few small artisanal producers still exist, such as Sømods Bolcher in central Copenhagen.
Over the past 50 years, many new, foreign products have been introduced to Scandinavia. However, when it comes to sweets, tradition remains strong. Although a significant number of small bakeries have closed over the last 20 years or so, a new generation of artisan bakers is making sure that the high-quality handmade products Scandinavian bakers are known for do not disappear. New trends are reinvigorating old traditions, such as the combining of chocolate and licorice in inventive cream cakes, or the use of fresh fruit instead of commercially prepared jam. Danish flødeboller—chocolate-coated marshmallows, sometimes with a layer of marzipan—have experienced a renaissance as chocolatiers experiment with new flavors like passion fruit, colorings like beet juice, and spices like cardamom.
Finland
Among the Nordic countries, Finland is often seen as an outlier, partly because Finns don’t speak the mutually intelligible languages of the Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes. The country’s culinary traditions differ, too, having been influenced by Russia rather than by the French haute cuisine embraced by the royal kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Finnish culinary practices tend to be less elaborate than those of its neighbors. With nearly 40 different types of edible berries, Finland often features fruit in desserts, along with an enticing array of dairy products. In the summer, berries are baked into mustikkapiirakka, Finland’s iconic blueberry pie, or pressed and whipped into light-as-air vispipuuro, a lingonberry and semolina pudding. The oven-baked Åland pancake, a specialty of the Baltic islands between Finland and Sweden, is based on semolina or rice pudding inflected with cardamom and served with stewed prunes and whipped cream. On the mainland, Tiger Cake, a chocolate-marbled pound cake, appears on the coffee table that is as much a tradition in Finland as elsewhere.
Like other Scandinavians, Finns love salty licorice, especially the extremely strong salmiakki. They also share a love of crisp, deep-fried battercakes in the form of tippalëivät, which are traditionally served for May Day along with sima, a lightly carbonated lemon mead. The Russian influence can be seen in the use of sour cream in coffee cakes, and in the fresh cheese used for cheesecakes. See cheesecake and coffee cake. Cardamom is a favored spice that shows up not only in sweet desserts, but also in enriched breads like pulla. See breads, sweet. All manner of fruit soups—from blueberry in summer to mixed dried fruit in winter—remain popular in Finland. See soup.
See desserts, chilled.
servers, ice cream, constitute an entire category of serving utensils. Despite the fact that food chilled by ice existed in ancient Rome, and that forms of ices and ice cream became fashionable in elite European circles in the seventeenth century, the development of utensils specific to its serving is primarily an American story. See ice cream. European serving methods in the pre-mechanized eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries included elegant porcelain serving pails with matching or glass cups that would have needed little more than a serving spoon or even a tablespoon to serve the ice cream. A simple, small teaspoon could have scooped the ice cream out of a cup. Spoon-like implements with straight edges—ice cream spades—exist from the eighteenth century.
In the mid-nineteenth century, ice cream and its servers came to newly rich middle-class diners as part of an ever-expanding market for specialized flatware in the United States. The crank-driven home ice cream maker, the increased long-distance transport of large masses of ice by railway, and the lowering of sugar prices all came together in the mid-nineteenth century to broaden the volume of ice cream being served. To these developments was added the discovery of the Comstock Lode of silver in Nevada in 1859. From this easy supply of silver flowed a river of fancy new implements that complemented changing culinary tastes. Ice cream was among the foods that inspired creative and specific serving implements. It was thought to be best served with a spade or a “slice.” However, some serving sets included a pierced, pointed serving spoon that could lift a block of ice cream from the ice and let any melted water run off. The spoon could be paired with a knife that could also be used for cutting ice cream or cake. The frozen-solid hardness of ice cream and sorbets inspired the market for often gilded and engraved, specially designed, sharp-edged forks and spoons, ice cream spades, slices, saws, and hatchets.
These ice cream spades, saws, and hatchets appeared in endless possible patterns thanks to new technologies like the steam-driven, double-sided die-stamp that enabled more efficient production of sometimes elaborate motifs on both sides of the utensils’ handles. The wide range of patterns, as well as the variety of solutions for serving large quantities of ice cream, appealed to American consumerism. Yet, despite the number of patterns available for servers, and individual flatware to match, the ice-cream server often did not match the service pattern. Instead, it was a key example of the American fascination for developing function-specific utensils. Thus, an ice cream hatchet’s handle might try to replicate, in silver, an actual hatchet.
Serving ice cream, preferably with dramatic implements, played a leading role in the conspicuous consumption of those who could afford luxurious trappings. This service was accompanied by the display of specialized implements, especially forks, with which to eat the ice cream and sorbets. Even though ice cream was enjoying similar levels of democratization in Europe, these implements were more successful in the United States, thanks to skillful marketing that played on social insecurities, which implied that to be socially acceptable, one needed food-specific designs. The idea of eating ice cream and sorbet with an individual fork appeared as early as the 1840s, when Americans were still sensitive about not being savvy about fork usage.
The masculinity of the forms of some ice cream servers suggests that the owners of such pieces were not embarrassed to consider themselves products of American prosperity, rather than of the refined European aristocracy associated with ice cream in previous centuries. The hatchet and spade forms may also suggest that the serving of ice cream was exclusively the province of the butler or male server, rather than of a maid, given the force that was likely needed to cut the ice cream. A large amount of frozen ice cream might have been set in tower-like displays, some on stands with polar décor. The ice cream was then cut with a silver spade, hatchet, saw, or serving knife on the dining room sideboard to avoid melting in transit; a spade was used to portion the ice cream for each plate, from which it was eaten with a special fork, small spade, or shovel, all with a knife edge for cutting.
By the end of the nineteenth century, as refrigeration and the cost of ice cream fell, ice cream became a mass-market product. Nonetheless, elegant menus still showed a fascination with palate-cleansing ices served between courses, presented in glass containers from the pantry so that no fancy servers were needed. More significantly, the broader market meant that the ice cream servers were often relegated to the kitchen, and so less costly materials were used. As ice cream became standard with birthday cake, some twentieth-century ice cream servers doubled as cake servers, using a sharp or serrated edge for both. With mass-market appeal, stainless steel came to the fore between the world wars, and even silver servers often featured stainless-steel blades for strength. More casual presentations of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have introduced brightly colored handles and circular metal scoops with a metal band that rotates to push the ice cream out into attractive balls for cones or bowls. Other innovations, such as cold-resistant silicone handles or metals that can be warmed to extract hard-frozen ice cream or sorbet from commercial containers, have replaced the spade or hatchet-like servers. Today, ice cream, no longer a luxury item, arrives in individual servings, including the cone, or with a spoon with which to eat it.
An engraved silver ice cream hatchet made by the Gorham Manufacturing Company, circa 1880. The growing popularity of ice cream in mid-nineteenth-century America, along with the proliferation of specialized tableware during the Gilded Age, inspired elegant serving pieces designed to cut through the treat’s frozen mass. dallas museum of art, gift of dr. and mrs. dale bennett / bridgeman
See also refrigeration; servers, sugar; and serving pieces.
servers, sugar, are necessary tools for the table, since sugar is used to adorn desserts and sweeten beverages. Over the years, as the forms of sugar have changed, so have the implements designed to serve it. An early place to store sugar on the table or sideboard was the sugar box, which was succeeded by the sugar bowl, and then the sugar caddy, primarily used to hold sugar for beverages. Sugar was retrieved from these boxes and bowls by means of nips or snips, scissors or tongs. Other early tools included casters or sugar sifter spoons used to shake sugar over fruit or other confections. In more recent years, sugar has been provided inelegantly at the table in simple paper packets or tubes, especially in restaurants.
Within the limited categories of sugar servers, there are many varieties in design. The greatest impact on the development of these objects occurred after the sixteenth century in Europe, when the introduction of tea, coffee, and chocolate led to a craze for these items among the elite. Although none of these beverages were generally imbibed with sugar in their native lands, Europeans perceived them as bitter. Before long, objects specifically designed around sugar added to the status of the beverage service and complemented the beautiful vessels made to hold them. During the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as tea, coffee, and chocolate pots and sugar bowls came into prominence, so too did various forms of nips, snips, tongs, and scissors. See chocolate pots and cups.
These silver sugar casters, made in Paris between 1730 and 1740, depict slaves carrying sugarcane, a reminder of sugar’s bitter origins. © rmn-grand palais / art resource, n.y.
Sugar boxes date back to the sixteenth century as storage containers appropriate for either the table or sideboard, for use with dessert or with the wine, which was sometimes sweetened. The significance ascribed to sugar can be seen in the generally high artistic levels of these objects, in their fine materials (often silver), and in their engravings and ornamentation.
Sugar caddies evolved as part of the tea equipage. Tea caddies were usually provided in pairs, for different types of teas, and sometimes included a third, larger box for sugar. This combination, usually made of silver but housed in a wooden box with mounts, evolved in the eighteenth century. Toward the end of that century, the tea set, which could include coffee and chocolate pots and hot-water urns, generally also included a matching sugar bowl, in which case the sugar caddy or box was replaced in a tea caddy set by a mixing bowl for the tea.
Sugar bowls appeared predominantly on the tea table, with coffee and chocolate at breakfast, or at the end of a meal. As sugar and tea became more affordable, the bowls grew in size. Early sugar bowls were often round in shape, their forms and decoration frequently reflecting those of the teapot. However, the first sugar bowls were not considered part of a set, and hence did not need to match. To keep the sugar clean and fresh, the bowls had covers that were lifted for retrieving the sugar with tongs or scissors; these implements never stayed in the sugar bowl, as is often common practice today. Silver and the prized porcelain imported from Asia, or of eighteenth-century European manufacture, were considered worthy materials for serving valuable sugar.
Sugar nips, nippers, or snips refer to the sharp-edged implements used to cut sugar into pieces small enough for serving. Sugar arrived from the refinery in loaves, cones, or coarse chunks that had to be separated and broken down further. See sugar refining. Scissor-like objects, generally known as sugar nips, with sharp, sometimes ridged fingers, were used to cut the lump sugar into small portions. The sugar could then be ground in a mortar, cut into even smaller pieces, or grated before being placed in a caster for sprinkling over food; the action of shaking created an even finer granulation. Cone and loaf sugar continued to be used throughout the nineteenth century in the United States, especially in rural areas, although once commercially granulated sugar became affordable, the cones were relegated to the kitchen.
Sugar tongs and scissors were designed for picking up lumps of sugar to put into a tea, coffee, or chocolate cup; the names reflect the different forms. Early sugar tongs often included two hinged or connected arms that could be pinched to grab a small lump of sugar. Some had sharp edges at the terminals to facilitate further crumbling. Sugar scissors, as the name suggests, were fashioned in the form of an X, with open, circular finger holes by which to grip and close the ends of the scissors around a lump of sugar. The scissor form became popular in the second quarter of the eighteenth century and remained so into the twentieth century, especially after Henry Tate introduced the sugar cube in London in the 1870s. See sugar cubes and tate & lyle. However, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, a simple, flat, elongated U shape became fashionable; it was easy to craft from a single sheet of silver and could be bright-cut or engraved with delicate decoration. With the increased consumption of tea, and the ever-increasing sizes of teapots and their accompanying sugar bowls, these tongs were easily made longer to accommodate the new bowl sizes. Tongs and scissors were not generally part of the tea set, but the U-form tongs sometimes did share engraved designs and initials, even armorials, with the sugar bowl.
Casters are usually found in the form of small towers, most frequently with baluster or octagonal sections and removable pierced domed caps. Initially they held sugar that had been grated from cones or chunks; as sugar became more refined, they later held granules and confectioner’s sugar. See sugar. When casters first appeared in England in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, they were considered appropriate gifts for noblemen, on the order of objects like pomanders for spices and perfumes. Some early standing table centerpieces featuring “salts” for another prized commodity included some sort of pierced component, possibly for sprinkling sugar or spices. The development of the three-caster box or set, with one larger sugar caster and two smaller ones for pepper and dried mustard, did not appear until the era of the English dessert banquet in the late seventeenth century. See banqueting houses.
Sugar sifter spoons function in much the same way as casters, holding grated lump, granulated, or confectioner’s sugar that can be sprinkled by shaking the spoon from side to side. Their sharp-edged pierced decorations allow sugar to sprinkle through the piercings. While the exact date of their origin is unclear, the earliest sifter spoons, with fairly deep bowls and long handles, seem to have appeared in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Their popularity in the nineteenth century and later is probably due to the advent of mechanized sugar refining and the patenting of a powdered sugar machine in 1851, which meant that sugar could be sprinkled in a more highly refined state from the spoons.
See also serving pieces.
serving pieces are the objects and tools devised for presenting sweets. Historically, they were treasured—stored separately and not in daily use. Examples include the Limoges enamel valued at the sixteenth-century Valois court, or the Venetian bowls in Henry VIII’s Whitehall Glasshouse. Some pieces were exotic, such as the gilded and lacquered “wicker China” at Salisbury House, London, in 1612. In Renaissance Italy, tin-glazed istoriato dishes painted with classical myths were popular. Dutch and English customers had tin-glazed plates painted with moralizing or mocking rhymes, successors to the earlier trenchers, which were disks of thin beech wood. Painted and gilded with a motto or a biblical text, these delicate mats had a plain side for candied fruit. See candied fruit.
Imported Chinese porcelain arrived in Italy beginning in the late fifteenth century, and from the mid-sixteenth century it rapidly became the desired material for serving fruit across northern Europe. The silver-mounted Imari porcelain service of Charles of Lorraine (now in Vienna’s Imperial Silver Chamber) shows how colorful ceramic services imported from China and Japan retained their appeal well into the eighteenth century.
In the early seventeenth century, fruit, a prestigious delicacy, was set out on broad “scalloped” dishes, as listed in Charles I’s inventories in the 1630s; beginning in the 1660s, this style was superseded by standing dishes on trumpet feet. For evening parties at courts, sugared fruit was piled up in decorative silver trays. Apart from the decorative pastry lids on pies and tarts, height was the desired effect. Service en pyramide created height by stacking graded salvers called porcellanes, a term used from the mid-sixteenth century, even though the salvers were not always made of porcelain. At the 1668 peace celebrations at Versailles, dessert was served in seize porcelains en pyramide.
New delicacies such as flavored creams required new serving wares. Between 1637 and 1639, Viscountess Dorchester’s dessert closet contained a sugar box, “cream bowls of china garnished with silver, China dishes, glasses and bottles … 5 drawers full of Chinay dishes and glass plates, a dozen tortus shell dishes.” Robert May, in The Accomplisht Cook (1678 edition), recommended “little round Jelly glasses,” to be stacked up on salvers. Before the early eighteenth century, flat ceramic plates and dishes were hard to fire in kilns. Metal or lead glass offered an alternative: “The broader your cream dish, the more beautiful your cream will look,” as Rebecca Price advised in 1681. She also recommended a silver server (salver) for “Jelly Lemons” and a salver for “Spoonefulls of Spanish Cream.” In 1702 the French chef Massialot recommended “China” for wet sweetmeats in his Nouvelle instruction pour les confitures.
Porcelain offered shiny color and ornament for ladles, bowls, and dishes for cream and compotes, as well as for plates painted with flowers and dessert tureens shaped like fruit. At Chelsea in 1755, a “compleat service for the dessert” featured large cabbage leaves, vine leaves, and small sunflower leaves. By the 1770s, European porcelain factories were making special ice-filled ceramic bucket-shaped containers, with a central saucer, for serving ice cream. See ice cream. The Meissen, St. Cloud, Chantilly, and Sèvres factories all supplied porcelain handles for dessert flatware. At Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1770, Governor Botetourt had a case of flatware “with China handles,” plus gilt-handled dessert sets, standard since the late seventeenth century. Diners often carried small folding pocketknives for fruit.
A new implement, a silver trowel devised for dexterous lifting of delicate pastries and cakes, was adopted from Oslo to London by 1720. Porcelain and creamware trowels soon followed. For serving ice cream, two-handled glass or porcelain cups, presented on small salvers, became standard, as depicted in M. Emy’s L’Art de bien faire les glaces d’office (1768). See emy, m. Silversmiths created spades with curved sides to slice the ice cream. See servers, ice cream. Gilding remained the preferred finish for both serving implements and dessert wares. In the 1760s the botanically knowledgeable second Duchess of Portland ordered a complete service, including blackcurrant and strawberry leaf dishes for fruit tarts, candelabra formed as plant stems with insects and butterflies, and serving spoons and forks with leaf-encrusted handles and bowls. These themed dessert services suited the eighteenth-century concept of summer dining al fresco in garden houses and grottoes, or on a boating lake, as at Wanstead House.
At all social levels, setting out a dessert was a valuable skill. Banquets (desserts) at sixteenth-century European courts are known about mostly from descriptions by heralds and stewards, images of royal marriages, feasts of knightly orders (the Garter, St. Esprit), and feasts held for imperial elections. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, professional table deckers created striking effects with silver, glass, and porcelain. For evening assemblies from the 1740s, epergnes in all these materials, with small hanging baskets for sweetmeats and sugared fruit, were popular. See epergnes. For large feasts, serving wares were rented from goldsmiths, glass sellers, and confectioners. In the 1760s, Domenico Negri depicted on his trade cards the fanciful dessert centerpieces on Chinese, marine, and classical themes available to rent from his premises at the Sign of the Pineapple in London’s Hanover Square.
Exceptional creations attracted comment in the press: the royal goldsmith Hugh Le Sage made for the Prince of Nassau “a very curious piece of wrought plate (for a desert) of exquisite workmanship” (Daily Advertiser, April 1731). For the Duke of Richmond, a 1730s list of “Things to be gott in Paris” included a confectioner and “a compleatt sett of desert dishes with looking glasses.” Mirror centerpieces, fashionable from the early eighteenth century, were dressed with clusters of porcelain figures and sugar flowers, which were replaced in the early nineteenth century by gilded stands for fruit or fresh flowers.
French and English handbooks of instructions, such as Hannah Woolley’s Queenlike Closet or Rich Cabinet … of Rare Receipts (for) … Ingenious Persons of the Female Sex (1670) or The Whole Duty of a Woman (1737), stress the importance of symmetry in the layout but rarely specify the dishes. In Manchester the confectioner Elizabeth Raffald recommended a “Deep China Dish” as the centerpiece for a dessert. Classes for women in pastry making and dessert planning were held in London in the 1720s and later.
Wealthy owners of costly porcelain dessert services often showed them in glazed display cases near the dining room, as at Apsley House, London, and Alnwick Castle. Exceptional eighteenth-century Sèvres services can be seen at Waddesdon Manor, the Rothschild Collection (Paris), and Woburn Abbey. Other European porcelain services made for imperial and princely households are in St. Petersburg, Vienna, and Munich. Beginning in the 1760s, creamware, aimed at middle-class consumers, offered a cheaper decorative substitute for porcelain. The best known are Queens Ware services from Wedgwood’s factory, often decorated with transfer printing; Leeds potters produced a variety called pearlware. Baskets with pierced borders were popular at all social levels. These English wares were widely exported.
Once the concept of the restaurant was invented in Paris in the 1760s, this new setting increasingly offered an agreeable environment alongside confectioners’ shops for respectable women to eat in public, and restaurants gradually transformed the preparation of sweets. More-complex and fashionable delicacies such as ice cream, puff pastry, and meringues became treats to be prepared by professionals and consumed away from home. See meringue and pastry, puff. Serving wares for commercial eating places were elaborate, adopting conventions such as special tiered stands for cakes, and tall glasses for iced confections. See cake and confectionery stands.
Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the variety of serving implements for desserts multiplied, driven by new dining practices, industrial innovation, and the constant invention of novelties. In the 1840s, Elkingtons, an entrepreneurial Birmingham firm, and Christofle in Paris almost simultaneously invented techniques for electroplating flatware. Shiny but much less expensive than sterling silver, and more durable than the earlier silver substitute known as Sheffield plate, this new material was fashioned into a huge range of slices, scoops, knives, and spoons.
American manufacturers were inventive in devising tools for particular delicacies. This “jewelry of silver,” a term used in Scribner’s Monthly 1874 article “The Silver Age,” ranged from oyster forks to “knife-edge ice cream spoons,” sawback cake knives, and servers for asparagus, celery, berries, pastries, and salad.
Machine-made pressed glass offered a decorative and colorful alternative to cut glass, which continued to be admired throughout the nineteenth century. Mid-nineteenth-century housewives appreciated colorful porcelain dishes and plates that reproduced rococo design of the 1740s and 1750s, including shell-shaped baskets and comports for fruit. As illustrated in Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management (in many editions from 1861), dessert tables were still laid in a symmetrical arrangement, echoing the location of the earlier savory dishes, with the addition of trowels, grape scissors, and decorative serving spoons, as well as small knives, spoons, and forks with gilded or mother-of-pearl handles. See beeton, isabella.
Today, informality in eating, driven by a lack of time to prepare foods as much as by changing attitudes to diet, means that desserts are rarely elaborately presented at home. However, a birthday or other celebration still merits a special effort, such as bringing out a treasured old dish or bowl and small forks. Restaurants and caterers for large dinners compete to present their confections with style, although the wares and tools are usually simple, practical expressions of contemporary design.
See also banqueting houses; fruit; and sugar sculpture.
sexual innuendo has coupled sweetness with love and sexuality since ancient times. In the Old Testament’s Song of Solomon, the female speaker equates her lover with sweet apples:
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. (2:3)
In his fourth-century work The Fall of Troy, Quintus Smyrnaeus alludes to “love’s deep sweet well-springs.” In the late thirteenth century “sweetheart” arose in English as a term of endearment, followed shortly after by “sweeting.” In the late sixteenth century “sweetikins” appeared: “She is such a honey sweetikins,” wrote Thomas Nashe in a pamphlet from 1596. “Sweetling” and “sweetie” appeared in the mid-seventeenth century, while “sweetie-pie,” “sugar pie,” and “sugar” emerged as terms of endearment around 1930. In 1969 The Archies released their hit song “Sugar, Sugar,” in which a “candy girl” is advised to “pour a little sugar” onto her boyfriend.
Not surprisingly, “honey” has also long been used as a term of endearment. In a fourteenth-century manuscript called “William and the Werewolf,” the hero tells his beloved, “Mi hony, mi hert, al hol thou me makest” (My honey, my heart, you make me completely whole). In a sixteenth-century bawdy poem by the Scottish poet William Dunbar, a woman calls her lover “my swete hurle bawsy, / my huny gukkis” (my sweet calf, my honey cakes). In the late nineteenth century “honey bunny” appeared, though a precursor might be found in a 1719 poem by Thomas D’Urfrey in which a lover proclaims, “My Juggy, my Puggy, my Honey, my Bunny.”
Sweet foods have also been used in sexual contexts to represent various parts of the human body. Slang words for the buttocks, for example, have included “hot cross buns” and “pound cake.” In addition, baked goods have been used as metonyms for female breasts, as with “cupcakes,” “apple dumplings,” and “love muffins,” but more often they are imagined as sweet globular fruits: apples, oranges, cantaloupes, mangoes, and especially peaches and melons. Sweet foods have also inspired several slang names for the penis, including “custard chucker,” “ladies’ lollipop,” and “sweet meat.” Slang names for the vagina have included “honey pot,” which was first used in a narrative published in 1673 called Unlucky Citizen: “Desiring by all means to gain his will on the Wench, and to have a lick at her Honey-pot.” “Jelly roll” was a popular slang name for the vagina in the 1920s, as was “fur pie” from the 1930s onward. The 1999 film American Pie, in which a teenager copulates with a warm apple pie, appears to have prompted the recent use of “apple pie” as a slang synonym for “vagina.”
The lyrics of many popular songs construe sexuality in terms of sweet foods. The term “jelly roll,” as mentioned earlier, was used as a slang name for the vagina and appeared in numerous jazz and blues songs of the 1920s, such as “I Ain’t Gonna Give Nobody None o’ My Jelly Roll,” “Nobody in Town Can Bake a Jelly Roll Like Mine,” and “The New Jelly-Roll Blues.” The latter song, as recorded by Peg Leg Howell in 1926, includes these suggestive lyrics:
Jelly roll, jelly roll, ain’t so hard to find.
Ain’t a baker shop in town bake ’em brown like mine
I got a sweet jelly, a lovin’ sweet jelly roll,
If you taste my jelly, it’ll satisfy your worried soul.
Sexual innuendo also characterizes the lyrics of Bessie Smith’s jazz classic “I Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl,” which she recorded in 1931: “I need a little sugar in my bowl, / I need a little hot dog, between my rolls.” Smith’s song “Kitchen Man” from 1929 is equally suggestive:
When I eat his doughnuts
All I leave is the hole
Any time he wants to
Why, he can use my sugar bowl.
Songs that made risqué use of sweet foods persisted throughout the twentieth century. Roosevelt Sykes, in 1961, sang, “I’m the sweet root man, try this potato of mine.” In the 1970s The Guess Who sang about a woman withholding sex from a man in their song “No Sugar Tonight.” Steve Miller admired a woman’s breasts when he crooned, “I really like your peaches, want to shake your tree,” and the Rolling Stones equated “brown sugar” with young black women: “Brown sugar how come you taste so good? / Brown sugar just like a young girl should.” In some song lyrics, sweet foods were employed as stand-ins for an erect penis: Tom Waits, in “Ice Cream Man,” sings, “I got a cherry popsicle right on time / A big stick, mamma, that’ll blow your mind,” while 50 Cent in “Candy Shop” says, “I’ll take you to the candy shop, / I’ll let you lick the lollypop.” Contemporary pop stars continue to honor the tradition of sweet and bawdy lyrics. In her 2013 album Blow, Beyoncé croons, “Can you lick my Skittles, it’s the sweetest in the middle, / Pink is the flavor, solve the riddle.”
See pastry, puff.
shape, perhaps against expectation, influences the way we perceive sweetness, leading to the question of whether sweetness itself has a shape. While the question might seem like a nonsensical one, a growing body of empirical evidence now documents the fact that the majority of Western consumers will match sweet-tasting foods with rounded (rather than angular) shapes. Why such an association should exist is not altogether clear. It may have something to do with the fact that both sweetness and roundness are treated as positive sensory attributes. By contrast, most Westerners match bitterness, sourness, and carbonation with more angular shapes, the link in these cases perhaps being that all three cues are associated with stimuli that are potentially dangerous or bad for us, and hence generally best avoided.
Shape Symbolism in Action
Foods are typically rated as tasting sweeter when they are served in a round format rather than a more angular one. Such an observation may help to explain why consumers complained following the introduction of the new, rounder Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bar in 2013, saying that the confection tasted sweeter following its change in shape. Mondelēz International, the company that currently makes the product, asserts that the recipe hasn’t changed. In the future, food companies may be able to use the cross-modal correspondence between roundness and sweetness to enhance the design of their product offerings.
Furthermore, once it is realized that taste attributes can be communicated by means of shape cues, a rich world of “synesthetic marketing” opens up. It can be argued that the labels, logos, and packaging of sweet products should be rounder (to set up the right expectation in the mind of the consumer), while products that are bitter or carbonated should be angular.
Desserts are rated as tasting significantly sweeter if served from a round plate than from an angular one, while food served from a white plate is perceived as tasting sweeter than food served from a black plate. Presenting a dessert on a round white plate may thus allow the chef to reduce the sugar content while not compromising on taste. No wonder, then, that many restaurateurs are now starting to sit up and take note of the emerging research on shape symbolism and taste.
Cross-Cultural Differences in the Shape of Sweetness
Intriguingly, recent cross-cultural research has highlighted the fact that not everyone experiences the same cross-modal associations when it comes to the shape of taste. The semi-nomadic Himba tribe of Namibia, for instance, actually shows the opposite pattern of results from Westerners, associating sweetness (as in milk chocolate) with angularity. Further research is needed in order to determine why this should be so.
See also vision; sound; and sweetness preference.
shave ice is the term used in Hawaii for thinly shaved ice doused in fluorescent, tropical-fruit-flavored syrups and served in a paper cone. The dropped “d” is typical of the Hawaii Creole English (commonly known as pidgin) that is widely spoken in the islands. Shave ice is one of a large family of shaved ice treats around the world that are enjoyed for the delicate consistency of their ice flakes, which hold the syrup in suspension. Snow cones or snow balls, more commonly sold in the mainland United States, are made of crushed ice.
The history of shave ice and snow cones is yet to be written, though certain preliminary observations are possible. Although there were probably hand-shaved predecessors (still found in Mexico, for example), to make either type on a commercial scale requires large-scale ice harvesting or artificial refrigeration, a machine for shaving or crushing, sugar, and artificial flavors and colors. This suggests an origin sometime in the early twentieth century. The distribution of shave ice maps fairly closely onto early-twentieth-century Japanese emigration routes to Hawaii and the Americas, and to the slightly later expansion of the Japanese empire across East and Southeast Asia (though how shave ice ended up in the Caribbean is obscure). This trajectory, along with the widespread occurrence of Japanese-made machinery, indicates an origin in Japan, possibly Okinawa, the main sugar-growing area in that country. Snow cones appear to have been an American innovation, though the crushed ice balls of India may be an independent invention.
Shave ice lends itself to more exuberant variants, such as sweetened azuki beans in the bottom of the cup and ice cream on the top in Hawaii, or condensed milk or Calpis (fermented goat’s milk) in Japan. Filipino halo halo is a riot of textures and flavors, including sweetened beans, jackfruit, gelatinous young coconut, and fresh fruits, all covered with syrup or condensed milk.
See also azuki beans; ice cream; and sweetened condensed milk.
sherbet refers to both a sweet chilled drink and a lush frozen dessert. Although it resists strict definition, sherbet is a delight to drink or eat. The name derives from the medieval Arabic sharāb, meaning a drink or a dose of water, medicine, or other liquid; this word was adopted into Urdu as sharbat and into Turkish as şerbet. By the late Middle Ages sharāb had become a notorious euphemism for an alcoholic beverage; the alternate form sharbāt (along with sharbat and şerbet) came to mean a sweet, nonalcoholic, fruit-based beverage, not necessarily chilled. The essential thing about a şerbet is sweetness, which is considered auspicious in Turkey and the Middle East. In Turkish, “To sense someone’s pulse and serve sherbet” means to use tact. In Egypt, the phrase “sherbet flows in her veins” means that a woman is sweet, delightful company; it does not mean that she is cold-blooded.
Traditional sherbet beverages are sweetened with sugar or honey, and are made with a variety of fruits, flowers, and herbs, including lemon, pomegranate, quince, strawberry, cherry, orange, rose, orange blossom, tamarind, mulberry, and violet. They are both everyday drinks and festive ones, served at weddings, births, and circumcision ceremonies. In Turkey, a bride-to-be is said to have drunk şerbet when she agrees to marry, and şerbet is prepared to mark the betrothal. Iranians drink sharbat as part of the festivities at Nowruz, the New Year holiday celebrated on the first day of spring. On such occasions, sherbets are traditionally presented in elegant glass cups covered with rounds of embroidered silk and placed on decorated trays. On more ordinary days, street vendors throughout the Middle East sell sherbets from large flasks and announce their presence with tinkling bells, much like ice cream peddlers in the West.
Sherbet makers also mixed dried fruits and flowers with sugar to make sherbet powders, a kind of instant sherbet that could be easily transported, then mixed with water and chilled for a refreshing beverage. The powders were sold throughout the region and even imported to England during the seventeenth century. In their modern form, sherbet powders are a child’s treat. Twenty-first-century English children eat sweet fizzy sherbet powders by dipping lollipops into the powder and licking it off. Sherbet Fountains, paper tubes of sherbet powder with licorice straws, are also popular with young children. See sherbet powder.
Sherbet in Europe
The word sharāb entered European languages in the late medieval period, resulting in words like sciroppo and syrup via Latin. The first Western mention of sherbet appeared only in the sixteenth century, when it was recorded in Italian as something that Turks drank. Italians adopted the word as sorbetto, rather than scerbetto, due to a folk etymology connecting it with sorbire, “to sip.” From sorbetto came the French sorbet (1553), Spanish sorbete, and Portuguese sorvete. English might be the only Western language that adopted the word “sherbet” directly from Turkish.
In the early seventeenth century the English writer and traveler to the Middle East George Sandys described “sundry sherbets … some made of sugar and lemons, some of violets, and the like.” Nineteenth-century novelist James Morier described the flavor of Persian sherbets as “so mixed that the sour and the sweet were as equally balanced as the blessings and miseries of life.”
Sherbet remained a drink until seventeenth-century Europeans discovered the endothermic effect whereby ice, when combined with salt, lowers the temperature of a substance enough to freeze it. Early freezing pots for making ices and ice creams were called sorbetières, sometimes spelled sarbetières or sabotieres. In Italy, the word sorbetto was used for both frozen ices and frozen ice creams well into the eighteenth century, when gelato became the term for ice cream.
In most countries, sorbetto or sorbet came to mean a frozen water ice made from a basic sugar syrup to which fruit juices, additional water, herbs, flavorings, wine, or spirits are added. Beaten egg whites, fresh or pasteurized, are often used to lighten sorbets. Today, commercial sorbets may also include stabilizers, emulsifiers, and other products to create a smoother, longer-lasting product.
In the United States, the word “sherbet” eventually came to be used for frozen mixtures that contained milk rather than cream, but the term was a fluid one. In her 1913 book Ice Creams, Water Ices, Frozen Puddings, the American Sarah Tyson Rorer wrote that a water ice should have the appearance of “hard, wet snow. It must not be frothy and light.” She defined sherbet or sorbet as being composed of the same mixture as water ice, but it had to be stirred constantly and have meringue mixed in. Her sherbets did not contain milk. See italian ice and meringue.
Soda fountain manuals from the early twentieth century include sherbet recipes that call for such ingredients as gelatin, cream of tartar, beaten egg whites, cream, or milk. But generally in the United States, sherbet is an ice milk. During World War II restaurants and soda fountains promoted sherbet since it was made with milk rather than cream, which was in short supply. Half-and-half sundaes were made with a scoop of sherbet and a scoop of ice cream. See sundae. Today, frozen sherbets are sold in many flavors, including pomegranate, lemon, grape, raspberry, lime, and peach, though the flavors are not yet as numerous as those used in Middle Eastern beverage sherbets.
Midmeal Sorbets
In Victorian England, elaborate multicourse meals began with a hot soup course. Then, after three more courses, the second half of the meal often began with a cooling sorbet or punch much like the Middle Eastern sherbet drinks. See punch. The preeminent English cookbook author Agnes Marshall wrote that these sorbets should be of a “light, semi-frozen nature…. They are generally prepared by first making an ordinary lemon-water ice, and adding to this some spirit, liqueur, or syrup for flavouring, and fruit for garnish, and are named accordingly rum sorbet, cherry sorbet, and so on.” She said they should be served in glasses or fancy cups. Mrs. Marshall used the terms “sorbet” and “water ice,” but not “sherbet.” See marshall, agnes bertha.
The midmeal sorbets were generally made with enough liquor to prevent their freezing solid, so that they would be slushy. Roman Punch, ubiquitous on nineteenth- and twentieth-century menus in England and the United States, was one of the most popular. Recipes vary. One of Mrs. Marshall’s was basically a lemon water ice with Jamaica rum added; another was a lemon water ice with beaten egg whites, brandy, and champagne. Her recipe for American Sorbet was similar to the others but flavored with Catawba wine (an American red wine) or champagne. Its unique quality was that it was served in ice glasses, made by freezing water in tin molds shaped like cups. Mrs. Marshall included an ad for the molds at the back of the 1894 edition of her book Fancy Ices. See molds, jelly and ice cream. Some twenty-first-century menus have revived the midmeal sorbet, but the practice has not regained its former popularity.
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defines sherbet as a frozen dessert with a milk-fat content of not less than 1 percent, or more than 2 percent. It defines water ices as similar to sherbets, except that no milk or milk-derived ingredients may be used. No definition is provided for sorbet. Generally, in the United States and Europe, sorbet does not contain dairy products and is usually hard-frozen rather than resembling the slushy mixtures of yesteryear. In the Middle East and Middle Eastern restaurants everywhere, sherbet is still the sweet chilled drink that so impressed sixteenth-century European travelers.
See also children’s candy; cream; ice cream; middle east; and soda fountain.
sherbet powder is a mixture of sugar, tartaric acid powder, bicarbonate of soda, and lemon flavoring. It combines sweetness, sharp acidity, and a sensation of fizz, and was described by Tim Richardson, in Sweets: A History of Temptation (2002), as “one of the most nutritionally unjustifiable and gastronomically obscure foodstuffs available to man (or child).”
This inexpensive confection is essentially a U.K. specialty beloved of children between six and ten. As “Rainbow Crystals,” arranged in colored stripes in the jar, it decorates the sweetshop shelves, waiting to be weighed out and tipped into flimsy paper bags; a cheap lollipop (a boiled sweet on a stick) is added to make a “sherbet dab.” Sherbet Fountains are paper tubes filled with the powder, each one sealed around a hollow tube of licorice that serves as a drinking straw for imbibing the contents. “Flying saucers” are fragile discs of wafer, domed in the middle and pressed together in twos to enclose the powder; and sherbet lemons are lemon-flavored boiled sweets filled with the powder. Sherbet also flavors tablet-like confections of powdered sugar stamped out under high pressure. Of these, Love Hearts, descendants of Victorian motto lozenges, are the most distinctive.
Sherbet powder dates to the mid-nineteenth century, when it was discovered that bicarbonate of soda and tartaric acid, developed by the chemical industry, produced a powder that effervesced when combined with water. The idea rapidly evolved into a dry mix for making fizzy lemonade, a cheap version of the popular iced lemon sherbet drink.
Other countries are less enthusiastic about sherbet powder, although the French Coco Boer, a concoction of powdered licorice and bicarbonate of soda sold in tiny tins, follows the notion of a powder to make a drink that combines novelty and appeal to youngsters.
See also lemonade; licorice; and lollipops.
shortbread, a flat, fragile, crumbly pastry, has been defined by the term “short” since medieval times. “Shortness” was created by using lots of butter or lard, rubbed into flour and baked, to make a flaky or crumbly texture. See shortening. Sweetness came from sugar, caraway comfits, sugared almonds, or candied peel. See comfit. In the late 1500s, some recipes were described in English as “short-cakes.” More palatable than a hard, salty, twice-baked biscuit, they were a popular treat in the centuries that followed, and they flourished in many different forms.
Shortbread belongs to an extended family of baked goods. Among those found in Europe are French galettes. See galette. Flat, round shortcakes in a pebble (galet) shape, they are perfumed with cinnamon, rum, or bergamot. Greek kourabiethes contain some egg and are flavored with almonds, ouzo, and vanilla. Once baked, they are thickly coated with confectioner’s sugar. Small, round English shortcakes include Derbyshire wakes cakes, with currants, caraway, and lemon; Goosnargh cakes from Lancashire, flavored with coriander or caraway; and Shrewsbury cakes, which include spices and rosewater. See small cakes.
It is in Scotland’s culinary history, however, that a recipe titled Short Bread appears in the nation’s first published cookery book, Mrs McLintock’s Receipts for Cookery and Pastry Work (Glasgow, 1736). Her buttery, caraway-flavored dough has a “mutchkin of barm” (the yeasty foam created by fermentation), which may explain its “bread” tag. A Scottish Shortbread recipe, in Mistress Margaret (Meg) Dods’s The Cook and Housewife’s Manual (Edinburgh, 1826), has the proportions 3:2:1 of flour, butter, and sweetening, which remains the norm. Dods also calls it—possibly for the benefit of English readers—a “Short Cake.” The recipe yields a 1-inch (2 cm) thick cake, made oval, square, or round in shape and either plain or with additions of candied peel and almonds. Besides the highest quality ingredients—especially good-flavored butter—careful blending and “firing” (baking) are considered essential for the finest results. Dods advises adding more almonds and butter if the cake is to be sent as a “holiday present to England.”
Being raised to the status of a special food gift certainly increased this shortbread’s fame. But it would not have flourished without the talents of skilled Scots bakers. During the period of the Auld Alliance with France (1295–1560), when there was much interchange between the two countries, French pastry cooks worked in Edinburgh. According to archive records from the 1500s, Scots bakers who made sweet cakes became known as “Caik-baxteris.” Like French pâtissiers, they were distinct from the bread bakers, and it can be expected that they practiced their art to high levels of perfection.
Evidence of Scottish shortbread’s reputation appears in advertisements in English newspapers. The Hereford Journal in 1825 describes it as “Scots short-bread, an Exquisite Cake.” In 1837 a London baker’s advertisement in the Morning Post states that his shortbread “is made in the same way, and in as high perfection, as it can be had in Scotland.”
During the 1800s, shortbread’s Scottish credentials were also noted by leading English cookery book authors, including Eliza Acton (1845) and Mrs. Isabella Beeton (1861), which added to its national, and global, commercial success. Popular not only as a year-round gift, “shortie,” as it is affectionately known in Scotland, is also an essential treat at festive times such as Hogmanay (New Year), when it is joined by black bun and drams of Scotch whisky.
While the 3:2:1 proportions have remained more or less constant, not all shortbread is made with white flour. On Orkney, where a tasty Neolithic barley known as “bere” is still grown and milled, bakers add a little of this flour to their shortbread. Others add rolled oats to provide more flavor and texture. Some use rice flour, or fine semolina, to make the shortbread grittier; or some cornstarch to make it more meltingly smooth.
Flavors, shapes, and textures always evolve. While new innovations with chocolate and caramel in “millionaire” shortbread make their mark, old traditions live on. Oldest perhaps is the thick round of shortbread shaped like a Yule bannock, with its edges pinched to symbolize the sun’s rays. Harking back to ancient folklore is the belief that this shape gave the cake magical powers at the darkest time of the year. Shortbreads shaped in a round, thistle-decorated, or plain wooden mold still have their edges shaped in the form of the sun’s rays.
“Petticoat tail” shortbread, cut in wedges, is yet another variation. One theory of its origins suggests that it emulates the bell-shaped petticoats worn in the 1800s. Whether true or not, this type was considered appropriate for a “ladies’” tea table. Men preferred to get their teeth into shortbread baked into thick fingers.
According to a member of the Scottish Association of Master Bakers, a tax ruling in the late 1900s threatened to classify shortbread as a “common biscuit.” Not so, argued the bakers: it has a long and distinguished history as “a specialty item of flour confectionery.” The evidence they presented proved their case, and the historic distinction between shortbread and biscuit was preserved. See biscuits, british.
See also butter; sablé; shortcake; and shortening.
shortcake is a cake made “short”—in its old English sense meaning “easily crumbled”—by the incorporation of fat such as butter, lard, or cream into the dough. The Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin (London, 1594) contains a recipe “To make short Cakes,” in which the finest flour is worked with cream or butter, sugar, sweet spices, and egg yolks, so that “your paste wil be very short, therefore yee must make your Cakes very little.”
There are regional differences in the use of the words “shortcake” and “shortbread” and in the differentiation, if any, between the two. In Britain (especially in Scotland) shortbread is the more common term and specifically refers to a sweet, buttery pastry with a crisp, cookie-like texture. See shortbread. In the United States, shortcake usually indicates a cake made with a rich, soft, scone- or biscuit-like texture, which is then split and filled with fruit.
The most famous and popular version in the United States is undoubtedly the strawberry shortcake. A short piece in the New-York Farmer and American Gardener’s Magazine in 1835 suggests that the cake was not at that time widely known: “In several parts of New-England … a short-cake is made, and while hot is cut open, and strawberries sweetened with sugar are put in. This cake is said to be delicious.” By 1867 strawberry shortcake was considered sufficiently iconic to be served along with other “popular Yankee dishes” at the American restaurants at the great International Exposition in Paris.
Strawberry shortcake remains one of America’s most popular desserts, with recipes for it (and other shortcake variations) still appearing regularly in books, magazines, and websites throughout the country.
See also cake; shortening; and united states.
shortening is fat used for cooking. Although the term is broad enough to encompass all sorts of fats (including liquid oils), as commonly understood, shortenings tend to be solid or semisolid at room temperature, since only these fats will make a dough “short,” meaning friable, or easily crumbled. They may be derived from animal, vegetable, or compound substances. Shortening can be used as an ingredient (in butter cake or lard pie crusts, for instance) or as a cooking medium (for deep-fried doughnuts or fritters). The modern usage dates to the nineteenth century and is generally a North American term.
The purpose of shortening in sweets depends upon the recipe. In cakes, it renders the texture soft and tender. It also adds volume to the batter. In cookies and sweet biscuits, shortening provides a chewy feel or crisp bite, depending upon the proportion. Pastry cut with shortening results in a flaky yet sturdy product capable of supporting fillings. See pie dough. Because shortening adds moisture in the form of fat (rather than water) to baked products, it contributes to the natural shelf life of the product. Shortening is also sometimes employed in confectionery, most notably in butterscotch and buttercream frostings.
With the exception of butter, shortenings are generally valued for being flavorless. Leaf lard, the highest-grade animal shortening, contributes almost none of its own taste to the product. Commercial products have long promoted this neutral quality. With the exception of butter, most shortenings can be stored in airtight containers at room temperature.
Lard
Lard is rendered pig fat. Humans have used hogs for food and cooking since prehistoric times. The fat from the pig was employed from these very early days as a cooking medium and ingredient. Uses and recipes evolved according to the needs and tastes of various cultures. How was lard discovered? Like most early foods, probably by accident. Presumably, when early cooks finished cooking hog pieces, they noticed the thick fat (lard) that had congealed after cooling.
Although solid shortenings get a bad rap these days for their saturated fat, they’re invaluable in baking for the tender, flaky goods they produce. © the j. m. smucker company
Leaf lard, considered the finest grade of lard, surrounds the kidneys of the hog. Commercial leaf lard surfaced in the l880s. Like other shortenings, leaf lard was used for frying and baking. Its “flavorless” quality made it especially appealing because, like the vegetable shortening Crisco (its competitor in later years), lard barely changed the flavor of the finished dish.
Margarine
Also known as “artificial butter,” “red butter,” “moonshine butter,” “city butter,” “margarine butter,” “oleomargarine,” “oilymargarine,” and “butterine,” this shortening compound was introduced by Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès, a French chemist, in response to Napoleon III’s call for a butter substitute suitable for field soldiers. Mège’s 1867 process was patented in England in 1869 and in the United States in 1973. At about the same time, a similar process was patented by Henry E. Bradley of Binghamton, New York (U.S. Patent #110-626, 3 January 1871).
American margarine production was firmly established by 1873. Founding investors of the Oleo-Margarine Manufacturing Company in New York City claimed that the new “butter” was genuine—only the means of producing it were artificial. Production costs were significantly cheaper than for traditional dairy butter, so return on investment was guaranteed. Period newspapers confirm that “city made” butter was used in fashionable hotels, restaurants, and steamship companies.
The American dairy trade objected strongly to competition from margarine. Industry leaders launched powerful campaigns stating that this adulterated product was manufactured under filthy conditions with inferior ingredients. They also argued, quite rightly, that unscrupulous venders were cheating consumers by passing off yellow-dyed margarine as butter. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service responded by requiring special retail licenses and taxes on both white and dyed margarine.
American consumers readily embraced this cheaper butter substitute. Recipes required no adaption or calculations when using margarine instead of butter. The chief complaint centered on color. Annatto, a red dye used for coloring margarine and cheese, was readily available for consumers who desired a yellow product resembling traditional butter. During World War II, margarine was promoted by home economists as a better choice than butter. By then, the product had improved greatly in terms of flavor and nutritional value. In the 1950s, popular cookbooks and baking mixes began substituting the generic term “shortening” for “butter,” leaving the ingredient decision to the consumer.
Margarine sales soared again in the 1970s, when health professionals educated consumers about the dangers of saturated fats and cholesterol. Margarine was actively promoted as a healthier choice than butter. New products proliferated in various textures (solid, whipped, and liquid) and types of packaging (sticks and tubs). In the 1980s, margarine-butter blends and diet (reduced-calorie) margarine were introduced. Twenty-first-century consumers still generally choose margarine over butter.
Vegetable Shortenings
Cottolene (N. K. Fairbank & Co., 1892), Crisco (Procter & Gamble, 1911), Primex (Procter & Gamble, 1926), Parfay (Swift & Company, 1930), Spry (Lever Brothers, 1932), Swiftning (Swift & Company, 1947), and Golden Fluffo (Procter & Gamble, 1955) were vegetable-based products marketed to American consumers as “digestible” and “pure.” Originally sold in tins, these semisoft shortenings were promoted for frying as well as baking. Vegetable shortenings were embraced in particular by the Jewish community, because according to kosher laws they were considered “pareve”—suitable for use at meals containing meat. Corporate kitchens produced booklets touting better flavor, crispier crusts, and richer results. Hydrogenation made the product shelf-stable. Historic descriptions concerning health and cleanliness in the realm of food production help twenty-first-century readers understand why “modern” homemakers favored commercial products over “natural” ingredients.
Cottolene is generally recognized as the first hydrogenated vegetable shortening available to American consumers. It was introduced in 1892 by the N. K. Fairbank & Co. of Chicago, and Produce Exchange of New York. While primarily marketed as a cooking medium, Cottolene could have been used as a baking ingredient.
Crisco was the first vegetable shortening to attain national popularity. Actively promoted by Procter & Gamble, Crisco’s slogan was “It’s Digestible.” Famous home economists worked in the company kitchens and wrote dozens of cookbooks encouraging modern cooks to try this new product. In 1937 Crisco introduced “Super-Creamed” Crisco, a fluffier product for even greater digestibility. Sales results and consistent product evolution attest to the staying power of this iconic American foodstuff, although in response to recent health concerns, Crisco reformulated its product in 2012 to eliminate all trans fats. Some of the fat it contains is still hydrogenated, however.
See also butter.
sitophilia describes sexual arousal involving food. It is arguably the most socially acceptable type of paraphilia. Within studies that address paraphilia more broadly, sitophilia has yet to receive sustained scholarly attention due to the lack of clarity as to whether it represents a deviant or a normal sex practice. In all probability, the word “sitophilia” was imported into the sexual sphere in the late twentieth century from biology, which labels a genus of weevils that threaten food stores as Sitophilus and several species of food-loving fungi as sitophilia. An expansion of the sensuality inherent in food preparation and consumption into the realm of the erotic, sitophilia realizes the alleged aphrodisiac properties of foods such as oysters or chocolate by making them into a sexual fetish. See aphrodisiacs.
Whether viewed as a result of the reciprocity of bodily appetites, a conflation of the cardinal sins of gluttony and lust, a disavowal of the mother’s absent phallus, a fixation on food as a transitional object, or the product of classical conditioning, sitophilia frequently involves sweets such as candy, whipped cream, honey, ice cream, syrup, and cake. Specific sitophilic practices are remarkably diverse and can include everything from eating or drinking a fetishized food from a partner’s body to using food items as surrogate genitalia. For example, the invention of edible underwear in 1975 has resulted in sex toys such as the trademarked Candypants, as well as candy G-strings and crotchless gummy panties, while those excited by wet and messy fetishism, known as sploshing, enjoy bodies liberally doused with viscous substances like whipped cream, custard, pudding, chocolate sauce, or cake batter.
The relative acceptability of sitophilia involving sweets is nowhere more evident than in sexual nicknames that include the words “sugar,” “honey,” and “sweet,” or in Hershey’s Kisses, a foil-wrapped candy that locates amatory and gustatory pleasures in the mouth. See kisses; sexual innuendo; and slang. Numerous bakeries, confectioners, and chocolatiers similarly link sugar to the erotic by adopting suggestive names (Chocolate Fetish, Cake Fetish, or Sweet Fetish), marketing overtly sexual products (chocolates shaped like breasts or lollipops representing a penis), and developing salacious flavors (e.g., Orgasmic Organic Ice Cream’s Chocolate Climax, Strawberry Seduction, and Kinky Karamel). The mass media has in effect made sweet-focused sitophilia into the neophyte’s fetish by advising men and women alike to include food play with fruits, chocolate, flavored syrups, whipped cream, and the like in their repertoire of healthy and normal sex practices.
Popular culture plays an important role in promoting sugary sitophilia. For instance, the cover of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’s 1965 album Whipped Cream & Other Delights features a photograph by Peter Whorf that has titillated many a splosher: an apparently nude woman sits in the middle of a mound of whipped cream with one dollop on her head and another on a finger poised at her parted lips. Similarly, Ken Russell’s 1975 rock opera Tommy includes a sexually charged food orgy in which Ann-Margret portrays a psychotic break by throwing a champagne bottle into a television set, surrendering to the fountain of bubbles, baked beans, and melted chocolate spewing from the broken screen, and then writhing through the ensuing mess while passionately embracing an oversized sausage-shaped pillow. The 1986 film 9 ½ Weeks presents a tamer sitophilic seduction when Mickey Rourke feeds Kim Basinger, among other foods, maraschino cherries, strawberries, Vicks Cough Syrup, red gelatin, and honey, before they have sex on the kitchen floor. Sitophilia moves onto the kitchen counter in the 1999 movie American Pie, in which high-school senior Jim (played by Jason Biggs) has sex with a warm apple pie. Evidently, almost everyone finds frisson in sugar and spice and everything nice.
See also anthropomorphic and zoomorphic sweets.
slang —mocking, sneering, casting a jaundiced eye on the world’s proprieties—is by its nature sour. It finds approval hard, congratulation challenging, and affection almost impossible. Yet even if slang’s oldest meaning of “sugar” is money, and the second oldest a euphemism for the most common term for defecation, slang, for all its skepticism, cannot resist the tempting possibilities of “sweet.” It has no word for “love,” but someone can “be sweet on” someone else, and the trope “good enough to eat” characterizes a wide range of human love-objects. But slang has its limits. The presence of sweetness—whether the term itself; semantic equivalents such as “honey” or “sugar”; specifics such as “cake,” “toffee,” “candy,” or “lollipop”; or a variety of brand names such as M&M’s (drugs in pill form)—is regularly turned on its head in a wide range of negative definitions. In slang’s upside-down, inside-out, tweaked, and twisted world, even sweet can turn sour.
Let us begin, then, with “sweet” itself.
Judged by slang’s mainly concrete lexis, the word “sweet” manages quite a few abstractions. There is the ironic sweet: a “sweet mess,” “take your own sweet time”; there is the approving sweet, applicable to people, objects, actions, and events. There is sweet in human terms, which can mean gullible, but also dexterous and expert; in criminal terms, it can mean devoid of suspicion, as well as simple and lucrative (when describing a crime as safe). To “be sweet” is to be amenable; this usually occurs as “keep/have someone sweet”—to keep someone well disposed toward oneself, especially by complaisance or bribery. Given the traditional equation of little girls with “sugar and spice,” it can also imply effeminacy when used of a male, thus yielding compounds such as “sweet kid,” “sweet girl,” or “sweetmeat”—prison terminology for a younger prisoner who joins up with an older man. (Sweet, when referring to real females is, of course, standard.) As noted earlier, to be “sweet on” is to be in love with or infatuated by, though it can also mean nagging, pestering and insistent, and, free of relationships, simply satisfied or happy. Australia’s “she’s sweet” or “she’ll be sweet” means everything is satisfactory, as does “she’s be apples” or “she’ll be apples.” That which is easy or pleasurable can be “sweet as a nut,” “sweet as honey,” or “sweet as a lolly.”
Sweet can act as an intensifier: “sweet (bleeding) Jesus!”, “sweet Christ!”, and others. It can refer to the beloved, the “sweet papa” or “sweet mama” (though the inference is of financial transaction and the primary synonym remains “sugar daddy”); thus it can also modify the world of commercial sex, giving the “sweet mack” or “Sweet Willie,” a (relatively) gentle pander. The pimp is also a “sweetman,” although the word can cover a less compromised lover—what makes him sweet are the gifts he brings, and perhaps his “sweet-mouth” (his verbal skills).
In standard usage, to “sweeten” is to adulterate with sugar; its slang definitions include to bribe, to flatter, or to mollify (typically a con man’s anxious victim). The trickster is the “sweetener,” a term that can also mean a bribe; a word of encouragement, or a threat of force; the lips; and, slang’s male viewpoint aforethought, the penis. Sometimes sweet can be taken literally, as in the short-order jargon’s “blonde and sweet” (coffee with cream and sugar). “Sweetness and light,” meaning whiskey, suggests a positive image of the liquor’s effects (not exactly what Matthew Arnold was thinking of in Culture and Anarchy).
What works for sweet also works for sugar, typically in its use for a range of wealthy lovers—“sugar daddy,” “sugar papa,” “sugar-pops,” “sugar mama,” or “sugar mummy”—although this latter should not be confused with the “yummy mummy,” a British confection suggesting that sexiness need not terminate with maternity, and which in turn is synonymized by pornography’s blunt acronym, the MILF. “Yummy” can also be used of a nubile teenager and is kin to “yum-yum,” used around 1880 for sex, and for a female who might permit it.
“Sugar” picks up on the monetary associations of “sweeten,” to mean a bonus or a bribe, and the verb form means to bribe or to present a fake image. A “sugar-bag” accepts such gifts, though the second-rate materials used for such containers have led to the meaning “second-rate” for the word’s adjectival form. Inferiority also accompanies the compound “tea-and-sugar,” usually joined to a bandit or burglar, both petty thieves. It is also—though here the link is only assonant—a euphemism for “shit” (either as excrement or used as an exclamation), though, like shit, sugar can also mean money. The terms “big sugar” and “heavy sugar” refer to substantial sums of money, while a “heavy sugar daddy” or “heavy sugar papa” is a woman’s generous or exploitable older lover. Men turn the tables with “sugar basin,” the vagina, into which they deposit “sugar,” or semen. The “sugar-bush” is the pubic hair, and the “sugar-stick,” inevitably, the penis. The nineteenth-century exclamation “sugar, cock your legs and cry” signifies triumph or delight among members of the underworld and is accompanied by standing on one leg, cocking up the other, and shouting “Sugar!” Perhaps it equates with modernity’s approving “sweet!”
Like sugar, the term “candy” is far more common in the United States than elsewhere. The word can mean something admirable or desirable. It can refer to money or someone seen as “sweet,” with or without sexual overtones. And, like sugar, candy can codify the names of a variety of drugs, usually narcotic. An underlying image of “softness” that parallels “sweet” can suggest effeminacy, even homosexuality, and a “candy-ass” is a weakling, though in the 1920s and 1930s, “candy-leg” suggested a wealthy and attractive young man—an early form of “chick magnet.” Candy’s best known combination is “arm candy,” a pretty girl adorning the sugar daddy’s arm, but it also provides the synonymous “eye candy” and “brain candy,” meaning superficially attractive but intellectually undemanding.
Terms of Endearment
Sugar and sweet are both enlisted as terms of endearment, but they are not alone. The equation of the loved one and the toothsome treat—one who is “good enough to eat”—is venerable. “Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue,” declares the Song of Solomon around 200 b.c.e., and the pattern has continued. “Honey,” with its combinations “honeychild,” “honey-chops,” “honey-dip,” “honey-baby,” “honey-pot,” and “honey-bun,” arrived in the early twentieth century, as did “crumpet.” The equation seems unquenchable, and endearments include “honey-bunch,” “honeybunny,” “honeybugs,” “honey-cunt,” and “honeypie.” As with sugar, there are less appetizing senses, notably the ironic: a “honey of a mess” is problematical. “Honey” can denote various bodily fluids, whether sexual or excretory—the best known of the latter is “honey cart,” used in various forms of public transport to describe a container for what an earlier world, equally euphemistic, termed “gold.” The rival images combine in the eighteenth century’s “all honey or all turd with them,” said of those whose relationship fluctuates violently between amity and enmity.
“Sweetie,” “sweetie-pops,” “sweetycakes,” “sweetie-pie,” “sweet pea,” and “sweet potato pie” are other modern terms of endearment. “Cake” has been popular in the United States for a century, while “lollipop” has been common since 1850.
“Tart” is perhaps the most interesting. Now seen as a pejorative (other than in Australia and Liverpool, where it remains neutral), the word began life positively. The Slang Dictionary of 1859 explained: “Tart, a term of approval applied by the London lower orders to a young woman for whom some affection is felt. The expression is not generally employed by the young men, unless the female is in ‘her best,’ with a colored gown, red or blue shawl, and plenty of ribbons in her bonnet—in fact, made pretty all over, like the jam tarts in the swell bakers’ shops.” (Beware, however, of compound tarts: rhyming slang is pervasive, and the “raspberry,” “strawberry,” “cherry,” and “treacle” varieties all mean breaking wind.)
Moving on to the physically attractive, one definitely finds more of the same. A pretty girl can be “jam,” “crumb,” “cupcake,” “raspberry,” and “peach” (and the intensified “peacherino”). “Cheesecake,” a pin-up, appeared around 1930 (its male counterpart, “beefcake,” is slightly younger).
Other expressions of affection or approval include “dishy,” “tasty,” “fruity,” “scrumptious,” “flavor,” “slice,” and “yummy.” Endearments have included a “banana,” a “basket of oranges” (a reference apparently to glittering nuggets of gold as well as fruit), one who is the “jammiest of the jam” or the “real raspberry jam,” a “bun,” “butter,” a “cutesie-pie,” a “dixie cup,” a “creamie,” a “pancake,” a “pastry,” and even a “penn’orth o’ treacle.”
Sometimes sweet turns sickly and endearment turns to abuse. Such terms include “pieface,” “muffin,” “fruitcake,” “jellybean,” “jellyhead,” and “social doughnut hole”—in other words, a human “nothing.”
Parts of the Body
The vocabulary of food has been enthusiastically colonized for parts of the human body. But sweetness—perhaps inevitably, given its adoption by the world of affection—tends to one area: the sexual. While there are exceptions—“biscuit” (the head), “cakehole” (the mouth), “jelly snatchers” (the hands), and the rhyming “tarts” (gooseberry, jam, raspberry, or strawberry) for heart—the primary links remain lubricious. If the beloved is “good enough to eat,” then slang’s appetite also encompasses her or his constituent parts.
The female breasts include the sixteenth-century “apples,” eighteenth-century “dumplings,” and such modernisms as “cupcakes,” “chestnuts,” “grapes,” “jujubes,” “mangoes,” “pippins,” “melons,” and “grapefruit.” The penis, traditionally seen as a weapon, can also be sweet—the “banana,” “candy cane,” “cinnamon stick,” “gobstopper,” “lollipop,” “tit-bit,” and “yum-yum.” Terms for the vagina include “bit of jam,” “brownie,” “cherry pie,” “date,” “orange,” “doughnut,” “fig,” “jelly roll,” “muffin,” and “pancake.” See sexual innuendo.
Slang’s sweet shop is capacious, and its cookie jar is deep. We can but nibble. “Cake” is both “sweet” and “soft,” both literally and metaphorically. The latter image has recruited it to mean a fool, a weakling, a fop, or a dandy; and a simple task is a “piece of cake.” The former attribute gives us an attractive woman, a prostitute, and the female genitals. Then there is shape: cakes are stereotypically round. This gives us the buttocks and breasts; it can also refer to a disk of crack cocaine. The “cake-eater” (elsewhere “cookie-pusher”) was an effete young man who attended smart tea parties and charmed old ladies; the inference was “gay,” though it might also have been “rich.”
Above all the cake is “taken”: “take the cake” means to surpass, to outdo (context determines a positive or negative inference). Nor is this exemplary cake alone: an individual or a circumstance may take the “bakehouse,” the “baker’s shop” or “bakery,” the “beer,” the “candied peel,” the “duff,” the “flour,” the “gingerbread,” the “pastry,” the “peach,” or the “scone.” Assonantly, the cake, “crumb,” or “currant” may also be “captured” or “copped.”
Similarly, one may “take the biscuit,” even the “pickled biscuit,” but while U.K. biscuits are seen as sweet, American ones are not. For Americans, the word is “cookie,” and cookies, far from being taken, are in various synonyms—“chuck,” “flip,” “heave,” “shoot,” “throw,” “toss,” “woof”—lost (in other words, cookies are “vomit”). Cookies are more productive than cake and can mean a person (“sharp cookie,” or “smart cookie”); like other objects of sweetness, they offer images of desirability and “softness.” Then there is “Oreo,” that cookie which, being black on the outside and white within, has been adopted as a pejorative in the fraught world of race. See oreos.
So many sweets. No room for “licorice stick” (the clarinet), “taffy” (nonsense), or “treacle” (flattery), or for the sugared delights of “kugels,” “jellybeans,” “flummery,” and “twinkies.” It’s enough to “give you diabetes,” or at least a “toothache,” but for slang even these are not a problem: both phrases just mean “you’re sweet.”
See also gender; pharmacology; sports nicknames; twinkie; and symbolic meanings.
slavery refers to the brutal system of production in which people are forced to labor for overseers who reap large profits from their work.
As the European craving for sugar exploded in the mid-seventeenth century, planters devised ways to provide huge quantities at affordable prices. Labor was an essential element in the production process, and because sugarcane is a demanding and labor-intensive crop, the acquisition of slaves seemed an obvious solution. See sugarcane.
From 1630 to 1660, England, France, Holland, and Denmark established large-scale sugarcane operations in the New World, following the example of Portugal and Spain. Labor remained the most urgent issue. The indigenous peoples who had been forced into slavery were dying out, killed by overwork, malnutrition, brutality, despair, and European diseases. European indentured workers and prisoners fared little better. Frustrated sugar planters turned to Africa, kick-starting an international slave trade that transported millions of Africans into slavery, of whom 6 million were eventually sold as sugar slaves.
This drawing from William Clark’s pictorial work Ten Views in the Island of Antigua (London, 1823) depicts slaves digging holes and planting sugarcane. © the british library board
On the Middle Passage, the route between Africa and the New World, Africans were crammed into filthy, unventilated holds and given inadequate food and water. The men were shackled; the women and children, in separate quarters, were not. Traumatized and grief-stricken, the Africans mounted revolts that began off the West African coast and persisted throughout the Middle Passage, which lasted from five weeks to three months. An estimated 15 percent died from disease, suicide, and brutality.
On their arrival in the New World, the slaves were sold, renamed, branded, issued identical cheap garments, and shackled. Then came a sad march to their new master’s sugar plantation, where resident Creole slaves were instructed to orient them, a process known as “seasoning.” Two out of seven Africans died of disease and despair at this stage, and suicide was common.
Sugar Plantations
The plantations, which ranged from hundreds to thousands of acres, featured cane fields known as “cane pieces,” pastureland and woodland for fuel, and self-contained villages. These villages included the infrastructure of sugar production: a mill, boiling and curing houses, often a rum distillery, and sheds and barns for the bagasse, or cane leavings, and for supplies, equipment, and livestock. There were homes for the overseer, chemist, and other white employees. The planter’s “great house” loomed over the slave quarters, built either as barracks or as rows of thatched-roof shacks. Many plantations contained gardens or “provision grounds” for their slaves to grow their own food, instead of providing food for them. See plantations, sugar.
Plantations operated like factories, with vast assembly lines of work gangs performing specialized tasks with rigid scheduling. Each gang—Great Gang, Second Gang, and sometimes a Third Gang—was selected for strength, ability, and blackness, and each had a slave driver. Except in the early days of the slave trade, when more African males were imported, females predominated in the fields. The elderly, the disabled, adolescents, and all slave children from four or five years of age on were pressed into the Hogmeat Gang, which scavenged food for the animals, weeded gardens, and did odd chores, under its usually female slave driver. Male slaves also worked as boilermen, coopers, mechanics, wheelwrights, carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, carters, loaders, mule handlers, stock keepers, cooks, grass cutters, rat catchers, fishermen, and watchmen.
To control their hostile labor force, planters hired white overseers, usually bachelors, who used whips and corporal punishment. Slave drivers also stalked the fields, flogging recalcitrant, slow, ailing, or weak slaves. They were “official tyrants” whom planters and overseers consulted and indulged as long as they were ruthless. What deeply complicated the slaves’ personal relationships was that these drivers were fellow slaves, mostly powerful males whose privileged positions depended on their continued willingness to monitor and punish the field slaves, even their own wives, sisters, daughters, and mothers. The exception was the Hogmeat Gang driver, who was usually a slave woman.
Sugarcane Crop
In July or August, slave gangs prepared the cane pieces for planting by slashing and burning grass, shrubs, and old cane. The work was dangerous, as slaves contended with swinging machetes, smoke, snakes, and armies of rats that inhabited the fields. (One plantation caught 3,000 rats in just six months.)
Next came cane holing, the backbreaking job of digging precisely measured holes and building ridges around them from scooped-out soil. Then pairs of slaves inserted three cane tops into each hole and packed it with manure, seaweed, or sludge before covering it with earth. As the planted cane grew, the slaves reinforced the ridges, weeded the thousands of rows between the cane holes, removed dry stalks, and pruned. Many plantations staggered their planting schedules so that slaves finished the dreaded job of cane holing in one field only to repeat it in another. See sugarcane agriculture.
When the cane matured, the gangs harvested it. Since the sugar content of cut cane decreases as it dries out, the gangs had to haul it to the mill for immediate processing. There it was crushed between giant rollers, a dangerous operation that cost many exhausted slaves their hands or arms and made amputees a common sight.
Once milled from the cane, the sap was piped along to be boiled and clarified, and slaves risked being scalded. In the final stages, the syrup was cooled and cured and readied for shipment. Some plantations distilled rum. See rum. The cutting-milling-boiling-distilling cycle lasted for five months. To urge their slaves to persevere in their superhuman efforts, planters offered them hot cane juice or tots of rum laced with sugar.
Planters also kept oxen and mules to power the mills and assigned field slaves the additional chore of picking grass for animal fodder before they could tend their own gardens and cook their meals. Nonetheless, determined slaves, usually women, assiduously worked their provision grounds, raising crops that improved their family’s nutrition and could be sold or exchanged for goods otherwise unavailable.
Female slaves, most barred from the skilled trades that males alone could aspire to in the sugar hierarchy, coped with pregnancy, childbirth, and raising children, whom most planters considered a drain on plantation coffers. Mothers were denied enough time for nursing and child care and were made to entrust their infants to slaves too old to do any other work. Except in Cuba, where planters allowed mothers time to breastfeed two or three times a day, babies were fed bread, flour, and sugar mashed into pap. Everywhere, the mortality rate of enslaved children was high.
A separate contingent of often lighter-skinned slaves, many the progeny of their master, overseer, or white visitors, served as housekeepers, cooks, laundresses, cleaners, and babysitters. They lived in the great house and had little to do with the slave quarters. Their work was less onerous than field work, but they were always on call, and women were sexual targets. Housekeepers, often their masters’ mistresses, were in danger from jealous white wives who supervised and hated them and their mixed-race children.
The literal and figurative shadows of the great house darkened all slave life, even in the quarters. Slave housing reflected how whites valued some slaves over others, and rewarded skilled boilers, carpenters, and others with larger and better homes. Slave family life was complex. After the abolition of the slave trade in the nineteenth century shut down the African source of new slaves, some planters forced their slaves to marry so that their offspring could create a new supply. Other unions were illicit, as slaves from different plantations sometimes defied orders and met surreptitiously. Slaves feared committing themselves to unions easily shattered if one spouse was sold away. When unions failed, the slaves separated and lived alone or tried again. Blood relations were strong, and shipmates from the Middle Passage always treated each other as kin. But slaves did not yearn for children they could not protect from abuse or save from the misery of slavery.
Racialism as Ideology
Sugar slavery’s most insidious creation was the racialism that was the sugar world’s organizing principle, and also its justification for enslaving Africans. This racist ideology borrowed from Christianity and pseudo-science, and referenced complex racial distinctions based on bloodlines. See race. Surrounded and outnumbered by the slaves they oppressed, whites needed social arrangements and power structures that would keep them safe from their victims.
Yet this carefully enunciated racism coexisted with its polarity of legal freedom. Manumission was possible, and sometimes light-skinned and beloved slaves were freed, as were those too old and decrepit to work, whose “freedom” saved the planters money but actually meant homelessness, starvation, and death for its luckless recipients.
As racial slavery evolved in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries onward, legal texts known in the British colonies as Slave Codes and in other colonies as Black Codes, premised on slaves being troublesome property, prescribed slavery’s operation. Varying little from colony to colony, they acknowledged interracial hatred, anticipated revolt, and prescribed brutal and mutilating punishments, including cutting off genitals and slow incineration.
Black Codes criminalized almost every slave misdeed, defined running away as the theft of the slave owner’s property, and dealt harshly with marronage (joining fugitive slave settlements). Despite the horrendous punishments prescribed, sugar slaves engaged in chronic resistance, including sabotage, suicide, marronage, and armed uprisings. They malingered, broke their hoes, burned cane fields, mutilated livestock, stopped work, sang satirical songs, and stole whatever they could, with sugarcane heading the list. They plotted uprisings that, in Haiti, burst into full revolution, overthrew slavery, and created the world’s first black republic.
After the phony freedom of apprenticeship—a transitional and mostly unsuccessful arrangement devised to help planters in the British colonies develop a wage-labor system—ended abruptly in 1838, slavery was abolished in the British West Indies, and over the next 50 years it was abolished in the rest of the sugarcane world, including Cuba and Brazil. Slavery ended, but its impact on slave descendants lingers to this day.
See also sugar barons and sugar refining.
small cakes are baked in individual small molds meant for single servings. We can be certain that small cakes came early to America, for Pilgrim father Edward Winslow brought a set of 12 banqueting trenchers to Plymouth Colony. The kind of banquet for which these trenchers were purposed was actually a little meal of sweets, which included the small Italian biscuits often called “prince bisket.” In modern terms, these were firm sponge cakes baked in home-sewn individual paper cases or round or rectangular metal or ceramic molds. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, prince bisket was joined on banqueting tables by new small cakes called Portugal cakes, which were an English invention. Portugal cakes were composed of roughly equal weights of flour, butter, sugar, and eggs, plus (in most recipes) a handful of the small raisins called currants, all of which were beaten together with the hand until the batter was aerated so that the cakes would rise light in the oven. Portugal cakes were baked in small tartlet molds called pattypans, about 24 of which were needed for one batch of cakes in 1-pound proportions.
The banquet faded around 1700, but American women continued to bake both of its small cakes long thereafter. Sponge biskets, often called Naples biscuits in America after 1800, remained favorite accompaniments to ice creams until around 1850, when they were subsumed by the modern French ladyfingers. Portugal cakes, increasingly known as queen cakes after 1770 and often baked in heart-shaped pans, were still considered fashionable for tea parties into Fannie Farmer’s day. See farmer, fannie.
Over the course of the eighteenth century, Portugal cakes gave rise to a large family of “rich cakes” that were likewise composed of equal weights flour, butter, sugar, and eggs and leavened by air beaten into the batter. One of these cakes, pound cake, became extraordinarily popular in America, as did two other rich cakes that American women invented out of pound cake during the 1830s: the almond-flavored, brilliant white lady cake, and the citrusy, deep-yellow golden cake. See cake and pound cake. Although typically made up as large cakes, these cakes were also sometimes baked individually—“in small tins, such as are used for queen-cake, or Naples biscuit,” wrote antebellum cookbook author Eliza Leslie. The decision to bake these cakes individually was sometimes tied to presentation: small cakes looked pretty when jumbled in a cake basket or stacked in a high pyramid on a party table. But women sometimes chose to bake rich cakes individually out of practicality. Said Leslie, “It may be recommended to novices in the art of baking, to do every thing in little tins or in very shallow pans; there being then less risk than with a large thick cake.” In the 1830s, when women baked cakes in a Dutch oven or brick oven, whose heat was uncertain, and when, more crucially, fine rich cakes were never chemically leavened, and were therefore dense and resistant to baking through, small rich cakes were far less apt to emerge from the oven disappointingly clammy and streaked than large, thick ones.
This simple fact of cake chemistry brings us to the small cake that became the mother of all modern American butter cakes, as well as eventually giving rise to today’s most familiar American small cake. In the 1820s, seeking a cake that was cheaper than pound cake yet nice enough to serve to company, American women invented so-called cup cake. See cupcakes. This cake was made with only about half as much expensive butter and egg in ratio to flour as true pound cake, and yet it rose palatably light without soda (the use of which would have made it decidedly not “nice”), precisely because it was baked in teacups. By the late 1830s some women had already modified this cake by adding milk and soda, making a plainer cake, but a larger, lighter, more convenient one that could be baked in a single pan. Thus, yellow cake, the first modern American butter cake, was born. The cupcake, as we now understand it, would have to wait another half century for its debut.
Small Cakes in the Gilded Age
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, French cooking became fashionable among the American middle classes. Besides bringing many new dishes into the American repertory, the French cooking vogue ushered in new meal styles, as well as new styles of serving and presenting foods. Among the new serving notions was the doily-covered silver or china platter holding a tempting assortment of individual pastries, cookies, and small cakes. Such platters were set out for the final dessert course at dinners à la russe, at ladies’ luncheons and teas, and at parties. It was primarily to fill such platters that, between roughly 1885 and 1915, American women created a new generation of small cakes.
These cakes can be divided into two groups. One group comprised individual cakes of familiar American types: modern butter cakes, pound-type cakes, and modified molasses gingerbreads. See gingerbread. Fannie Farmer outlined five such cakes in the original 1896 edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, including a plain modern butter cake (or “yellow cake”) called Cup Cake and a molasses-pecan cake called Brownies. In most of these recipes, including her Cup Cake, Farmer called simply for baking the small cakes in “shallow tins” or “individual tins,” but in her recipe for Brownies she wrote, more specifically, “small, shallow fancy cake tins.” A photograph in a 1904 issue of The Boston Cooking-School Magazine shows us exactly what the tins for molasses brownies—and, presumably, for the other small cakes of the day—looked like. Variously shaped as rounds, ovals, rectangles, and triangles, with fluted walls and narrow bottoms, the tins appear to be virtually the same as the individual tartlet or cake molds imported today from Europe by American cookware shops. Farmer, in effect, Frenchified the old American small-cake tradition, thereby producing suitable articles for the slot labeled “fancy cakes” inscribed in countless period dinner, tea, and party menus.
The other group of new small cakes comprised petits fours, which American women of the Gilded Age understood to be dainty cake sandwiches cut in rectangles or other shapes, filled with whipped cream or jam, dipped in fondant, and topped with a nutmeat or candied flower petal. See candied flowers and fondant. The French made such cakes with the enriched sponge cake called génoise, for which American women usually substituted either pound cake or a new butter cake/sponge cake cross invented specifically for this purpose.
Petits fours are still with us, as are various more recently arrived French small cakes, including madeleines, financiers, canelés, and the multifarious dainties presented as mignardises in ambitious restaurants. See mignardise. Also sometimes seen in the United States are fancy small cakes from other parts of Europe, such as the Viennese Indianerkrapfen and the Italian sospiri. But the small cake that won the day in America was, of course, the cupcake, or so it came to be spelled in the early twentieth century, when the fancy tins gave way to the convenient connected cupcake pan, and cupcakes tumbled from tea and party tables into children’s lunchboxes.
See also banqueting houses; brownies; chemical leaveners; dessert; and sponge cake.
s’mores first appeared as a published recipe in Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts (1927), where they were called “Some Mores.” This now iconic combination of marshmallows, Hershey’s milk chocolate, and graham crackers was suggested as a campfire dessert: marshmallows are roasted on a stick over an open campfire, then sandwiched between two graham crackers along with squares of milk chocolate to make a sweet, gooey treat. It is unclear whether the Girl Scouts actually invented s’mores or whether they were known before the recipe was published. The combination of a smooth chocolate covering, sticky-soft inside, and crisp base was certainly familiar to American consumers: the popular Mallomar cookie had been introduced in 1913, followed by MoonPies in 1917; both consisted of chocolate-covered marshmallow on a crisp cookie layer. See moonpies. However, the fire-singed marshmallow of s’mores distinguished and intensified their sweetness, making them a summertime favorite, especially for children, for whom they remain lovingly associated with camp and campfire songs.
The ingredients for s’mores are much older than the confections themselves. Modern marshmallow confections were first made in France around 1850, when candy makers used the root of the swamp mallow plant to bind egg whites, corn syrup, and water to create handmade confections. See marshmallows. In the late nineteenth century, a recipe of corn syrup, cornstarch, sugar, and gelatin made the mass production of marshmallows in cornstarch molds possible, and they became popular sold in tins. In 1948 a new extrusion process and a “jet-puffed” method that infused the marshmallow with air sped up production even more. By 1955 there were over 30 commercial manufacturers of marshmallows in the United States; at present only three remain. Graham crackers, created in the 1820s by health and nutrition reformer Reverend Sylvester Graham, were popularized by the Nabisco Company at the turn of the twentieth century, and Milton Hershey introduced the first mass-produced chocolate bar in the United States in 1900. See hershey’s. Today, contemporary pastry chefs create refined and dramatic versions of the s’more by layering house-made marshmallows with Graham crackers and top-quality chocolate. “S’more” has also become a special flavor for brownies, cupcakes, and ice cream. So beloved are these treats that 10 August is celebrated as National S’Mores Day in the United States.
soda is a generic term for carbonated beverages dispensed from fountains or sold in bottles or cans. Depending on the region, these are also known as soft drinks, soda pop, fizzy drinks, or tonic, or called by brand names such as those of the three leaders: Coke, Pepsi, or Dr Pepper. All sodas are carbonated, sweetened, and flavored, features that distinguish them from noncarbonated energy and sports drinks, juice drinks, and flavored waters.
Carbonated water and sweeteners are the most important ingredients. Sodas are sweetened with sugars (regular soda) or artificial chemicals (diet soda). The other ingredients—sodium, caffeine, organic acids, coloring agents, and flavor additives—are present in amounts too small to have much effect on nutrition or health. A typical 12-ounce cola, for example, contains only 30 milligrams of sodium and 35 milligrams of caffeine, low in comparison to other sources. The flavor additives are deeply guarded trade secrets, but include fruit and herbal extracts. The acids and flavors help to counteract the otherwise overwhelming sweetness of these drinks.
Regular Sodas
A 12-ounce regular soda typically contains 40 grams of sugars—the equivalent of ten teaspoons. Sodas are, in effect, systems for rapid delivery of large amounts of sugars into the blood stream. The sugars are glucose and fructose, derived from high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or, occasionally, cane and beet sugar (sucrose). See corn syrup; fructose; and glucose. Until 1984, American sodas were largely sweetened with cane or beet sugar. But these are more expensive than HFCS because of quotas, tariffs, and corn subsidies. When taste tests proved that consumers could not tell the difference between sodas made with sucrose or HFCS, companies switched to the cheaper alternative. In some cane-growing countries, such as Mexico, sodas are still sweetened with sucrose but increasingly diluted with the less-expensive HFCS. Because some European countries grow sugar beets, and former colony trading partners grow sugarcane, the European Union continues to favor sucrose.
Sugars account for all of the 150 calories in a 12-ounce drink. As the size of drinks increases, the sugars increase, and so do the calories. A vending machine’s 20-ounce bottle provides about 250 calories from its 16 teaspoons of sugars. A movie theater’s 64-ounce “Double-Gulp” could, in theory, contain as much as 54 teaspoons of sugars and 800 calories, but it is typically poured over ice. The more ice, the less sugar and, therefore, calories.
Less sugar is desirable because the sugars are almost entirely responsible for the health effects of sodas. Sugary drinks contribute to poor diets, weight gain, and obesity-related conditions such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. Sugars provide no nutrients; their calories are “empty.” Worse, the sugars come in liquid form and constitute “liquid candy.” Preliminary research in animals suggests that consuming sugars as liquids rather than in solid foods bypasses regulatory systems that control appetite and food intake. Studies of human eating behavior support this idea: sodas encourage people to consume more calories from other foods. Sugar alone does not have this effect; people eating jelly beans compensate for candy calories. Neither do liquids necessarily; soups help people lose weight. These observations explain current dietary advice to “drink few or no regular sodas” as a means to reduce intake of sugar and its nutritionally empty calories. See sugar and health.
Sodas would not be a health concern if people did not drink so many of them. But in America, sodas together with energy and sports drinks are the fourth leading contributor to adult calorie intake, and the third for children. These drinks account for 36 percent of added sugars in American diets, and sodas alone provide twice as much sugar as is recommended for daily diets. Dietary surveys find half the population to maintain that they consume no sodas at all, meaning that the other half must drink much more. Five percent of the population admits to drinking at least 48 ounces a day. Men drink nearly twice as much soda as women, especially when they are single. The highest intakes are reported by boys ages 12 to 19, and people who are from the South, black, Hispanic, or of low income. Even children ages 2 to 5 drink an average of 6 ounces a day. Soda use declines with education, income, and age, which makes it an indicator of low social status and low income—characteristics most associated with high rates of obesity and related health conditions. The one hopeful sign is that soda consumption in the United States has been declining since the late 1990s, as health-conscious Americans increasingly turn to less sugary sports drinks, teas, diet drinks, and bottled water.
The industry reports that American companies produced 30 gallons of regular carbonated sodas per capita in 2012, down from 41 gallons in 1998. Because inventory is tightly controlled, the industry says that virtually all the soda it produces is purchased. If we assume that all purchased soda is consumed, these figures translate to a per capita intake of 320 12-ounce servings per year, down from 437 per capita in 1998. The difference between slightly less and slightly more than one serving a day may not appear serious, but the industry views the decline as a crisis.
To expand sales, soda companies have moved their marketing overseas. On a worldwide basis, the industry produced 194 billion liters of regular sodas in 2012. For the 7 billion people in the world, this works out to 78 12-ounce servings per capita per year. The range of consumption is large, from less than ten a year in some countries in Asia and Africa, to more than one a day in Mexico and Argentina. Soda companies view high-population countries such as China, India, and Indonesia as prime markets for expansion. Public health experts predict that an increase in obesity prevalence is sure to follow.
Diet Sodas
Diet sodas contain no or little sugar and provide no calories. Instead, they are artificially sweetened with aspartame, acesulfame K, sucralose, Stevia, or other nonnutritive chemicals. See artificial sweeteners and stevia. Even though there is little evidence to support the idea that diet drinks help with weight loss or maintenance, they account for 30 percent of soda sales in America. Their most frequent drinkers are older, white, married, and well-educated females. Sales of diet drinks are also declining in America as a result of concerns about their slightly bitter aftertaste and unnatural sweeteners. On a worldwide basis, diet drinks comprise 12 percent of soda sales, but the percentages vary widely, from 3 percent or below in Asian countries to as much as 35 percent in Australia.
Are Sodas Addictive?
Soft drinks include caffeine as well as sugars. Addiction researchers note that even small amounts of caffeine make people feel more alert, energetic, and cheerful and can induce symptoms of dependence in susceptible individuals. In laboratory animals and in some people, caffeine and sugars independently encourage habitual daily use and induce symptoms of dependence and withdrawal. It remains an open question whether sugars and caffeine, alone or together, are addictive in the usual sense—inducing cravings, an inability to stop the craving, and intense discomfort when the craved substance is unavailable. Addictive or not, health advice to consume sodas only in moderation makes good sense. See addiction.
See also soda fountain.
The soda fountain, which began as a simple utilitarian device to dispense carbonated soda water, evolved into an inviting public space where consumers enjoyed beverages, ice cream, and light meals. Completing a circle, in the fast-food era the soda fountain returned to its roots as an uninteresting machine that dispenses fizzy liquids.
Primitive societies ascribed magical powers to the effervescent waters bubbling up from underground sources. Many people believed these special waters could cure diseases. Scientists studied the effervescent waters, hoping to replicate them and make their curative powers available to everyone. Around 1766 Henry Cavendish, an Englishman, designed an apparatus for making aerated water. In Sweden, chemist Torbern Bergman produced effervescent waters in his lab and promulgated his method in the 1770s. The noted British scientist Joseph Priestly conducted simple experiments to infuse water with gas expelled from fermentation vats in a brewery. He built a device to impregnate distilled water with carbon dioxide, and John Mervin Nooth improved on his design. In the early 1800s, British entrepreneurs sold bottled water infused with carbon dioxide, which was commonly called soda or carbonated water.
Benjamin Silliman, a chemistry professor at Yale, took the lead in popularizing soda water in the United States. After buying an apparatus from Nooth in 1806, he carbonated and bottled water in New Haven, Connecticut. Silliman found a ready market for his soda water, but a shortage of bottles limited his output. To sidestep this problem, he set up a pump room where the customers drank from glasses. To expand his business, he recruited partners and opened shops in Baltimore and New York City. Other entrepreneurs launched pump rooms in Philadelphia and New York.
Pump rooms and drugstores produced their own soda water. Typically, the carbonating apparatus was located in the cellar, and the soda water was pumped upstairs via a metal tube, which protruded through a countertop. To fill a glass, the server turned a stopcock at the top of the tube. For decorative purposes, the tube was often hidden inside an attractive urn or column.
In the mid-nineteen century, physicians generally agreed that carbonated water had no significant merit as a medication. Yet soda water sales were strong: consumers liked the bubbly, refreshing drink even if it didn’t cure their ills. In 1832 John Matthews began manufacturing soda fountains in New York City, and John Lippincott opened a similar business in Philadelphia. The two men were innovators who greatly improved the equipment for making and dispensing carbonated water.
Students at Cranbrook, an elite boarding school in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, enjoy a soda fountain right on campus in 1955. Soda fountains were most popular in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. historic photograph collection, cranbrook archives
Matthews, Lippincott, and other manufacturers built equipment that dispensed both unflavored soda water and carbonated water flavored with syrups, such as chocolate or strawberry. They encased the equipment in marble boxes with multiple spigots to dispense the different syrups. To catch the consumer’s eye, they added fanciful, showy decorations to the boxes. Towers or onion-shaped domes sat atop some box fountains; others had intricate metallic scrollwork and shiny metal ornaments. In general, box soda fountains were placed against a wall, and the server worked with his back to his customers. During the early 1900s the counter-service fountain replaced the marble boxes. In the new arrangement, the drafts and syrup pumps were attached to one side of the counter, and the customers sat on stools on the other side.
Before mechanical refrigeration, soda fountains relied on large blocks of ice to keep beverages and ice cream cold. In the early 1900s, technological advances led to “iceless” fountains, which used brine as the coolant, and to “50 percent fountains,” which combined ice and mechanical refrigeration. In the 1920s, many stores installed soda fountains with ammonia refrigeration. The Liquid Carbonic Company, Bishop and Babcock, the Bastian-Blessing Company, and L. A. Becker led the charge to modernize the industry. See refrigeration.
The soda fountain flourished in drugstores, department stores, ice cream parlors, and train stations. It seemed to be a permanent part of the American landscape. But an array of trends caused the fountain’s gradual decline. Americans fell in love with automobiles and ate in their cars at drive-in restaurants. Drugstores cut costs by switching to self-service and eliminating the labor-intensive soda fountain. Supermarkets sold a dazzling variety of ice cream products at affordable prices. Vending machines sold ice-cold soft drinks in cans and bottles.
To avoid extinction, the soda fountain morphed into an insipid, boxy fixture that dispenses carbonated drinks in fast-food outlets and convenience stores. Perhaps more transformations await the soda fountain in the future.
See sherbet.
sorbitol is a sugar alcohol employed as a sugar substitute. A French chemist discovered it in 1872 in berries, and the substance was later detected in a wide range of fruits. Although found in nature, sorbitol has been prepared synthetically since the 1960s from sugar, glucose syrup, or starch, with the most common sources for the starch being corn and cassava.
Sorbitol is sold in liquid and crystalline forms. It is metabolized more slowly than glucose or fructose, so it can be used by diabetics, since it does not increase blood glucose levels when consumed. Sorbitol also contains fewer calories than table sugar (sucrose), and it is used in many diet foods as a bulk sweetener. In the food industry it is mainly used in fruit preserves, cake mixes, ice cream, cookies, chocolates, pastries, and sugar-free candy and gum. Its main nonfood applications are in toothpaste, mouthwash, cosmetics, and laxatives.
At high doses, sorbitol can cause gastrointestinal problems—diarrhea, abdominal cramps, bloating, and flatulence. Of particular concern is the amount of sorbitol in fruit juices and chewing gum consumed by children. Despite potential problems, it is on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) list and is approved by most other countries when used for sweetening. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, however, has argued for labeling indicating potential problems when sorbitol is consumed in high doses.
See also artificial sweeteners; glucose; fructose; and starch.
sorghum syrup is a natural sweetener made from the juice of sorghum cane, a tropical grass brought to the United States from Africa and Asia in the mid-1800s. Sorghum cane resembles corn without the ears. The plant can grow to a height of 12 to 14 feet; when the cane is almost mature, it produces a seed head on top. These heads are cut off and usually saved for seed for the following season, while the leaves are stripped with a machete or small handsaw. The stalks are cut off and the juice squeezed from them by means of revolving rollers. Traditionally, a horse or mule turned the cane mill, but today tractors pull modern machinery that cuts the cane off at the ground, while large rollers squeeze the juice right in the field. The juice is then pumped into a tank that is pulled behind the machine. The juice is next transported to a mill, where it is preheated overnight before being boiled down the next day. While the juice boils, the chlorophyll (impurities) is skimmed off to achieve a thick, amber syrup in a ratio of 10 to 1—ten gallons of sorghum juice are needed to produce one gallon of sorghum syrup.
Sorghum syrup has long been mistaken for molasses. See molasses. In truth, sorghum syrup is made from sorghum cane, and molasses is a byproduct of sugarcane and sugar beet refining. See sugar beet; sugarcane; and sugar refining. There are several differences between sorghum cane and sugarcane. Sorghum cane is an annual grass, whereas sugarcane is a perennial. Sorghum cane produces a sweet syrup, but sugarcane produces sugar and the thick, dark syrup byproduct called molasses. A further difference is that sorghum cane can tolerate a colder climate than sugarcane. Sorghum also has a shorter growing season, around three to four months, while sugarcane takes from ten months and up to two years until it is ready to harvest.
Sorghum syrup has a mild caramel taste that many describe as earthy and fruity. It is rich in antioxidants and is high in protein, potassium, iron, calcium, and other nutrients. The syrup is delicious on a hot buttered biscuit or even a piece of toast. It makes an excellent addition to baked beans, barbecue sauce, gingerbread, sorghum cookies, apple stack cake, pecan pie, and many other cakes, pies, and cookies. See appalachian stack cake. Sorghum syrup is also good for glazing ham, marinating steaks, and as an addition to green beans or sweet and sour sauce.
Sorghum syrup gained popularity in the early 1860s during the Civil War, when the North found a way to make syrup out of sorghum cane, which grew well in their colder climate. The North also didn’t like the idea of slave labor being used in the production of sugar; if they could make their own substitute sweetener, so much the better, and they were eager to grow an acre or two of sorghum cane to boil down into syrup. By the 1870s, when the North could once again obtain sugar from the South, sorghum syrup production in the North slowed down. And because sorghum cane will not boil down into solid sugar, it lost even more popularity.
During the Great Depression, beginning in 1929, family farms grew sorghum cane and made sorghum syrup for their own use. Sugar was rationed and expensive and considered a luxury, so farmers grew an acre of sorghum cane, squeezed the juice out of the stalks, and boiled it down to a rich syrup. Many older people still remember syrup making at their homes and the candy or other desserts their mothers created out of the sorghum. They also remember the taste of sorghum syrup mixed with butter and eaten on a cathead biscuit—a misshapen and rough biscuit the size of a cat’s head.
At the end of World War II many families in the United States migrated to cities, and sorghum syrup production declined. By the 1970s it had reached an all-time low. Today, sorghum syrup is still not made on a commercial basis, but production has increased slightly. More and more chefs are using sorghum in their cooking—it is not just for eating on biscuits anymore. The majority of sorghum syrup produced today is in North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, some other southern states, and some northeastern states.
The National Sweet Sorghum Producers and Processors Association (NSSPPA) was formed in 1985. The Association’s main goal is to promote sweet sorghum syrup. Since the U.S. Department of Agriculture does not even recognize sorghum syrup production in their crop reporting statistics, many of the 332 members of the NSSPPA are hobbyists, who make only a few gallons of sorghum for family and friends and are trying to keep a bygone culture alive. A few members of the association produce a large amount of sorghum and make it available to stores and through Internet sales.
See also maple syrup and sugar rationing.
soufflé has been part of the French dessert repertoire since at least the time of Vincent La Chapelle’s Cuisinier moderne (1733–1735). A soufflé is made of stiffly beaten egg whites that are gently folded into a sauce base and baked. The heat of the oven expands the air bubbles trapped in the beaten egg whites, causing the mixture to puff up above the sides of the baking dish. The name derives from the French word souffle, meaning breath. This delicate confection must be served as soon as it comes out of the oven, as it will collapse when it begins to cool. The necessary precision in timing is why restaurants ask that a dessert soufflé be ordered at the beginning of the meal. Dessert soufflés can have either a cream or a fruit purée base, for which there are many possible formulas, with the choice of flavorings being almost endless. Chocolate and lemon are two of the most common flavors. The top is dusted with confectioner’s sugar as the soufflé comes out of the oven, and the dessert is often served with a sauce, such as crème anglaise. Any kind of macerated or cooked fruit (e.g., peaches, raspberries, apricots, oranges) works well, as do various nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, or a mixture of roasted chopped nuts). Other typical flavorings include liqueur, vanilla, crushed pralines, and macarons. See macarons.
Soufflés are baked in individual ramekins or in a single large mold. The traditional soufflé mold, either small or large, is made of porcelain, with straight sides above which the mixture rises as it cooks. The design on the outside of the mold is fluted in imitation of the folded paper container (caisse or papillote) used for soufflés, as shown in Favre’s Dictionnaire universel de cuisine pratique (1905). In classical French cuisine, a cylindrical metal charlotte mold, which has higher sides, is also used.
See also custard.
sound is rarely considered when food is discussed, yet using all available cues from our five senses to decide what to eat is essential to our survival. From sight—the appearance of the food, or even its packaging—we gain a lot of information. Thus it is not surprising that we tend to associate the color red with sweetness and yellow with sourness, as a ripe fruit is more likely to be red. Sweets manufacturers have long been aware of this color association, and consequently they produce sweets in all kinds of colors and shapes. Sometimes the change of color indicates a change in flavor, but sometimes it does not. As for smell, after examining a given food, we will usually smell it before putting it into our mouth, especially if we have doubts about its freshness. See olfaction. Once we are chewing a given food, our sense of touch, which is very developed in the mouth, will further inform us about some of its characteristics. Finally, the sounds heard when biting into a given food can tell us a lot about its texture and can influence our perception of its freshness. For example, it has been shown that modifying the sound heard when biting into chips will change their perceived crispiness and freshness.
There are, however, associations between the senses that are more difficult to explain. Does it make sense to ask what the taste of sweetness sounds like? Participants in an experiment at the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at Oxford University were asked to match tastes and flavors with musical notes. Most of them chose high-pitched notes for sweetness and sourness, while low-pitched notes were preferred for bitterness. This association extends to smell, with fruity odors being matched more often to high-pitched notes. Moreover, the timbre could also be matched with the tastes: piano for sweetness, brass instruments for bitterness or sourness. The tastes do not even have to be completely different. Similar foods can be associated with distinctive sounds: chips of different flavors or different types of chocolate lead to a different choice of sounds. For example, milk chocolate is associated with higher-pitched notes than dark chocolate is.
One factor underlying these associations seems to be the pleasantness of the tastes. In the experiment using dark chocolate, the lovers of the stuff tended to pick the piano, while those who hated it preferred to match it with notes played by brass instruments that were also less pleasant to hear. However, both lovers and haters seemed to agree that dark chocolate should be matched to a low-pitched note, suggesting that the role of pleasantness is not sufficient to explain the associations between tastes and pitch. The reason behind these associations is thus still a bit of a mystery. One suggestion is a link with the faces made when tasting, as these are innate. Newborns, for example, will lick their lips and suck when given a sweet solution, while a bitter taste will lead to mouth gaping and frowning. The sounds that can be produced while making such faces vary in pitch, so that different tastes could end up being associated in the mind with different pitches. These associations could also be part of a complex network of associations or correspondences among the senses. For example, sourness is associated with lemons, lemons are yellow, and brighter colors are associated with higher pitches. Thus, sourness would be associated with a high pitch.
Pitch and timbre are not the only musical elements that can be matched to tastes. In an experiment conducted in Argentina, musicians were asked to improvise based on taste words. Their compositions on the same taste had some similitudes not only in pitch but also in articulation, loudness, or length of the notes: “sweet” pieces tended to be consonant and use long notes, played legato, for example. Moreover, naïve listeners were able to guess with rather good accuracy whether the pieces were inspired by the word “bitter,” “salty,” “sour,” or “sweet.”
Wherever they come from, these associations can affect our perception of food. When listening to a “sweet” soundtrack, participants in a laboratory experiment rated cinder toffee to be sweeter than they did when listening to a “bitter” soundtrack. The type of music also affected their pleasantness ratings. The same has been demonstrated for wine: “zingy and refreshing” or “powerful and heavy” music listened to while tasting increased the ratings of the same description for the taste of the wine. Researchers and chefs are starting to team up to create events where tasting is combined with the whole atmosphere of a room (colors, decoration, music, etc.), leading to a truly multisensory experience. One can easily try this at home: gather some favorite sweets and favorite musical recordings and try different combinations with food, and see whether your overall perception changes. As new studies are conducted, the number of elements shown to influence our perception of food keeps increasing. For example, don’t hesitate to play with the weight, shape, and color of plates and cutlery, as well as the general atmosphere of the room. It is surprising what a difference all these factors can make.
See also neuroscience and sugarplums.
soup with a sweet taste is generally made from berries and other fruits. Traditionally, such soups were prepared mostly by poor people, who used what they harvested in their small gardens or collected in nearby woods. They even dried the ingredients in order to make soup throughout the year (as in Scandinavian rose hip soup). Sweet soups were often prepared for invalids as a light yet nutritious meal. Only the wealthy could afford to season sweet soups with sugar; otherwise the soups relied on the intrinsic sweetness of the fruits, or sometimes the addition of honey.
As an umbrella term, “sweet soup” can cover a broad spectrum of dishes ranging from liquid to solid. Liquid compote (fruit, often dried, and stewed with sugar) is served in Central Europe as either a dessert or as a side dish to accompany roasts, cordon bleu (breaded and fried meat with cheese), and, especially in Austria, various Schmarren (a type of eggy fried pancake). In Russia, kissel (or kisel’)—fruit juice thickened with potato starch—ranges from a pourable mixture to a slightly jelled one. Solid dishes include the various cold fruit porridges of Scandinavia and Germany that were originally made with grain, such as Denmark’s rødgrød and Germany’s rote Grütze. Nowadays these beloved dishes are made with red berries mixed with potato starch or cornstarch.
Sweet soups in Central Europe were generally made from milk, cream, beer, wine, or, later, chocolate, egg yolk, and roasted white bread. They were popular breakfast soups, very substantial and mostly eaten with a thick slice of brown bread. Milk and cream soups could also be afforded by peasants, who ate their soup with black bread and always served hot; the use of sour milk meant that some of these soups were neither very sweet nor salty. Members of aristocratic families ate their morning soups with white bread or sponge cake. Over the course of the eighteenth century, breakfast soups were gradually replaced by tea, chocolate (i.e., a beverage made from chocolate boiled in milk and sweetened with sugar), and coffee—which were luxury beverages at the time, initially introduced at princely courts and in other noble households. In the nineteenth century, as sugar became more affordable, the affluent middle classes were able to afford tea, coffee, or chocolate for breakfast. In some rural areas, however, people had sweet soups for breakfast as late as the 1930s.
In northern and eastern Europe, sweet soups became a more common dish that was eaten not only for breakfast. Fruit soups in particular were, and still are, served hot during the winter and cold in summer, such as Sotsuppe, a Scandinavian sweet soup made from raisins or currants, dried apricots, and prunes. In these regions, cold fruit soups appear either at the beginning of a summertime meal or as dessert. Many of the Scandinavian and Baltic sweet soups contain dried fruit or berries, collected in the summer and preserved for the winter. Water-based pear soups are characteristic of Sweden and northern Germany, as are soups made from bilberries or cranberries.
Kalte Schale, or Kaltschale (cold bowl), is a genuinely German dish mentioned as a common meal as early as 1836. It consists of beer, breadcrumbs, sugar, lemon peel, various domestic fruits, and small raisins. Cold bowls are also made from apricots, melons, yogurt, and Liebesperlen (pomegranate seeds). They are served as cold instead of hot soups in summer, and nowadays mostly as a dessert. Other cold soups include cherry soup, made from cherry juice, water, sugar, cinnamon, wine, and potato starch, and served with slices of white bread.
A specialty of the northern and eastern regions of Germany is fruit soups and sweet soups based on meat stock, to which sliced fresh fruit is added. Sometimes the cooked meat is sliced and added to the soup as a garnish. Thickened with eggs, cream, and flour, or flour fried in butter and sweetened with sugar, such soups provide a hearty main course. These special soups can also be found in Transylvania, where settlers from northern Germany and Saxony brought along their traditional dishes and defended them against Hungarian and Romanian influences. The soups, called Kächen, were sweetened with sugar; fruits (apples, pears, berries) were added 20 minutes before the soup was done.
Asian cuisines also have various traditional soups based on meat or fish broth with vegetables, which range from sweet, to sweet and sour, to hot, sweet, and sour. Often seasoned with sweet soy sauce, they are served at the beginning of a meal or between mealtimes. Many soups in this category are closely linked to theories of traditional Chinese medicine, and thus are considered restorative. An example is Korean naing kuk.
sour cream today, in usual commercial packaged versions, only vaguely resembles cream that happens to have naturally gone sour. Before universal pasteurization, cream and milk spontaneously soured by the action of certain lactic acid bacteria that were ubiquitous in most of northern Europe and the British Isles. Loosely labeled “mesophilic,” or adapted to temperatures between about 70° and 90°F (21° to 32°C), these organisms ferment part of the original lactose (milk sugar) to lactic acid, thickening the cream to a gel and lending it a noticeable but discreet sourness.
When cream was skimmed from milk on the farm or at home, sour cream was infinitely variable. See cream and milk. The richness of the original cream, along with conditions such as ambient temperature and a shorter or longer ripening period, determined both texture and flavor. Increasing nineteenth-century urbanization meant a corresponding decrease in the number of consumers familiar with simple changes in milk or cream between milking pail and table. But around the turn of the twentieth century, immigrants who had grown up with sour milk and sour cream in Eastern Europe and the Jewish Pale of Settlement flooded into American cities. Small businesses sprang up to address this market, just as modern science was starting to impose more system and uniformity on the dairy industry. Commercial brands using pasteurized cream and laboratory cultures soon arrived.
Jewish and other cooks from Eastern Europe prized sour cream that was nearly as thick as a set custard, with a delicately flowery, buttery quality. In its own right, it was an excellent dessert topping or sauce. It was also useful in baking, where its slight acidity helped weaken gluten development and prevent toughness in cakes and pastries. In some pastry doughs it could substitute for part of the butter and milk or other liquid.
Commercial sour cream gradually moved beyond a restricted ethnic clientele, though its acceptance by other cooks proceeded quite unevenly. By the mid-1940s, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, formerly geared to cautious New England sensibilities, called for sour cream in more than half a dozen recipes ranging from gingerbread to fudge. But even in the late 1950s, requests for sour cream in many American grocery stores might have been met with bewilderment.
A dramatic expansion of the industry during the 1950s and 1960s coincided with aggressive public health advocacy of low-fat diets. Major sour-cream manufacturers already seemed to have abandoned the use of rich cream, trying instead to mimic richness by adding stabilizers or thickeners to cream standardized at less than 20 percent milk fat, or lightly setting it with a small amount of rennet. Some adopted a double-homogenization technique developed in the late 1950s, which eliminated some leakage of whey (viewed as a defect by uninformed consumers) and created a very fine, smooth body. Many tried to cater to the low-fat market by further reducing milk-fat content and throwing in still more additives or aiming for “fat-free sour cream,” which is unrelated to sour cream.
Several decades ago, commercial sour cream began encountering competition from American attempts to reproduce a similar French cultured cream unhelpfully known as crème fraiche (fresh cream) or, a little more intelligibly, crème fraîche épaisse (thick fresh cream). Chiefly associated with Normandy, thick crème fraîche was formerly made from raw milk colonized by natural mesophilic bacteria. The old method has been almost wholly replaced by laboratory inoculation of pasteurized milk with chosen mesophilic strains.
Today, several commercial American brands of crème fraîche are available. They are expensive, but their advantage over the major sour cream brands is twofold. First, they usually contain more than 30 percent butterfat, just slightly less than U.S. heavy cream. (There is, however, no official standard of identity.) Crême fraîche as rich as this does not curdle on heating, so it can easily be used in either savory or dessert sauces. It also works well in short or yeast-raised pastry doughs and cake batters.
Second, crème fraîche manufacturers generally take pains in selecting the different mesophilic bacteria used to culture the cream, in order to balance a mild acidity against the aromatic flowery quality mentioned earlier. This fragrant effect had also been prized in sour cream made for the old clientele of Eastern European shtetl refugees, but it is less noticeable in today’s commercial product. This aroma chiefly depends on a compound called diacetyl, produced through the action of Leuconostoc meserentoides and certain subspecies of Lactococcus lactis.
To some extent, the American success of crème fraîche has encouraged home cooks to try ripening heavy cream at home to obtain something richer and fuller-flavored than today’s rather weak-bodied commercial sour cream. Some cooks have also experimented with making yogurt from cream. See yogurt. In both cases, success depends on creating a delicate balance of crucial organisms, not easy to duplicate without either firsthand experience or access to laboratory cultures.
The South (U.S.) is said to have the finest bakers in the United States, directly attributable to the reputed Southern sweet tooth. Things are a bit more complicated than that. The desserts of the American South vary through geography, the economics of class and status, poverty, the legacy of slavery, and, in the twentieth century, electricity and the rise of air conditioning. Geographically as large as Western Europe, the South stretches down the eastern seaboard from Maryland to Florida and across to Texas. The region is usually defined by the 11 states of the Confederacy, plus the so-called border or slave holding states that did not secede: Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri, plus West Virginia, which seceded from Virginia after Virginia seceded from the United States. Florida, Texas, and especially Louisiana have developed their own cuisines, and their cooking is no longer classically Southern, although it certainly overlaps.
Early desserts reflected the influences of each cook’s country of origin, of the foodstuffs available in the region, and of course economics and status. The early influences on Southern desserts were primarily transatlantic, with the dominant techniques and recipes derived from England and France, followed by Germany and Spain. The availability of soft-wheat flour contributed to the prevalence of cakes, pies, and biscuits, and cane sugar was more available than beet sugar, both due to importation and a small amount of cultivation in the Deep South. See sugarcane and sugarcane agriculture.
A symbiotic relationship developed between African slaves and their primarily white owners when blacks became the cooks in homes and on plantations. Primarily female slaves, they learned the techniques and recipes for cakes, pies, candies, and other confections by heart. Few were allowed to learn to read. They gradually excelled in their execution and became known and valued for their skill. When the importation of slaves ended in 1808, the expanding domestic slave trade dispersed many skilled of these slave cooks throughout the Deep South states. This movement helped create the common basis for desserts throughout the slave-owning South. See slavery.
The dominant Southern ports also brought in foodstuffs that became known as “Southern.” Pineapple was considered so fashionable that having one on a dinner table in places such as Charleston, South Carolina, denoted wealth and status. Coconut, brought from Cuba, became a “Southern” ingredient, even though coconut was hardly grown in the South. Other ingredients, such as benne seeds, were primarily imported from Africa and India. Benne seed wafers are still popular in Charleston, although there is no benne seed production of note. See benne seed wafers. New Orleans, whose slaves and Free Persons of Color primarily came from the French West Indies after the Haitian revolution, brought skills for beignets and other sweets that reflected those origins. Pralines and tea, each sweet enough to “set one’s teeth on edge,” are claimed by both Charleston and New Orleans. See new orleans and praline. Rice, extensively cultivated by African slaves in the hot coastal regions, was used in rice pudding, the rice fritters called calas, and other sweets. Ingredients such as pecans were indigenous to the Americas and provided roulades, soufflés, pecan ice cream, and more. These ingredients were also incorporated into European recipes for sweets. Strawberries were plentiful, and in the nineteenth century Charleston was the strawberry capital of the United States. Peanuts were featured prominently in desserts from brittles to chocolate pies.
Puddings, both French and English, were quickly adapted to the South. Classic boiled puddings, baked puddings, mousses, and other puddings coddled children and adults alike during the cooler months from fall to spring. See huguenot torte and pudding.
Cakes
Cakes were primarily English and French in origin. Historic cookbooks feature pound cake, sponge cake, angel food cake, and other cakes that remain popular. See angel food cake; pound cake; and sponge cake. Lady Baltimore cake, described in the 1906 Owen Wister novel Lady Baltimore, is a favorite. Batter cakes became popular as soon as baking soda was developed, offering a much faster and easier way to utilize fruits, and their popularity increased during the mid-twentieth century. Peach cobbler is more likely to be a batter cake than a pie in the warmest areas of the Deep South, particularly for church suppers and community gatherings, although the further north one goes in the Southern states, the more prominent crisps and peach pies are. See fruit desserts, baked. Few cookies were made until the twentieth century.
A table covered with cakes was once common at annual barbecues. Sweet cakes like caramel cake and sweets such as divinity fudge came to the South from elsewhere and stayed until they were considered “native.” The story goes that “a Southerner is not sure he is loved unless multilayered caramel cake and coconut cake are on the table at holiday times.”
Temperature affected chocolate usage, enabling Virginia and other northernmost Southern states to use it more readily than states further south. Even so, as late as the 1879 Housekeeping in Old Virginia cookbook, recipes using chocolate were scarce. In the southernmost states it was primarily used in the colder months, if at all, until air conditioning became common and stabilizers added.
Pastry and pies were less common than puddings until the mid-twentieth century and electric ovens, because they had to be made in the rare cool morning hours, or during the winter months in the lower South. Peach pie was made from stewed peaches rather than fresh slices, as we know it now, the filling having to be “at the ready” to expedite the process once the pastry was made. Although puff pastry is referred to in early cookbooks, with its high butter content, it is difficult to imagine anyone making it except in the coolest of situations. Fresh lard, much easier to work with all year long than butter, was widely available, as well as less expensive. Pecans, harvested in late fall, dominated the winter holidays in the form of pecan pies, tassies, and other tarts. Fried pies were developed into a staple because they were easy to make from reconstituted dried fruit, especially apples and peaches. Cooks simply tucked the filling into biscuit dough, folded it over, and pan-fried the pies. Custard pies such as buttermilk pie and chess pie remain favorites.
Electricity and air conditioning changed everything. Pies could be made any time of year, with butter, lard, or shortening. Cakes were baked in more easily regulated ovens. Cookies were now easier for the home cook to deal with and became the norm. Chocolate could be safely stored in a cupboard without melting.
The development of Florida into a major East Coast growing area for fruits and vegetables, and the lower South’s many growing seasons, keep fruit desserts at the top of the list. Today, mangos and other subtropical fruits are incorporated into batter cobblers and pies. Florida and Texas have introduced Spanish influences, and flan now rivals standard crème caramel. Although home baking is on the decline, bakeries satisfy the Southern sweet tooth. Grocery stores offer mixes and prepared cream cakes and other popular cakes year round. But no matter who is doing the cooking, batter cobblers, ice cream, holiday cakes, and pies still appear without fail on the table.
See also appalachian stack cake; cake; coconut; flan; flour; pastry, puff; and pie.
South Asia is a term applied to countries on the Indian subcontinent: the Republic of India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, both created in 1947; the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, formed in 1971; the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal; and the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon). India is a secular state with a Hindu majority; Pakistan and Bangladesh have largely Muslim populations; while the main religions in Nepal and Sri Lanka are Hinduism and Buddhism. See buddhism; hinduism; and islam.
Food, like language, is not conterminous with political boundaries, and Indian sweets such as laddu, peda, rice puddings, jalebis, barfi, kulfi, and halwa are universally popular throughout South Asia. See barfi; india; and laddu. However, other sweets are more local, especially those associated with festivals, religious events, and family celebrations.
Pakistan
Pakistan is an ethnically diverse country, consisting of four provinces and four federal territories. The cuisine and sweets of Punjabis and Muhajirs (descendants of immigrants from India during Partition in 1947) are very similar to those in India: halwa, jalebi, and rice pudding are especially popular. See halvah. Sweets are always part of an iftar, the meal that breaks the daily fast during the fasting month Ramadan. See ramadan. The end of Ramadan, called Eid al-Fitr, is celebrated with such desserts as sewian (vermicelli pudding) and the similar sheer khurma, vermicelli cooked in thickened, sweetened milk with nuts and raisins. Another traditional festive dish is zarda, a sweet, saffron-colored rice pilaf made with rice, thickened milk (khoya), sugar, and nuts, and flavored with rosewater. See flower waters.
The Pakistani province of Sindh was settled by Arabs in the eighth century. The Arabs brought many kinds of halwa to Sindh, the most popular of which is made from sesame paste and studded with fruit and nuts. Mazoon is another halwa made from ground nuts, khoya, and poppy seeds. Penhon is a typical Sindhi dessert of crushed rice cooked in sugar water; it is often served at breakfast, especially the day after a wedding. Tahiri is a dish of cooked rice, sugar, ghee, cardamom, saffron, and nuts served during the rainy season.
Bangladesh
In Bangladesh, which shares a common language and cuisine with neighboring West Bengal, sandesh, pithas, ros malai, and rosogolla are as popular as they are across the border. See sandesh and rosogolla. Dhaka is as famous as Kolkata for its sweet makers (moira). See kolkata. Pithas (or pithes) are especially popular and are often made at home. These are little cakes made from rice flour, thickened milk (khoya), and jaggery or sugar; they can be fried or steamed. For Ramadan and Eid, Shahi Jilapi is very popular; this is a large round disk made of flour and yogurt that is poured into hot fat in the shape of a spiral, and then soaked in sugar syrup. It is a variation of jalebi, although unlike jalebi, the spirals stick together. It is also a popular street food, sometimes served with zarda.
Nepal
The mountainous country of Nepal has 100 ethnic groups, many with their own distinctive cuisines and dishes. Indian sweets are popular, especially in the capital, Kathmandu. Most indigenous Nepali sweets are far less likely to be milk-based and are less sugary than Indian sweets. Local sweets include sel-roti, crisp deep-fried rounds of ground rice and bananas that are made during family celebrations and religious festivals, especially Tihar Bhai Tika (the equivalent of Diwali); malpuwa, wheat pancakes soaked in sugar syrup; and khajuri, flaky cookies made from flour, sugar, and clarified butter pressed into molds and then fried in clarified butter. Sweets made of sugar and molasses from various sources (including palm and sugarcane) and sesame seeds are also popular. See palm sugar.
The Newaris, a large ethnic group, have many distinctive dishes. Laakha-mari is a ceremonial sweet bread that is sent to people with a wedding invitation. To make it, rice flour dough is pressed into molds of various shapes and sizes, then deep fried and glazed with sugar to give it a satiny finish. Yomari is a steamed rice-flour conch-shaped “dumpling” stuffed with roasted sesame seeds and brown sugar. Juju dhau, a sweetened yogurt made from buffalo milk and flavored with cardamom, pistachios, and saffron, is a highlight of festivals.
Sri Lanka
An island of many ethnicities and influences, Sri Lanka was colonized successively by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British, all of whom left their mark on the local South Asian cuisine. See portugal’s influence in asia. Baked goods made with wheat flour, sugar, and eggs, such as cakes, tarts, and cookies, reflect the European influence. One Portuguese legacy is love cake, made from flour, eggs, spices, crystallized fruit, and nuts, and baked so that the center remains moist. Broeder is of Dutch origin, a round, rich, yeasty cake made of white flour and raisins and cooked in a pan resembling a Gugelhupf pan. See gugelhupf.
The use of coconut, rice, and palm as ingredients in many sweet dishes reflects an older, precolonial tradition. Kalu dodol is made by heating a mixture of rice flour, coconut milk, and palm sugar until it thickens, then adding cashew nuts and cardamoms. The most traditional Sri Lankan sweet dish, sold at roadside stands throughout the country, is kiri pani, buffalo milk yogurt with a layer of cream, which is served with palm syrup.
See also breads, sweet; coconut; diwali; festivals; and yogurt.
Southeast Asia, a region of subtropical and tropical environments, includes the Philippines, Indonesia, East Timor, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma (also known as Myanmar). In addition, some of the peoples living in China’s Yunnan province near the border with Burma and Laos have closer cultural and culinary connections to Southeast Asia than to the rest of China. In most of the region, fruit is the main sweet treat. Prepared sweets, mostly the preserve of specialized cooks rather than made by home cooks, are eaten as a snack or treat rather than as the last sweet course in a meal.
Before the arrival of European powers in the sixteenth century, Southeast Asian sweets relied on local ingredients, primarily coconut, palm sugar and cane sugar, sweet rice, also known as sticky rice or glutinous rice, taro, bananas, and other sweet fruits. See coconut; palm sugar; and sticky rice sweets. Trade, immigration, and colonial conquest resulted in the introduction of new ingredients that found their way into the sweets of the region: tapioca (manioc), wheat flour, butter, milk products, sweet corn, sweet potato, and other New World and temperate-climate foods. See tapioca. Foreign cooking techniques and dishes from Europe, China, and India became adapted once they reached Southeast Asia, including deep-frying in oil, egg custard (from Portugal and Spain), roti (sweetened fried wheat-flour flatbreads from the Indian subcontinent), ice cream and other cooked milk dishes, lumpia (fried “eggrolls”), tarts and pastry, and leavened cakes and bread.
Thailand and Laos
In Thailand, as in the rest of Southeast Asia, sweets are most popular as afternoon snacks, though sweet sticky rice treats also sell well in the morning markets. See thailand. Thai sweets are inventive and often combine sweet and savory in unexpected ways. For example, sankaya, classic Thai coconut milk custard, comes topped with fried shallots and is often steamed in a small kabocha-like squash. Minced garlic and a few coriander leaves, or shrimp and shredded coconut, flavor the sweet meringue topping on the Thai tuiles called kanom beuang. As in much of Southeast Asia, pandanus leaves (also known as “screwpine,” which give a delicate scent and green color) perfume some sweets and tint them a pale green. See pandanus. Sticky rice, both black and white, is sweetened with palm sugar and coconut milk, then served with tart-sweet fruit, most commonly sliced mango. In neighboring Laos, this treat is called khao nio mamuang as it is in Thailand; versions of some of the other simple Thai sweets such as deep-fried baban and taro are also made in Laos. A Southeast Asia–wide approach to bananas includes grilling (gluay bing) or deep-frying in a simple sweetened rice or wheat-flour batter (gluay kaek); taro is also deep-fried. Cubes of taro are sometimes cooked in sweetened coconut milk to make a soupy comfort food snack called pua gaeng buad; the banana equivalent, gluay bua chi, often topped with sesame seeds or chopped roasted peanuts, is found in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam as well as Thailand.
Burma
In Burma (formally known as Myanmar), people may eat a sweet snack in the morning, but more frequently indulge in mid- or late afternoon. Confections range from the sweet street-side coconut cream and rice-flour crepes called ah-boh to rice-flour dumplings known as moun yon lei bo, the large ones filled with palm sugar and the small ones served in a light sugar syrup. Home cooks and teashops make a two-layer pudding of tapioca topped with creamy coconut milk custard, the tapioca often dyed with pandanus. Sticky rice is the basis of the cake called htamanei, which is flavored with peanuts, sesame seeds, and palm sugar and may also include coconut shavings and ginger. The Shan people make deep-fried sticky-rice doughnuts that are drizzled with melted palm sugar. The delicate Indian-inflected sweetmeat called shwe gyi mont is a version of halvah and is made from semolina flour cooked with butter and sugar, enriched with coconut milk and sometimes eggs, and then baked. See halvah.
China
In the areas of China’s Yunnan province that border Laos and Burma, as in Laos and the northern hill areas of Burma, the primary sweet is fruit (bananas, papayas, litchis, etc.). In addition, sticky rice sweetened with crude cane sugar or white sugar, or pounded to a paste, grilled, and drizzled with liquid sugar, is a favorite sweet treat, especially in the morning. Fritters made of wheat flour or rice flour, sugar, and often sweet corn are a common mid-afternoon sweet sold by street vendors.
Cambodia
Cambodian (Khmer) sweets overlap with those of neighboring Thailand and Vietnam, but often with a slight twist. Examples are sankya lapoh, custard steamed in squash or pumpkin; bobo samdaik ankoy, sticky rice and black bean pudding with coconut milk; and vavee, known as golden threads or angel hair. Kralan resembles the bamboo-steamed rice dishes of Laos and northeast Thailand: rice, red beans, coconut, coconut milk, and palm sugar are mixed and then stuffed into a hollow bamboo and steamed over a fire. Num treap is a cousin of the Burmese htamanei, cooked sticky rice flavored with sweetened coconut milk and topped with sesame seeds.
Vietnam
Vietnam’s geography and history have resulted in sweets that vary greatly from the temperate north near the Chinese border to the tropical south. Northern sweets make extensive use of mung beans and black-eyed peas. Rice dumplings called banh troi nuoc, cousins to the Khmer num treap, are filled with a sweetened mung bean mixture and served in a ginger syrup that evokes Chinese sweets. Che hot sen that tranh is an iced agar jelly sweet that combines lotus seeds, scented water, sugar, and mung beans and is topped with coconut milk. The same combination is found in the familiar “bubble tea” made with large tapioca pearls and a variety of colorings and flavorings. See bubble tea. For che dau trang, a sweet similar to the Khmer bobo samdaik ankoy, cooked black-eyed peas are combined with glutinous rice, sugar, and coconut milk. Vietnamese make tamarind candy and candied coconut, mut dua. There is a whole repertoire of sweet soups made of fruits, coconut, noodles, sweet beans, and more, such as che chuo (banana and tapioca cooked in coconut milk, like the Khmer chaek katih). See soup. And ansom chaek, the Khmer dish of bananas wrapped in rice and then banana leaves before grilling, is a favorite that the Vietnamese call chuoi nuong. A range of sweetmeats known as mut also exists that includes candied ginger, star fruit, coconut, and orange peels. See candied fruit.
Indonesia
In Indonesia, with its multitude of islands and tropical climate, there are distinctive local sweets as well as more generally available treats such as pisang goring, fried bananas. A number of them, like the sesame-coated, deep-fried rice balls filled with bean paste found in Java, are inherited from Chinese tradition. Mochi is made of rice-flour dough filled with chopped sweetened peanuts; similar rice-flour treats, called cendil, are colored, so they look a little like Turkish Delight and are served topped with grated coconut. See mochi. The glutinous rice-flour dumplings called klepon, or onde-onde, filled with palm sugar and boiled, are prepared like the moun lon yei bo of Burma but are often colored pale green with pandanus. The spicy fruit salad named rojak manis, served either as a dessert or a snack, combines powdered dried red chilies and palm sugar with chopped mixed fruit and vegetables such as pineapple, green mango, starfruit, jicama, green apple, and cucumber. Yucca is cooked, sweetened, and mashed, then shaped into disks and coated with fresh grated coconut to make the sweet snack getuk lindrii. Agar agar is used to thicken puddings and cake fillings, such as the coconut pudding called agar degan made with coconut milk and young coconut flesh, eggs, and palm sugar. Agar is also used to make the rice-flour jelly noodles that are an important ingredient in cedol, the layered shaved ice treat that has become popular across Southeast Asia. See shave ice. Cedol (Burmese mont let saung; Thai lot chong; Vietnamese banh lot) layers colorful jelly rice noodles, shaved ice, green dye (originally pandanus coloring), sweet corn, coconut cream, and sometimes red beans.
Malaysia and Brunei
Sweets in Malaysia and in Brunei, the small sultanate on the north coast of the island of Borneo, are very like those of Indonesia, with similar names. Thus, one encounters there goreng pisang, bananas coated in a rice-flour batter and deep-fried (yams and sweet potatoes are cooked the same way); tapioca pudding called kuih benkah; and kolak, also called pengat pisang, plantains cooked in coconut milk and palm sugar, a treat eaten at the feast that ends Ramadan. There are a number of thick, porridge-like dishes sweetened with sugar and coconut, and often made richer with coconut milk. They include pulut hitam, made of black sticky rice, and lek tau tang, created with green mung beans and colored and flavored with pandanus. The popular tall shaved ice treat known as ais kacang, a version of cedol, includes peanuts, basil seeds, and red beans.
Singapore
Sweets in the city-state of Singapore reflect its mixed Chinese, South Asian, and Malay heritage, with a huge dose of cosmopolitan modernity thrown in. Hawker stalls sell the Malay classics, along with sweetened roti topped with sweetened condensed milk, Chinese-style sweetened bean dishes, silken tofu in sweet ginger syrup, and shaved ice combos. Western-style cakes and pastries, available at all hours, include custard tarts, coconut tarts, and tapioca puddings.
Philippines
The Philippines arguably has the largest repertoire of sweets in the region. See philippines. Apart from the usual tropical ingredients such as coconut, sweet rice, and banana, Philippine sweets make inventive use of purple yam (dioscorea alata); avocado; kalamansi (a distinctive local lime); wheat flour (for little doughnuts called bunuelos, and for bread pudding—pan de sal—and cakes); silken tofu (called taho); sweetened red beans; sago and tapioca (in helo-helo, shaved ice sweet drinks); and milk and cream. The latter are used to make flan, leche, and ice cream, a big favorite that comes in a wide range of flavors, including cheese and avocado. See flan (pudím) and ice cream.
See also china; india; and ramadan.
The Southwest (U.S.) has a repertoire of native sweets that entwine with those of the former Spanish empire like stripes on a candy cane. The original foray into the American Southwest, into what is now northern New Mexico, was led by the Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate in 1598. Unlike many European colonists on the Atlantic coast, the pioneers who settled in this region remained intensely loyal to their homeland, including its culinary traditions, and they immediately planted their familiar wheat upon arrival. Panocha, a porridge or pudding made from wheat and little else, was likely the first sweet prepared on the frontier. Wheat kernels were rinsed with water, bagged, and set near a fire or other warm place until the grain sprouted. This germinated grain was dried (malted) before being ground into flour (also called panocha), which had a subtle natural sweetness. Spanish settlers had access to some honey, and they grew a little sugarcane and sorghum in areas as unlikely as the New Mexican foothills. However, sugar was in short supply until the railroad came to the region in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Today, cooks flavor their panocha with cinnamon and brown sugar, caramelized white sugar, or piloncillo, a cone-shaped raw sugar dissolved in hot water. See sugar. This dish, cooked on the stovetop and then oven-baked, resembles a lustrous Indian pudding. It is most often served in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado during Lent.
Corn is the basis of several sweet Southwestern beverages. Atole is a hot drink sometimes made of blue corn; champurrado blends masa harina or other corn flour with chocolate for a hot beverage. Other corn-based sweets include the fruity tamales—similar to their Mexican counterparts—that are especially popular in southern Arizona and the El Paso region. See mexico. The masa corn flour batter might be flavored with preserves or crushed pineapple, or even stained nearly red from strawberries.
Spanish nuns from convents in the Andalusia sherry region of Spain brought the tradition of egg- and dairy-rich sweets to Mexico and the American Southwest. Sherry producers clarified their wines with egg whites and gave the yolks to the sisters, who devised ways to use them in desserts and other confections. See convent sweets. Flan, the baked caramel-topped custard, is one of the many sweets from the frontier period that still dominate southwestern dessert cooking. The use of canned evaporated milk or sweetened condensed milk became common by the nineteenth century. Today, many southwestern cooks still make flan with canned milk because the taste resembles their grandmother’s version. See flan (pudím); milk; and sweetened condensed milk.
Another offspring of this egg- and dairy heritage, still popular in New Mexican home kitchens today, is natillas. Similar to the Spanish classic, this stovetop vanilla custard or pudding has beaten egg whites folded into the custard in “floating island” style. See custard. Susan Shelby Magoffin, the bride of an early trader, described in her Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico (a diary from 1846–1847, first published in 1926) a dessert that was likely natillas as a part of her “first entire Mexican dinner” in Santa Fe. In another entry, Magoffin describes a dessert “made of boiled milk and seasoned with cinnamon and nutmeg” as “very good, the recipe I should like.” She was talking about dulce de leche, most often made with cow’s milk. See dulce de leche. Cajeta, a goat’s milk caramel, is made in a similar style, and sometimes cooked down to candy. Simple homemade goat cheeses, often eaten for breakfast in the past, were usually covered in molasses, honey, or sorghum. See honey; molasses; and sorghum syrup.
Syrupy sweets include dulce de calabaza, pumpkin candied with sugar syrup and cinnamon. In Early California Hospitality (1952), Ana Bégué Packman notes that the confection “was to California what pumpkin pie was to New England.” A caramel syrup forms the base of bread pudding called capirotada or sopa, most popular in New Mexico and Arizona. White bread is combined with raisins, nuts, mild cheese, and the syrup. The pudding has an association with Lent and Easter because of the religious significance of breaking bread. See caramel.
Other sweet breads are buñuelos, sopaipillas, and frybread. All are most often made with a baking-powder dough that rises high when dunked in hot oil. See doughnut. Discus-like buñuelos, most often eaten as snacks in Texas and Arizona, are frequently drizzled with a piloncillo syrup. New Mexican sopaipillas, slathered in honey, may serve as bread or dessert. Frybread, a tradition of the Diné, Pueblo, and other Native Americans, was first created out of adversity, with rancid flour offered by the U.S. Army. It has become a hallmark of skilled Native American cooking. See native american. With a shower of confectioner’s sugar, frybread can be snack, bread, or dessert.
Both empanadas and empanaditas, fruit-filled half-moon pastries, have Spanish antecedents. Baked or fried, the sweets might have a filling of stewed dried apples or apricots, or fresh pumpkin with raisins and pine nuts, or mincemeat. Pastelitos comprise a fruit filling sandwiched on a baking sheet between two crusts, and then cut into squares.
Not many states have an official cookie, but New Mexico’s legislature recognized the bizcochito, or biscochito, decades go. This shortbread-like molded cookie is flavored with cinnamon, anise, and often brandy.
One of the few Anglo-American sweets with any degree of history is cowboy Dutch-oven-cooked fruit cobbler. See fruit desserts, baked. Chuck-wagon historian Tom Perini, author of Texas Cowboy Cooking (2001), emphasizes that cobblers were not common on long trail drives but were wildly popular as special-occasion treats.
Today’s hottest sweets often include chili in some playful way. Chocolate truffles and brownies are enhanced with New Mexican red or smoky chipotle, while ice cream might be fired up from a tiny chiltepin or a hefty New Mexican green pod.
See also breads, sweet; brownies; candied fruit; ice cream; pudding; shortbread; turnovers; and truffles.
Spain is a peninsula with marked regional, geoclimatic, and cultural differences that yield an impressive array of sweet dishes. Along the lush northern Cantabrian coast and extending to the Atlantic Ocean in the northwest, regional specialties such as arroz con leche (rice pudding), natillas (custard), tocino de cielo (milkless flan), casadielles (fried pastries made with butter and anise liqueur, stuffed with a paste of ground walnuts, butter, lemon peel, sherry, and cinnamon), and filloas (very thin crepes served with cinnamon and honey) make good use of the local dairy products, eggs, wheat, and fresh and dried fruits. Roman and Arabic traditions—the original Mediterranean diet—marry along the eastern Mediterranean coast, where mel y mató (whey similar to cottage cheese), menjar blanc (milk pudding with ground almonds), and flaó (cheese tart with mint) are inspired by the local dairy products. There are also baked doughs such as cocas (thin, crisp bread with dried fruit), pan quemado (round cake made without eggs), and a wide range of turrones (nougats). In the central Meseta extending to the west, as well as in Extremadura, lard, wheat, and eggs are used to bake simple, exquisite cakes like bizcochos and magdalenas, or the fried doughnut-like rosquillas. In Andalusia, which borders the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts in the south, the art of frying in olive oil was inherited from the Semitic populations and led to a panoply of sweets of different shapes and textures, collectively described as frutas de sarten (frying pan fruits). See fried dough. Examples include pestiños and the complex alajú, flat, round baked dough made with aniseed, cinnamon, coriander, sesame seeds, and cloves. In the Canary Islands, roasted corn flour, called gofio, is used to make the local version of nougat.
Over the centuries this immensely contrasting scenery saw a changing population of many different peoples. Native Tartessians and Iberians witnessed the successive arrivals of Celts, Greeks, Romans, Jews, Visigoths, Moors, other Europeans, and Americans. These various influxes resulted in a dynamic exchange of material culture, including ingredients, culinary tools, and cooking techniques.
Spaniards still enjoy sweets handed down from classical antiquity made with honey, wheat flour, olive oil, eggs, and wine, such as hojuelas de aceite y vino, thin, fried pastries in the shape of leaves or ears (orejas), as well as thick, round, fried rosquillas de anis and thin, flat baked tortas de aceite with sesame seeds. From the Visigoths, they inherited a passion for fruits, as can be seen in arropes (mixed fresh fruits boiled with honey and juices) and compotas (compotes of boiled dried figs and chestnuts), as well as in the general preference for oleaginous fruits, such as the almonds and walnuts native to the peninsula.
Spain also enjoys a rich Arabic-Andalusian legacy that includes sweets such as alajú (flat, round, baked dough made with almonds, walnuts, pine nuts, toasted breadcrumbs, orange peel, cinnamon, and honey), talvina (a kind of porridge made with pistachios, almond milk, and milk), and almojábanas (a mixture of flour, olive oil, milk, and cheese that is baked and soaked in honey with cinnamon and pepper). This culinary inheritance includes the Arabic method of making fried, flour-based desserts sweetened with syrups and honey, like alfajores (a complex mixture of toasted breadcrumbs, orange and lemon peels, cinnamon, and nutmeg, boiled in honey with cloves) and pan de Alá (bread of Allah), which has similar ingredients but is shaped into a loaf. The most emblematic of all sweets handed down from this period are the turrones (almond nougat made with egg whites and honey) and mazapanes (marzipan), both typical Christmas fare. See marzipan and nougat. The most traditional turrones (turrón de Jijona and turrón de Alicante) date from the thirteenth century. In the sixteenth century, during the reign of Phillip II, turrones became renowned in the Far East and were eaten throughout Europe. A wider variety emerged, including hard and soft versions, those using whole or ground almonds, and those with egg yolk and candied fruit. Today, chocolate turrón is becoming popular. Unlike the marzipan of other European countries, Spanish marzipan does not contain bitter almonds, so it is sweeter. Marzipan comes in several shapes and sizes, from tiny figuritas de mazapan (3D representations of all sorts of animals) to the large, extravagant, and most expensive anguila. Typical of Toledo, this eel-shaped loaf is filled with pumpkin jam, sweet potato, and egg yolk and is decorated with sugar lace and candied fruit.
Spaniards developed a taste for the small scale from the Arabic-Andalusian tradition of edible artistry, and so pasteles (assorted small cakes) are preferred over tartas (large cakes); an overflowing tray is considered more tempting than a single dessert that can be divided. There are many types of tiny sweets, from huesos de santo (realistic-looking marzipan “bones” filled with “marrow” made of chestnut, sweet potato, coffee, or egg yolk paste) to buñuelos de viento (airy spheres stuffed with cabello de angel, a sweet that looks like fairy hair made from a fibrous variety of pumpkin).
Spanish tartas are mostly flat and more ceremonial than their European counterparts; they are conceived more to delight than to nourish. The star ingredients are egg yolks, as in the aristocratic tarta Capuchina; almonds, as in the tortada de almendras; and the combination of both, as in the popular and now commercial tarta de Santiago. The tarta de manzana (apple tart) is less interesting than in other countries; by contrast, the tarta helada (a frozen cake with layers of custard covered in cream and chocolate) was the first quirky application of technology to pastry making and represents each pastry chef’s signature work of art. It is an appealing choice for special occasions.
Although Spain’s consumption of ice cream is relatively low outside of summer compared to that of other countries, it is enjoyed in the hottest months. The best ice cream comes from the Balearic Islands and Jijona, Alicante, such as the delicious helado de turrón (nougat), helado de avellana (hazelnut), helado de almendra (almond), and helado de leche merengada (made from chilled sweetened milk flavored with lemon rind and cinnamon). In the summer vendors throughout the country also sell the refreshing beverages horchata de chufa (tiger nut milk), granizado de limón, and granizado de café (lemon and coffee granitas).
Christopher Columbus’s return from the Americas also had sweet consequences for Spain. Frutas de Aragón (dark-chocolate-covered candied fruit) are a perfect marriage of the newly arrived chocolate with the ancient inclination to experiment with orange peel and other candied fruits. They are beautifully wrapped in cellophane and sold in wooden boxes. Bombones (chocolates) are mostly sold by weight, rather than in boxes, whereas children prefer chocolatinas, small chocolate bars.
As a country of lamineros—people with a sweet tooth—Spain has a daily timetable for eating sweets. In the morning, bollería (pastries) like ensaimadas (pastry coils dusted with confectioner’s sugar), suizos (sweet buns), trenzas (pastry braids), and churros (long, thin strips of fried dough sprinkled with sugar) are dunked into thick hot chocolate (chocolate a la Española) right up to the fingers until dark moustaches tattoo the indulger’s face. In the early hours of New Year’s Day, Spaniards everywhere eat churros with family and friends, and churrerías throughout Spain are packed with people very late at night. Dessert after lunch may be queso con membrillo (manchego cheese with quince paste), macedonia de frutas (fresh fruit salad), pasteles, or tartas. Merienda (afternoon tea) often involves local specialties such as bizcochos (cakes), bizcochos borrachos (cakes soaked in sugar syrup and wine), or some of the enormous array of pastas (biscuits) with evocative names like feos (ugly things), mostachones (moustaches), and estacazos (thrusts), or the popular jelly-roll-like brazo de Gitano (Gypsy arm).
Julio Camba, author of The House of Lucullus or The Art of Eating, wrote that the Spanish kitchen is full of garlic and religion. In this regard, many votive sweets devoted to each locality’s patron saint are now baked beyond convent walls: coca de San Juan (an oval or rectangular cake made of flour, eggs, sugar, and lard, decorated with candied fruit), huesos de San Expedito (finger- or cylinder-shaped and made from a dough of flour, sugar, and egg yolk fried in aniseed-perfumed olive oil), panecillos de San Antón (sweet buns), and rosquillas de Santa Clara (fried anise-flavored doughnuts topped with meringue). Yemas de Santa Teresa and yemas de San Leandro are considered special. Both are made of egg yolk fondant, the latter with a center of huevo hilado, thin threads of egg yolk boiled in syrup. See egg yolk sweets.
Industrious nuns in cloistered convents still maintain local pastry traditions. See convent sweets. Originally, making these pastries was their humble and authentic way to thank and honor their donors. Today, the income from baking allows the convents to survive. Although local religious festivities are respected, the classic repertoire consists mainly of fried and baked sweets made with natural ingredients like flour, eggs, milk, almonds, lard, butter or olive oil and lemon peel, cinnamon, and sesame seeds. Most convents produce pastas caseras (homemade biscuits), whether mantecadas (egg, sugar, and butter cupcakes), sobadillos (anise and lard cookies), almendrados (almond cookies), galletas de nata (cream crackers), or pastas de té (tea biscuits or teacakes). The ritual of buying these cookies from the torno (turntable through which the sweets are passed) adds a spiritual dimension.
The sweets calendar begins in December with turrones and mazapanes, as well as polvorones (shortbread made of flour, sugar, milk, and nuts), peladillas (bite-sized dragées), and the solemn roscón de reyes (three kings cake in the shape of a wheel, containing a tiny surprise). Lent and Easter high teas are celebrated with torrijas (slices of bread soaked in milk or wine with honey, then dipped in egg and fried); pestiños (deep-fried pieces of dough glazed with honey and sesame seeds); buñuelos de viento (fried dumplings made with wheat flour, shortening, and eggs, with an array of fillings); and cocas or monas de Pascua (round cakes with a boiled egg in the middle), often consumed on Easter day along with longaniza de Pascua (cured sausage) and soaked in thick, hot chocolate a la española. Summer is marked by coca de San Juan and autumn by buñuelos and huesos de santo for All Saints Day and the Day of the Dead. See day of the dead. People in Spain never miss the tiniest occasion to celebrate with ecstatic immersions into the earthly paradise of sweets.
See also candied fruit; flan (pudím); middle east; and twelfth night cake.
The Spanish-American War (1898) revolved around the Spanish Caribbean colonies of Puerto Rico and Cuba, as well as around Guam and the Philippines. Economic and political conditions in Cuba triggered the war. At the encouragement of American owners of sugar plantations in Cuba, the U.S. Congress passed the McKinley Tariff Act (1890), which eliminated tariffs on imported refined sugar from Cuba, then a Spanish dependency. See legislation, historical; plantations, sugar; and sugar barons. The Cuban sugar industry was more efficient than its counterpart in the United States, and with an open market, Cuban sugar-plantation owners ramped up production, and exports to America soared. Under pressure from American sugar producers, Congress reversed direction in 1894 and passed the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act, which levied a 40 percent tariff on imported sugar from Cuba, making Cuban sugar more expensive than sugar produced in the United States.
Sugar exports from Cuba rapidly declined, as did the price of Cuban raw sugar, which had no other major market. Workers on Cuban sugar plantations were laid off, and many joined Cuban guerilla groups fighting for independence from Spain. Guerillas destroyed sugar refineries as well as cane fields. Spanish colonial authorities responded with harsh measures to put down the revolt. The resulting atrocities were covered by many newspapers in the United States; the inflammatory articles, called “yellow journalism,” eventually swayed American public opinion to support the guerillas.
In February 1898, two months after the U.S.S. Maine, an American battleship, blew up in Havana harbor (the cause was never determined), the United States declared war on Spain. Five months later the American military occupied Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. During the war the United States also annexed Hawaii, then controlled by American sugar interests.
After the war, sugar output in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines increased to some extent, but Cuban production skyrocketed thanks to low American tariffs and the advent of new milling methods, such as the use of water mills, enclosed furnaces, steam engines, and improved vacuum pans. See sugar refineries and sugar refining. American investments in Cuban sugar also soared. By 1919 Americans were estimated to control about 40 percent of the Cuban sugar industry. Cuban sugar production reached 3.5 million tons by 1925. When Fidel Castro took control of Cuba in 1959, the United States drastically reduced purchases of Cuban sugar. In retaliation, Castro nationalized Cuba’s sugar operations, many of which were owned by Americans. The United States responded by halting all imports of Cuban sugar in 1961.
speculaas are thin, crisp, light-brown spice cookies, usually with a raised design imprinted on the top. Speculaas are thought to have originated in the Netherlands several centuries ago, and their popularity soon spread to other regions near the Rhine River, including Belgium (speculoos), northern Germany (Spekulatius), and northeastern France (spéculos), where they are a traditional holiday treat for St. Nicholas Eve (5 December) and St. Nicholas Day (6 December).
The cookie dough is made of flour, butter, brown or white sugar, and sometimes milk or eggs, with seasonings such as cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, cardamom, coriander seed, white pepper, mace, anise, and grated lemon zest. The chilled, stiff dough is pressed into an elaborately carved wooden mold that shapes the outline of the cookie and imprints a raised design on the top. See cookie molds and stamps. Before the dough is baked, flaked almonds are often pressed onto the back of it. A rich variation is “filled speculaas,” with a layer of marzipan baked between two layers of the spicy dough. See marzipan.
Speculaas molds range in size from a few inches to three feet tall. Early molds were carved to produce cookies in the form of St. Nicholas. Other popular motifs are men and women in traditional folk costumes, animals, ships, farmhouses, and windmills. (In the United States, speculaas are often known as “windmill cookies.”) The origin of the cookie’s name is uncertain: perhaps from the Latin speculator (overseer or bishop), referring to the fourth-century bishop of Myra in Turkey, source of the St. Nicholas legend; or the Latin speculum (mirror) because the imprinted designs are the mirror image of the motifs in the carved molds; or simply the Latin species (spice).
A recent speculaas spin-off is Belgian speculoos cookie butter, a thick, sweet, caramel-and-gingerbread-flavored paste made from crushed speculoos cookies, sugar, and vegetable oils, which is used as a spread like peanut butter.
See also belgium; netherlands; and spices.
spices are easy to identify, but they are complicated to define. All are aromatic, nearly all are plant products, most have medicinal effects, they generally contribute strong flavors to food, and the great majority originate in the tropics. Many spices have been traded over great distances for many centuries—this is their truly salient property. People far from spices’ points of origin craved them and were prepared to pay dearly for them. They wanted spices for their health benefits at least as much as for their flavors and aromas.
Spices are used in all kinds of foods, and in quite different ways from one culture to another, but it is easy to forget how important they are in sweets. Sugar, long considered a spice, almost defines what is meant by “sweets.” Physicians once prescribed this sweet “spice” to their wealthy patients just as enthusiastically as they now forbid it. See medicinal uses of sugar.
The point of origin of sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum) is said to be central New Guinea, on the eastern edge of modern Indonesia, where it emerged in early farming as the result of hybridization of three or more preexisting species. See sugarcane. Several other spices originate not far away. Cloves (Syzygium aromaticum) came from the eastern Moluccas, particularly the little islands of Ternate and Tidore, whose rulers had grown rich on the spice trade before the arrival of the greedy Europeans in the late sixteenth century. Nutmeg and mace, the nut and husk of a single tree (Myristica fragrans), came from the Banda islands a few hundred miles to the south.
Black pepper (Piper nigrum), long pepper, cubebs, and other relatives—members of the Piperaceae family—originate in southern India and Indonesia. Pepper vines are not as difficult to propagate as nutmeg and clove trees, but they, too, demand a tropical climate. Although not common in sweets, black pepper occasionally shows up in spiced cookies, as the names of Venetian pevarini, Dutch pepernoten, and Swedish pepparkakor illustrate.
Cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum), the aromatic inner bark of a small tree related to bay (laurel), is at its best in Sri Lanka. It has relatives in Southeast Asia with thicker bark and coarser flavor, and the cheaper aromatic from these other species—sometimes called cassia (Cinnamomum cassia) but often not distinguished from true cinnamon—is widely used in confectionery.
Ginger (Zingiber officinale) and cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum), along with their less well-known relative galanga, belong to the Zingiberaceae family of flowering plants, native to India, southern China, and Southeast Asia, whose fruits, shoots, and rhizomes are the sources of many natural aromas. They, too, are tropical plants, but ginger is relatively easy to grow: it is propagated by dividing the rhizome, and it is this fleshy, root-like part that is valuable. Not only is it the essential ingredient in gingerbread and other spiced desserts, the rhizome itself is commonly candied. See candied fruit and gingerbread.
It means little now to say that a food product comes from the other side of the world. Chilled and frozen foods from distant continents reach us with astonishing speed, at negligible cost to us, and taste nearly as good as when fresh. Long before any other foods belonged to a global economy, spices were in demand far from their places of origin, but long-distance trade was then very different. It is true that the real producers, then as now, were rewarded with only a small proportion of the final sale price. There was, though, a good reason for the price differential. Whether they were on their way to China or to Europe, the spices of tropical Asia, once picked and brought to market, had a long and difficult journey ahead of them.
Trade Routes
The usual stages of this journey—the Spice Route—can be set out briefly. Indonesian spices came, in successive local steps, to one or another of the early ports neighboring the Straits of Malacca. From there, if going west, they crossed the Bay of Bengal, with the monsoon, to the neighborhood of Madras in southeastern India; the Indian peninsula itself, relatively narrow at this point, was then often crossed by land. The South Indian spices, if going east, followed the return route of the same ships.
From the Straits of Malacca, the China trade took spices northward by sea, skirting the coast of Indochina, to Canton, and from there either by land or by coastal shipping to the great cities of northern China. Meanwhile, from the neighborhood of Cochin in southwestern India, spices destined for Europe crossed the Indian Ocean, again with the monsoon, to Somalia or southern Yemen, where they were often trans-shipped for the northward journey along the Red Sea and then onward by land to Alexandria. The next leg was by sea across the Mediterranean to a European port such as Venice. A less-used route from India was to Basra, at the head of the Persian Gulf, then by barge up the Euphrates, by land to Antioch or Aleppo, and thence, again, across the Mediterranean.
This traditional route began to flourish when the use of the monsoon to facilitate direct crossings of the Indian Ocean in both directions was discovered. Rightly or wrongly, Greeks and Romans credited the second-century b.c. navigator Hippalos with this crucial discovery. Earlier than that, only the tiniest quantities of tropical Asian spices had reached China or Europe, and some were quite unknown.
The end of the Spice Route was foreshadowed by Vasco da Gama’s opening of the seaway from Europe around Africa to India. This discovery was quickly followed by European conquests in the East and by bitter competition to create and control spice monopolies, all of which eventually came to nothing as ingenious botanists and gardeners (including the well-named Pierre Poivre) learned to grow the desirable species elsewhere.
Other Spices
Apart from the tropical Asian spices, a half dozen others have been important for their use in sweets: one from central Asia, one from Africa, two from the Mediterranean, and two from the Americas.
Licorice root was chewed by the ancient Greeks, to whom it came from the steppes north and east of the Black Sea. That was where English explorers found it again in the sixteenth century while traversing Russia in search of the Silk Road. The origins of licorice are far from tropical, but it is one more of the spices that are of equal interest in China and Europe. See licorice.
Grains of paradise are the seeds of a cardamom-like plant (Aframomum melegueta) native to West Africa. They first came to medieval Europe by way of camel caravans across the Sahara, then more cheaply by sea in the sixteenth century as a side effect of the direct sailings to India. Although now almost forgotten, grains of paradise were a regular ingredient in the sweet, spiced medicinal wine hippocras (or hypocras). See hippocras.
Saffron, the most expensive of spices today, consists of the flower stigmas of the saffron crocus (Crocus sativus). After at least 3,300 years of cultivation, it is no longer known in the wild and its origin is uncertain, though southern Turkey is a strong possibility. The high cost of saffron results not from its rarity—it is now grown in many countries—but from the intense labor of harvesting the tiny stigmas.
Mastic comes even today from one geographical location. See mastic. The Greek island of Chios is the only place where the mastic tree (Pistacia lentiscus var. Chia) flourishes. The resin that is gathered by slashing the bark of this tree was a significant source of the wealth of Genoa in medieval times: mastic was among the spices that Columbus, a Genoese familiar with the trade, was most eager to find in the Indies.
Vanilla is the unripe, fermented pod of a vine (Vanilla fragrans) that grew in the forests of Mexico. It was used by the Maya and Aztecs, and by the Spanish after them, to flavor chocolate. More recently it has been cultivated in Madagascar, the Indian Ocean islands, and Indonesia. More recently still, synthetic vanillin has replaced it in many sweets, but nothing matches real vanilla. See vanilla.
From a little farther south, in Central America, came chocolate: From sugar to chocolate, we begin and end with everyday foods that were once prized as medicinal and traded as spices. See chocolate.
Uses of Spices
Specific uses of spices vary infinitely. Americans love the flavor of cinnamon in cakes; Scandinavians prefer cardamom. Romans flavored cakes and custards with pepper, where others might choose nutmeg. The English like ginger biscuits and ginger wine. The Chinese chewed cloves to freshen their breath, but medieval Europeans chewed mastic. Galanga was reputed to be an aphrodisiac, grains of paradise were believed to make alcoholic drinks seem stronger than they are, and both were frequently included in hippocras. South Asians not only include a wide variety of spices in savory cooking but also add them to sweets; cardamom is an especial favorite. Candied spices are consumed as well, both as a palate cleanser and as an ingredient in sweet paan recipes. See comfits.
Ancient and medieval peoples paid high prices for many centuries for exotic spice imports. Having acquired them, they reveled in them, dreamed of them, and were cured of all ills by them. The thirteenth-century French Roman de la Rose features a dream of a garden in which all the spices grow. It is at the same time a vision of Paradise, where every spice must surely have flourished, and a mirror of the banquet tables of premodern Europe, laden with cakes, sweets, and spiced wines, each individually healthy, invigorating, and irresistible.
spirituality, a heightened emotional state traditionally achieved by perceived unity with the divine through mortification of the flesh, including meditation under stress, finds its physical equivalent in the pleasure delivered by sweetness. Whatever the source—biblical manna from heaven, sweet dates eaten at sunset after the daylong fast of Ramadan, honey used to sweeten the Aztec emperor’s sacred cup—sweetness delivers an intense feeling of happiness, however brief. This experience, when shared, enters the collective memory on which all belief systems depend. The seemingly magical ability of sweetness to transform unpalatable foodstuffs—whether sour, bitter, or even poisonous—must surely have increased the feeling of mystery.
Moments of spiritual importance when sweets are eaten include rites of passage—funerals and days of the dead as well as weddings, harvests, and the advent of spring. See funerals and wedding. The association of sweetness with religious festivals is particularly evident in Mediterranean lands where Arab culinary influence was strong and the secrets of the pastry cooks of the seraglio passed to the convents. Nuns prepared delicious sweetmeats for sale on the great feast days of the church, providing them with erotic names such as “virgin’s breasts” and “nuns’ sighs.” See convent sweets. Even in the mid-twentieth century, as described by Maria Grammatico in Bitter Almonds (1994), the San Carlo orphanage in Erice, Sicily, prepared almond confections for important holy days: almond pastry hearts were baked for Christmas, cannoli for Carnival, paschal lambs at Easter, and ossi di morti (bones of the dead) for All Saints. See carnival; christmas; day of the dead; and easter. Marzipan fruits, beautifully molded and realistically painted, were once taken to the churchyard on All Souls Day, and the orphanage also prepared them to order at Christmas and Easter. They are now sold in every Sicilian pasticceria throughout the year. The transition of sacred to secular, facilitated by the arrival of cheap beet sugar, has simply increased the availability of these treats. Sweet confections—the focus of near-spiritual longing—remain more desirable than any other foodstuff.
Wedding rituals involving the sharing of sweets, such as cutting or breaking apart a rich cake or the distribution of sugared almonds or sweetened grains, have a practical purpose in guaranteeing the community’s support for a young couple about to embark on the dangerous business of bearing children. Even the strictest of nonconformist puritans permit the eating of sweets at a marriage feast. Edna Staebler, writing at the end of the last century, described the good things served at a Mennonite wedding celebrated in Ontario, Canada: “After the chiffon cakes had been consumed by two hundred guests … the bride passed around a tray with little packages of hard candies wrapped in cellophane … the groom followed her, carrying a tray full of chocolate bars distributed to all.” More casual tokens of friendship are the syrup-soaked fruit preserves offered to welcome guests in the Middle Eastern tradition, a gesture also implicit in the bowl of sweets at a restaurant till, and in the wrapped piece of chocolate placed on the pillow in a hotel bedroom.
If sweetness lies at the heart of our emotional response to one another at moments of celebration, it features equally strongly in our relationship with death. While not all belief systems look toward the life everlasting, faith in resurrection is expressed in Christian rituals through the sharing of sweetened porridges made with unmilled grains, among them frumenty, a whole-grain porridge once eaten in Britain on All Hallows Eve, the night when the dead revisit the living. See halloween. The Turkish food historian Mary Işın points out that sweetened wheat-berry dishes such as aşure and anus abur eaten in memory of the dead are always made with unmilled grains, since milling a seed, which holds within it the possibility of resurrection, destroys its spiritual significance. See wheat berries. Among similar preparations is koliva, a dish of whole-grain porridge decorated with almonds, raisins, and brightly colored sugar crystals distributed among mourners at Eastern Orthodox funerals in Greece and the Balkans, and also eaten on the eve of All Souls. In China at the midwinter festival of Dong Zhi, writes Deh-Ta Hsiung in The Festive Food of China (1991), “a lavish feast is laid out before the ancestral altar, empty chairs for the spirits are set at the head of the table,” and the main dish offered, traditionally made by the new bride in the family, is Eight-Treasure Rice, a variable dish of sweetened rice with red beans prettily layered with dried fruits and nuts finished with sugar syrup. In the Jewish tradition, an important element of the Seder plate set on the table at the thanksgiving feast of Passover, or Pesach—from which many of the rituals of the Christian Easter are derived—is haroset, a pounded paste of nuts and grains sweetened with honey. See passover.
Ancestral memory as expressed through spirituality shapes the rules by which we live, whatever the circumstances or belief systems to which we may or may not subscribe. Sweetness, even when delivered in the form of a chemical copy rather than from sources provided by nature, remains a powerful weapon in humanity’s spiritual armory.
See also buddhism; christianity; islam; judaism; manna; and wedding cake.
sponge cake, once a special cake using only eggs, sugar, and flour baked in an attractive mold or shaped as a biscuit, is now encountered in tiramisù, Twinkies, and store-bought strawberry shortcake shells. Beating air into eggs for long periods, particularly when the eggs are separated, causes the whites to form a mountain of foam, forcing the batter to rise when heated, which results in a lighter texture than the centuries-old yeast, pound, and fruit cakes. See fruitcake and pound cake. Recent sponge cakes may contain oil, butter, and even baking powder.
The earliest sponges were “biskets” or small cakes (cookies). The “Prince-bisket” recipe in Sir Hugh Plat’s Delightes for Ladies (1602), probably the first in an English cookbook, contained the same proportions as some later sponge biscuits and nineteenth-century ladyfingers. See plat, sir hugh and small cakes. The bisket had made its way to England from Italy via France, thus the names Naples Biscuits and Savoy Biscuits, or Savoyardi. In 1913 the French writer Marcel Proust memorialized the madeleine, a shell-shaped sponge biscuit made by the genoise method of stirring the ingredients over heat. See madeleine. Larger cakes, such as the Savoy, were baked in elaborate molds, buttered, and then sprinkled with sugar to form a sweet, crisp crust.
Angel food cake is an American sponge cake using only the beaten whites of eggs, sugar, flour, flavoring, cream of tartar, and, later, cornstarch; the last two ingredients affect the cake’s lightness and whiteness. Lacking butter, the angel food cake is not derived from Silver, Lady, or other white butter cakes, but rather the White Sponge Cake that first appeared in the 1839 Kentucky Housewife. Most likely the first angel food recipe in a cookbook was in Isabella Stewart’s The Home Messenger Book of Tested Receipts of 1878. This cake quickly became popular, with ten recipes appearing in My Favorite Receipt cookbook, from 1886. See angel food cake.
Early cookbook authors acknowledged that the sponge was the hardest type of cake to perfect. Thus, when the recipe for chiffon cake was made public in 1948, it called for a novel ingredient—vegetable oil—as well as for baking powder, which made it more reliable. A green chiffon cake in Southeast Asia, the pandan, is colored by using pandanus leaves. See chiffon cake and pandanus.
Jelly and cream rolls are made from malleable sponge cake to form the French bûche de Noël (Christmas Yule log), the British Swiss roll, and the Spanish brazo de gitano (Gypsy’s arm). Commercial American snack cakes like Yodels and Ho Hos are also based on sponge cake. For all of these rolled cakes, the batter is baked in a shallow, rectangular pan, removed, spread with jelly, jam, custard, or cream, then rolled while still warm.
The versatile sponge has also been used for layer cakes. It is spread with custard and a chocolate glaze for Boston cream pie and forms the dome of the Swedish marzipan-draped Prinsesstårta (princess cake); it creates the espresso-soaked almond layers for the elegant layered opera cake. Since the classic sponge cake contains no butter or cream, it is perfect for observant Jews who must not follow a dinner that includes meat with desserts containing dairy products. An unusual sponge, the Ma Lai Go, is steamed and often served as part of the Chinese dim sum spread.
Like any good absorbent sponge, the sponge cake makes an ideal base to soak up liquors and custard, with the added benefit of not getting soggy or disintegrating as butter cakes would. Sponge or Savoy cakes were used as the base for trifles, charlottes, and tipsy puddings—the Squire, the Parson, and Hedgehog—and now is encountered in the ubiquitous tiramisù. This Italian trifle of ladyfingers dipped in coffee with mascarpone has gained in popularity, as has the tres leches cake, which usually uses a sponge base for soaking up three types of milk. See tiramisù and tres leches cake. Thus the sponge cake survives, having taken on new forms through the centuries.
See also boston cream pie; bûche de noël; charlotte; trifle; and twinkie.
spoon sweet is a soft, toffee-like confection made of boiled sugar syrup, which is then stirred until it becomes opaque. A variety of flavorings can be added, such as fruit juice, mastic, or nuts. See mastic. Spoon sweet originated as an Islamic medicinal preparation called lâ’ûk, made palatable with sugar or honey; it subsequently evolved in fifteenth-century Turkey into a sweetmeat called lohuk or çevirme. The term çevirme, which means “turning,” refers to the long process of stirring in one direction that causes the sugar to form tiny crystals and yields a smooth, viscous texture.
In the seventeenth century this sweetmeat was incorporated into Ottoman hospitality rituals as a refreshment offered to guests before coffee. Each guest took a spoonful of the sweet paste, hence the Greek name glykokoutaliou (spoon sweet). Wealthy families used special sets of spoons for this ceremony. Although this custom has virtually died out in Turkey, it is still widespread in Greece. Lord Charlemont was offered spoon sweet when received by Ottoman minister of the Interior Nailî Efendi in Istanbul in June 1749: “He called for coffee, and his servants presented me with a silver vessel, filled with a sort of perfumed marmalade with a large gold or gilt spoon…. I put into my mouth a spoonful, which served instead of sugar to the coffee, which was then brought in.”
Traditional flavors included fruits, nuts, spices, and flowers such as violets, roses, and jasmine. In Istanbul today, only mastic and bergamot are available, whereas in Greece spoon sweet is still produced in a wide range of flavors.
Apart from the long stirring, spoon sweet is identical to fondant, which almost certainly originated from it, since fondant made a sudden appearance in France in the 1860s, not long after the Bavarian royal confectioner Friedrich Unger published numerous lohuk-scherbet (spoon sweet) recipes in his book on oriental confectionery. See fondant.
See also flower waters; greece; and turkey.
sports nicknames with sweet references may seem surprising, given the brutal image of sports like boxing and football. But in fact boxing was termed “the Sweet Science of Bruising” as early as 1813, in English journalist Pierce Egan’s volumes of Boxiana.
The most famous athlete with a sweet name is Sugar Ray Robinson (1921–1989), a boxer whose actual name was Walker Smith Jr. As a fledgling fighter in the late 1930s, Smith borrowed the Amateur Athletic Union card of an older friend named Ray Robinson. Watching the agile fourteen-year-old, George Sainford, later Robinson’s manager, called him “Sugar Ray” for his ease and élan, a style as “sweet as sugar.” Smith never used his real name again. Although boxing is a violent sport, Sugar Ray’s fans never associated him with the sport’s brutality, perhaps because of his nickname.
Other boxers adopted the sobriquet “Sugar” to convey the sweetness of their styles and similarity to Sugar Ray Robinson. Probably no one came closer to that identification than Ray Charles Leonard (b. 1956). In the 1972 U.S. Olympic Trials, a coach watching Leonard’s smooth approach muttered, “That kid you got is sweeter than sugar.” From then on, throughout his championship years in five different divisions, Leonard was known as “Sugar Ray” Leonard, both in homage to the first, most famous, Sugar Ray and in praise of his artful, dance-like style.
Among the tender sobriquets in other sports, the best was assigned to the Chicago Bears’ Walter Payton (1954–1999), one of football’s greatest running backs, who carried the affectionate nickname “Sweetness.” At 5 feet 10 inches and 200 pounds, Payton was small for professional football, but he compensated with speed and grace, characteristics that sports fans associate with the quality of sweet.
Boxing great Sugar Ray Robinson at the height of his fame. His toughest rival, Jake LaMotta, once quipped, “I fought Sugar Ray so often, I almost got diabetes.”
Baseball players speak of the “sweet spot,” the part of the bat most likely to produce a hit, and few hitters enjoyed a sweeter spot than George Herman Ruth Jr. (1985–1948), known as “Babe,” whose association with sweetness extends beyond the bat to a candy bar. The “Baby Ruth” bar, produced by the Curtiss Candy Company, was a triumph of advertising and good luck, as its sales soared along with Babe Ruth’s career. From the first, Otto Schnering, the candy visionary who named and marketed the Baby Ruth in 1920, maintained that the bar was named for President Grover Cleveland’s daughter, Ruth, born in the White House in 1891. Baseball fans remained skeptical, as did lawyers working for Babe Ruth, but Schnering was adamant in all of his court depositions, not wanting to share profits with the baseball great. He didn’t have to worry about Ruth Cleveland, who had died of diphtheria in 1904.
See also candy bar and sugar bowl.
springerle are white- or ivory-colored cookies made from flour, sugar, and eggs, leavened with hartshorn salt (ammonium carbonate) or baking powder, and flavored with anise seeds and sometimes grated lemon zest. The dough is rolled out flat and firmly pressed with a special springerle rolling pin or cookie mold to imprint one or more designs on top. See cookie molds and stamps. After the mold is removed, the dough is cut into shapes—squares, rectangles, circles, hearts, stars, human or animal figures—that frame the embossed designs. The dough cutouts are transferred to a baking sheet sprinkled with anise seeds and left to dry overnight before baking. After they have cooled, the hard, dry cookies are kept in a tightly closed container for three to four weeks to soften a bit and allow their flavor to develop.
The history of springerle dates back at least 500 years, to the southern German region of Swabia, where these cookies probably originated. From Swabia their popularity spread to Bavaria, Bohemia, Switzerland, Austria, and Alsace. These pretty “picture cookies” belong to a larger family of northern European shaped-and-stamped cookies made from a variety of doughs, including gingerbread, shortbread, and almond-paste cookies.
The word springerle translates literally as “little springer” or “little jumper,” but its exact origin is unknown. It might refer to the popular motif of a jumping horse carved on cookie molds in the Renaissance era, or just to the rising, or springing up, of the dough as it bakes, to form a pale golden base on the underside of the cookie, a result of the dough having dried overnight.
Many springerle molds are small works of folk art. Although the molds have been made from stone, ceramics, metals, plaster, wax, and even leather, they are most commonly carved from wood, especially fruit woods. The earliest surviving wooden molds are intricately carved flat boards dating from the sixteenth century. Later, rolling pins were also carved with designs for imprinting springerle cookies.
The motifs on historical springerle molds range from religious figures and scenes to secular designs such as knights on horses, ladies in fancy dresses, and fairy-tale characters; and from domestic animals such as horses, sheep, cats, and dogs to mythical figures like mermaids and unicorns. Modern springerle molds often have simpler depictions of birds, flowers, fruits, and holiday motifs, some of them hand carved, others machine made. Reproductions of historical molds are sometimes made from a composite of powdered wood and resin, stained to look like wood.
Although historical molds show that springerle were baked for religious holidays and secular occasions throughout the year, today these cookies are most often associated with the Christmas season. Usually eaten in the afternoon with coffee or tea, springerle can also be accompanied by a glass of chilled white wine. Sometimes the white cookies are also painted with food coloring or other paints, for use as holiday decorations. An old custom was to hang springerle cookies, painted or unpainted, as ornaments on Christmas trees. When the trees were finally taken down after Epiphany, the children were allowed to eat the cookies.
See also germany; gingerbread; and shortbread.
sprinkles, to state the obvious before getting into the curious, suggests the act of scattering or dispersing, and yet when used in confectionery parlance the term is actually quite broad. Decorative sprinkles can refer to sanding sugar, slightly coarser than table sugar, whose clear, multicolored crystals lend sparkle to cookies or pastries. It might also reference French decoratifs called nonpareils (“without equal”), tiny balls made of sugar and starch that provide flourish to elaborate desserts, or dragées, the inedible spheres of sugar with metallic outer shells used primarily for the formal adornment of wedding cakes. But, most commonly, sprinkles are the cylindrical bits of candy toppings that add color and texture to a range of sweets, generally requiring frosting, ice cream, or other surfaces onto which to adhere. See ice cream and icing.
Historical mentions of sprinkles date to the early 1920s, and in 1927 the Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company of Kansas City introduced a product called “chocolate sprinkle cookies” under its Sunshine brand. However, the ascendance of sprinkles in the dessert kitchen is most notably credited to the efforts of a Russian immigrant by the name of Samuel Born.
In 1916, only six years after arriving in America, Born invented a machine to mechanically insert sticks into lollipops. In 1923 he established the Just Born Candy Company in New York City, its logo featuring a baby resting in a candy measuring scale. See lollipops. After moving operations to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1932, he began producing rod-shaped bits of candy, first offered as “chocolate grains” and later trademarked as “jimmies,” the name inspired, according to company history, by Jimmy Bartholomew, a Just Born candy maker.
Over the years, Americans have named the treats toppettes, trimettes, shots, fancies, hundreds-and-thousands, and mice. While jimmies has remained the term of choice in New England, throughout most of the country they are simply called sprinkles.
Multicolored rainbow sprinkles are made of sugar, cornstarch, vegetable oil, and food coloring; chocolate sprinkles contain chocolate, cocoa, and sugar. Ingredients are combined into a doughy paste and forced through an extruder in much the same way pasta is made. The “noodles” are cut to the right size and shape, then dried and tumbled to make them uniform in appearance. Finally, a confectioner’s glaze is applied, creating those tiny cylinders of garnishing magic.
It was at his family’s chocolate factory in the Netherlands in 1936 that Gerard de Vries developed a machine to produce the Dutch version of sprinkles. They were named hagelslag (the Dutch word for hail) after their resemblance to the pellets of a hailstorm. Fruit-flavored vruchtenhagel and anise-flavored anijshagel followed the success of chocolade hagelslag onto the Dutch breakfast table, where sprinkling over lightly buttered bread has become a national ritual.
See sugar sculpture.
Sri Ramakrishna was a nineteenth-century spiritual leader whose influence on the sociocultural life of Bengal extends to the respect he enjoyed among Kolkata’s confectioners and literati. See kolkata. Ramakrishna came to prominence after taking over as head priest of the Dakshineshwar Temple dedicated to the goddess Kali following the death of his brother Ramakumar, the temple’s first head priest. Like Sri Chaitanya, another religious figure whose arrival marked the advent and spread of Vaishnavism in sixteenth-century Bengal, Ramakrishna and his teachings influenced the daily life of Bengal. Followers and nonfollowers alike embraced both of these spiritual figures by naming stores after them and hanging their portraits in sweetshops.
In addition, their biographies provide a valuable source of information for food historians, because they describe two distinct traditions of sweet making in Bengal that indicate the shift from sweets based on kheer (thickened milk) to chhana (fresh curd cheese). In Sri Sri Ramkrishna Kathamrita, Mahendranath Gupta writes of Ramakrishna’s fondness for sandesh and jalebi, which he shared with his disciples. See sandesh. Rani Rashmoni, the founder of the temple, bought tons of sandesh from Bhimchandra Nag, a famous Kolkata sweetshop, for the temple’s inauguration. Ramakrishna was known to be partial to this sweet.
Unlike kheer-based products, which predominate in Chaitanya’s biography, chhana-based products appear throughout Sri Ramakrishna’s biography, often in reference to rituals. Chhana is prepared from milk that is considered to be ritually pure; however, in A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food, K. T. Achaya mentions a taboo against using curdled milk for ritual use. Nevertheless, chhana-based sweets became common in ritual offerings, as Ramakrishna’s autobiography makes clear.
According to confectioners in Kamarpukur, Ramakrishna’s birthplace, he was particularly fond of sada bonde (white bonde), a confectionery made of tiny granules prepared by grinding a special pulse called barbati kalai into flour. Today, this sweet is available in a few shops in Kamarpukur and Jairambati, the birthplace of Sri Ma Saradamani, Sri Ramakrishna’s wife.
See also hinduism; india; laddu; mithai; and rosogolla.
stages of sugar syrup describe the transformations that sugar and water undergo when heated together. From thin syrup the mixture thickens, bubbles, becomes malleable, and then cracks when dropped into cold water before it finally caramelizes and turns brown. The unique physical properties of each stage lend themselves to particular candying techniques. The rather thin thread stage, for example, is used for candying fruit and making jellies, while the hard ball stage is employed for various soft candies.
Modern home confectioners rely heavily upon candy thermometers to help them determine when the syrup reaches the increasingly cooked stages of thread, soft ball, hard (or firm) ball, soft (or small) crack, hard crack, and caramel. However, factors such as altitude, humidity, and sugar purity also affect the rate at which these phenomena occur, and thus the temperatures at which they are achieved. Professional kitchens since at least the 1820s have therefore utilized refractometers to measure degrees Brix (°Bx), which is the percentage of sucrose in an aqueous solution. See brix.
Before the technologies of the thermometer or Brix meter came into widespread use, many confectioners had gradually codified the basic stages of boiled sugar through direct observation. Eighteenth-century confectioners, especially those working in France, inherited, elucidated, and published details of various terms. Joseph Gilliers’s Le cannameliste français (1751) disseminated a list that includes all of the major stages currently in use. It also included the blow stage, which appears only rarely on contemporary charts, and the feather stage, which dropped entirely out of use after the generation of Antonin Carême (1784–1833). See carême, marie-antoine and gilliers, joseph.
Gilliers felt it necessary to warn confectioners to have a bowl of chilled water handy before sticking a finger into the boiling mixture to test it. This is still good advice, and reflects the fact that, in spite of antecedents, Gilliers did not assume that his readers had previous knowledge of sugar boiling techniques. That subsequent authors gradually cribbed his directives into shorthand bears witness to the degree to which they had become codified and accepted as a fundamental building block of Western confectionery, as evolved from French techniques. The simplification in the number of stages began in the early nineteenth century and continued under Auguste Escoffier (1846–1935) and later authors, attesting to the overall modification of French culinary techniques that resulted from a reduction in staff due to increasingly high labor costs. See escoffier, georges auguste. Instructions also shortened over time because of the increased reliance on scientific instruments, which reduced the role of the old-fashioned directives to a back-up position. By contrast, Gilliers’s inclusion of phenomena that later chefs glossed over speaks to the meticulous precision with which the office of a grand French kitchen operated prior to the 1789 Revolution.
Elisions to Gilliers’s system have occurred with a degree of overlap, especially with the finer, lower-temperature stages, which are rarely used in contemporary recipes. For example, the thin syrup that the French now call nappé (coated) can, confusingly, also appear as lissé (smooth), although historically that was the French name given to the thread stage, which later came to be known as filé.
Even in the heyday of the ancien régime, authors introduced idiosyncratic stages to describe their personal observations in terms that they felt their readers would comprehend. The eighteenth-century author Menon, who in 1746 published La Cuisinière bourgeoise, included a queue-de-cochon (pig’s tail) stage, which takes its name from the fact that at that stage of cooking, a drizzle of the syrup from a skimmer resembles its eponym. Some contemporary French sources also include a morvé (mucus-like) stage to lump together many of the subtler stages described by Gilliers that occur between the thread and soft ball stages. Nevertheless, despite overlaps and inconsistencies of nomenclature, the observable phenomena that occur when sugar boils remain unchanged since Gilliers’s day.
More significantly, the deep caramel color and flavor now so greatly admired was considered “burnt” by Gilliers’s generation and simply thrown away. It was only in Carême’s era that this state became appreciated in its own right, and it later became, especially for Anglophones, the preferred one.
On the other hand, new research demonstrates that it is possible to caramelize sugar without boiling it at all. In 2012 Shelley Schmidt and colleagues at the University of Illinois showed that sucrose breaks down and transforms in hitherto misunderstood ways. As opposed to water, for example, which has a defined melting point of 32°F (0°C), sugar in water, if heated over time, transforms into caramel due to two overlapping phenomena. There is a range of temperatures at which sucrose molecules get jittery and break loose. However, they attach themselves to their neighbors at a separate range, which turns out to start much sooner than previously thought. Early experiments with this discovery have led the food-science writer Harold McGee to produce caramel-center crystals and roasted sugar, among other inventions.
Boiling sugar, however, remains the norm. Whether measured using eighteenth-century techniques, home thermometers, or professional refractometers, the stages of cooked sugar continue to underpin candy making today.
See also confectionery equipment; measurement; and saccharimeter.
starch is a digestible carbohydrate made by chaining together hundreds or thousands of glucose molecules. Plants produce starches from carbon dioxide and water through photosynthesis. The linkages between glucose units are readily broken, enabling plants, as well as organisms that consume plant material, to rapidly reclaim the individual simple sugar units to use as an energy source. In the kitchen, starches are used to thicken sweet and savory sauces, and to help puddings and fillings set.
Starch molecules can be classified by their three-dimensional molecular structure. Amylopectins are highly branched and fold into sheet-like structures, while amyloses are smaller, helically shaped molecules with minimal branching. Roughly three-quarters of the starches in plants are amylopectins. The spiral units of amyloses pack tightly together, making them substantially less soluble than amylopectins. Starch molecules pack into larger granules, ranging in size from 1 micron to over 0.1 millimeters in diameter.
Culinary starches are derived from a wide variety of plants, including wheat, tapioca, corn, and arrowroot. Starch is the major component of flour, by mass making up 85 percent of corn flour and 70 percent of wheat flour. Pure starches are most often used as a thickening agent. Each plant starch has slightly different properties, depending on the size of the starch granules and the relative proportions of amylopectins and amyloses. Arrowroot cannot be used with dairy products, for example, and cornstarch-based sauces will refuse to thicken if they are too acidic. The texture of confections made with cornstarch will suffer upon freezing, while tapioca-thickened mixtures are cold tolerant.
Arrowroot effectively thickens citrus glazes, and the starch in wheat flour thickens the base of sweet and savory soufflés. Under certain conditions, starch mixtures will form a gel. The filling in Boston cream pie is a cornstarch-based gel, while tapioca is often added to fruit-pie fillings, where it combines with the juice exuded by the fruit to produce a clear gel that sets as the pie cools. See boston cream pie and pie. When starches are heated in the presence of water, the water insinuates itself into the granules, breaking up their ordered structure and causing them to swell to many times their original size. As they swell, some of the smaller amylose molecules move out of the granules entirely and into the surrounding solution. These amylose molecules, along with the granules and fragments of the granules, gradually become dispersed throughout the water, thickening it in much the same way that water trapped in a web of protein molecules becomes gelatin. The resulting dispersion can gelatinize if the concentration of material becomes high enough. Acid-modified starches are more likely to form gels, and are thus used to make the popular gummy candies and Turkish delight. See gummies and lokum.
The ability of starches to temporarily trap water helps to keep baked goods moist. As baked goods age, the starches expel the water and return to a more ordered structure, resulting in a drier, tougher texture.
Since proteins coagulate above about 180°F (82°C), well below the boiling point of water, starches can be added to interfere with protein coagulation, reducing the formation of undesirable clumps of coagulated protein—particularly in egg-based sauces and custards—and increasing the temperature at which coagulation will occur. Addition of too much starch, however, can trap too much water and result in custard with a rubbery, gel-like consistency.
The enzyme alpha-amylase quickly breaks down starches into glucose. See glucose. Human saliva contains alpha-amylase, as do egg yolks. While the presence of this enzyme in cake batters is of no consequence, since prolonged heating above 180°F will destroy the enzyme, care must be taken to see that sauces or custards that contain egg yolk are heated long enough to completely inactivate the amylase. Introducing saliva into a custard or sauce (for example, by eating half of a dessert and reserving the rest until the next day) can also lead to the degradation of the starches. The water trapped by the starches is released and the dessert may separate unappetizingly.
Dispersions of amylose in solution tend to clump when cooled close to or below the freezing point of water, resulting in custards that weep or sauces that separate when frozen. Starches that have a higher proportion of amylopectin, such as rice starch, are less likely to undergo this retrogradation process.
Cornstarch is the feedstock for production of the sweetener high-fructose corn syrup. See corn syrup and fructose. The cornstarch is broken down into individual glucose units using the enzymes alpha-amylase and glucoamylase. Another enzyme, xylose isomerase, then converts some of the glucose molecules into fructose (which has the same molecular formula, but a different arrangement of atoms).
state desserts are part of the official symbolism decreed by state legislatures to represent the various traditions and natural resources of the 50 U.S. states. These symbols range from official state poems and state toys to state firearms and state dinosaurs. Nearly half of America’s states have some sort of official state dessert, treat, or sweet snack, reflecting the country’s well-known sweet tooth.
Pie, that classic American dessert, is by far the most common official state sweet. See pie. Delaware, a leading producer of peaches in the nineteenth century, represents itself with a warm, perfumed wedge of peach pie, while Florida’s pick is Key lime pie, a creamy, sweet-tart mix of condensed milk and eggs flavored with the tiny, yellow-skinned Key limes indigenous to the islands off the South Florida coast. Citizens of Indiana adore sugar cream pie, in particular the “Hoosier pie” (“Hoosier” is a nickname for an Indianan), a custard pie combining sugar, butter, and cream that originated with the state’s Amish and Quaker communities. See cream pie. In summer the fields of Maine are overgrown with wild blueberries, which are smaller and tarter than their domesticated cousins, and they become the key ingredient in wild blueberry pie, Maine’s official state pie. Oklahoma and Texas go nuts for pecan pie, made from the fruit of a species of hickory tree native to both states. Traditional pecan pie combines pecans and corn syrup (either light or dark). See corn syrup. Texas also has an official cobbler—peach cobbler—to honor the state’s love of sweet, juicy peaches. More rustic than pie, cobbler consists of fruit baked in a pan with a biscuit or batter topping. See fruit desserts, baked. It is a popular dessert throughout the American South. The chilly New England state of Vermont is famous for its apples, making apple pie appropriate as its state symbol, even though the pie is beloved throughout the United States. See united states.
Far fewer cakes than pies appear on the list of official desserts. Despite its name, Massachusetts’s state dessert of Boston cream pie is actually a cake comprising sponge layers filled with vanilla custard and topped with a chocolate glaze. See boston cream pie. The Boston cream doughnut, essentially a miniature version of the pie, is the state doughnut. Even though it is also called a pie, Maine’s state treat, the whoopie pie, is actually a cake-cookie hybrid consisting of two individual-sized cake rounds filled with marshmallow cream. See whoopie pie. One actual cake on the list is Maryland’s Smith Island Cake, a specialty of Smith Island, a fishing community in the Chesapeake Bay accessible only by boat. This tall cake alternates at least eight thin layers of yellow cake with chocolate frosting.
After pies, pastries are the second-largest category of official state desserts. Louisiana’s state doughnut is the beignet, a nod to the state’s Creole heritage. Beignets are fritters of hot fried dough, usually served with powdered sugar. They were introduced by French immigrants who settled in the region in the 1700s and are a popular item at coffee shops in New Orleans’s French Quarter. See fried dough. South Dakota’s state dessert is kuchen, a traditional German cake of sweet, yeasted dough filled or topped with custard or fruit—no surprise for a state where nearly half of the residents claim German heritage. See kuchen. Proving that everything really is bigger in Texas, the Lone Star State has two official pastries in addition to their official pecan pie and peach cobbler—sopaipillas and strudel. Sopaipillas are fried dough topped with powdered sugar or honey, while strudel is a flaky layered pastry typically filled with fruit. See strudel. These pastries honor both the Hispanic and the German heritage of the Lone Star State. Wisconsin, with its rich Danish heritage, has the kringle, a classic Scandinavian flaky pastry ring.
Two states have given cookies the official stamp of approval. Massachusetts honors the chocolate chip cookie, the classic American drop-style cookie, which was invented in 1930 by Ruth Wakefield, owner of the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts, when she ran out of baker’s chocolate and used a chopped-up semisweet chocolate bar instead. New Mexico reflects its Spanish and Hispanic heritage with the bizcochito, a crisp rolled cookie made with lard or butter and flavored with anise, traditionally served around Christmas.
Missouri bucks the pie-pastry question with its state dessert, the ice cream cone. Though the original inventor of the ice cream cone is unknown, the cone was popularized at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, where vendors rolled waffle cookies into cones to serve the hungry crowds. See ice cream cones.
Utah’s state snack is Jell-O. See gelatin desserts. This jiggly, sweet gelatin dessert is wildly popular in the state, and residents of Salt Lake City are said to eat more Jell-O than the inhabitants of any other city. Jell-O’s popularity might be attributable to Utah’s high percentage of children—due to the traditional Mormon preference for large families, Utah has more children per family than any other state.
See also midwest (u.s.); new england (u.s.); pacific northwest (u.s.); south (u.s.); southwest (u.s.); and west (u.s.).
stevia refers to a large genus of American plants. The name honors Petrus Jacobus Stevus (in Spanish, Pedro Jaime Esteve), a sixteenth-century professor of anatomy and medical botany at the University of Valencia. The word “stevia” was introduced in 1797 by Antonio José Cavanilles, a taxonomic botanist from Valencia who was one of the first Spanish scientists to use the Linnaean classification system.
Stevia rebaudiana is a species native to Paraguay, where it is known locally as ka’a he’hê and used for sweetening and medicinal purposes. Moisés Santiago Bertoni, a Swiss botanist of Italian descent who worked in Paraguay, learned about this plant from a local guide in 1887. He obtained leaves in 1899, and an actual plant soon thereafter, and named it in honor of Ovidio Rebaudi, a Paraguayan chemist who published the first analysis of its sweet constituent. Paraguayan farmers began growing Stevia rebaudiana around 1902. Cultivation later moved to the Far East, with China becoming the largest producer.
Cecil Gosling, the British Consul at Asunción, sent samples of Stevia rebaudiana to the British Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in 1901. The United States Department of Agriculture got some leaves and seeds in 1919. European scientists isolated the glycosides that give the plant its sweet taste in 1931, and in 1971 Morita Kagaku Kogyo Co., Ltd., in Japan, began producing a sweetener based on this purified substance. Truvia, a stevia-based sweetener developed by Cargill and the Coca-Cola Company, came on the market in 2008. PureVia is a similar product developed by PepsiCo and the Whole Earth Sweetener Company.
Stevia rebaudiana is substantially sweeter than sucrose and is a suitable sweetener for people who are diabetic or obese. However, since some of the compounds in the plant may be toxic, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration allows the commercial distribution of products containing purified stevia extracts, but not stevia leaves and stevia extracts. The European Food Safety Authority has given approval to stevia but suggests that daily intake be limited.
See also artificial sweeteners.
sticky rice sweets, which have as their main ingredient white, black, or purple varietals of glutinous or sweet rice, comprise hundreds of Asian desserts and sweet snacks. Low in amylose starch, opaque and waxy when uncooked and moist, glossy and tacky when steamed, sticky rice yields two basic types of sweets: those that incorporate the whole grain, and those based on a smooth or nearly smooth dough made with either sticky rice flour or steamed sticky rice that has been pounded, mashed, or otherwise transformed into a paste. Across Asia, sticky rice sweets of all kinds are often made or purchased to celebrate holidays like New Year’s, to recognize special occasions such as weddings, and to serve as offerings on religiously significant days.
“Whole-grain” sticky rice sweets range from simple combinations of rice with various accompaniments and toppings, to those formed into cakes or dumplings of varying degrees of intricacy. Of the former, khao niaow mamuang, sweetened sticky rice with lightly salted coconut cream and fresh mango (Thailand and Laos), is probably the most well known, but the Vietnamese eat a similar sweet for breakfast called xoi, sticky rice that may be topped with (among other ingredients both sweet and savory) crushed peanuts, sugar mixed with salt, and grated fresh coconut. Sweet rice cakes are found from China (ba bao fan, or Eight Treasure Rice, is a cake steamed with lard and sugar and studded with dried fruits and nuts) to Indonesia (wajik, variously shaped and tinted cakes boiled with palm sugar), India, and Japan. Malaysia is especially rich in sticky rice kuih (Malay for “cake”); among the most beautiful are pulut tai tai, slabs of sticky rice tinted blue with dried butterfly-pea flowers (Clitoria ternatea) and smeared with coconut milk and egg jam; and seri muka, diamond-shaped cakes of rice cooked in coconut milk, topped with a layer of coconut milk rice flour custard tinted green from pandan leaf extract.
Lao khao lam—black or white sticky rice cooked with coconut milk, sugar, and salt, and sometimes mixed with dried legumes, sweet potato and yam, or sesame seeds—is stuffed into a bamboo tube and cooked over an open fire. Thais and Cambodians make a similar snack. More often sticky rice, cooked with coconut milk and sugar and formed into logs, squares, and other shapes, is steamed in banana, lotus, and other leaves. Filipino suman are a large subset of steamed sticky rice dumplings, both sweetened and plain but eaten with sweet accompaniments. In northern Thailand, banana-leaf-wrapped sticky rice logs enclose a variety of banana that turns pink when cooked and tastes like strawberries; in Malaysia, banana-leaf-wrapped triangles of sweetened coconut sticky rice are crowned with a point of grated coconut cooked with pandan leaf and palm sugar. See palm sugar and pandanus. The Malaysian Nyonya specialty rempah udang, banana-wrapped and steamed sticky rice logs filled with coconut and palm sugar, get a savory kick from dried prawns and a bit of ground chili.
Of all dough-based sticky rice sweets, Japan’s mochi—pounded sticky rice cakes traditionally filled with azuki bean paste (but these days hiding everything from green-tea-flavored pastry cream to ice cream)—are probably the most widely known around the world. See mochi. Mochi’s Chinese equivalent is zi ba, plain or filled sticky rice confections that may or may not be rolled in sweetened soybean or peanut powder. Migu are Taiwan’s version of zi ba, filled with sweet bean paste and colored red for religious offerings. The Nyonya of Malaysia and Singapore make a similar sticky rice sweet filled with mung bean paste called angkoo. Asia’s spherical sticky rice dumplings include China’s tang yuan, filled with ground sesame or peanuts and floating in warm, sometimes ginger-flavored sugar syrup; and Malaysian onde-onde, which are colored green with pandan juice, coated with grated coconut, and filled with semiliquid palm sugar.
See also china; india; japan; philippines; southeast asia; and thailand.
sticky toffee pudding is a light, baked sponge studded with chopped dates and topped with a butterscotch sauce. See dates and butterscotch. It was made popular in Britain after it became a standby on the menu of the Sharrow Bay Country House hotel in Ullswater, Cumbria, in the early 1970s. Coincidentally, there was a rising affection for traditional puddings and desserts among the British dining classes, which was stimulated and encouraged by restaurant kitchens (which were more prepared to do the work than were private cooks). The two most significant examples of this tendency were sticky toffee pudding and Banoffee pie (a tart of caramelized condensed milk with sliced banana and an instant-coffee-cream topping) created by the Hungry Monk restaurant in Jevington, Sussex. Neither was traditional; both were excessively sweet.
While there is little doubt that Sharrow Bay’s adoption of the dish contributed greatly to its popularity in Britain (the hotel was among the most celebrated of that era), whether the chef and co-proprietor Francis Coulson (1919–1998) actually invented the recipe (as was claimed) is more debatable. Many have asserted otherwise. The most credible of these alternatives was admitted by Francis Coulson himself to the British chef and food writer Simon Hopkinson. Coulson had, in fact, taken the recipe from Mrs. Martin, a cook at the Old Rectory restaurant in Claughton, Lancashire (and it was first published by her in the Good Food Guide Dinner Party Book of 1971). She, in turn, had picked the recipe up from a friend in Canada (which may explain the muffin-like composition of the sponge batter).
See also dulce de leche; pudding; and united kingdom.
Stohrer, Nicolas (1706–ca. 1781), was born to a modest family in Wissembourg, Alsace. He became an apprentice in the kitchen of King Stanisław of Poland, who had been exiled in Wissembourg, sometime around 1720. Stohrer then followed Stanisław’s daughter Marie Leszcyńska to Versailles as her pâtissier in 1725, when she married King Louis XV. In 1730 he opened Pâtisserie Stohrer, now Paris’s oldest pastry shop, at 51 Rue Montorgueil (then called Rue du Mont Orgueilleux).
The shop has long been associated with the classic French baba, a sweet, yeasty cake similar to a Gugelhupf, with a colorful mythology linking it to King Stanisław and Stohrer. See baba au rhum and gugelhupf. Stohrer may have played some part in introducing the cake, common for centuries in the German-speaking world, to the French court of Louis XV. The baba is depicted in a wall mural of a sylphlike woman holding pastries, painted for the shop in 1864 by Paul Baudry.
Tourists still flock to Rue Montorgueil to sample the shop’s various babas: one rum-soaked, another filled with pastry cream, a third with whipped cream. A saffron-tinted version is available by special order. Stohrer is also renowned for its old-fashioned puits d’amour (wells of love), tarts filled with caramelized vanilla cream that are popular for Valentine’s Day; macarons; and religieuse, a confection of éclairs and cream that is meant to resemble a nun’s habit.
See also macarons and valentine’s day.
stollen is Germany’s most traditional Christmas cake. Its history encompasses the entire debate about the religious dietary rules, sins, and indulgences of medieval times. Looking at today’s recipe heavy with butter, almonds, and dried fruit, it is hard to believe that stollen originated as a cake for the Advent period of fasting before Christmas. The cake’s shape is meant to symbolize the infant Jesus wrapped in swaddling.
The first recorded mention of stollen dates back to 1329 in the city of Naumburg an der Saale, near Leipzig. Back then, strict Catholic regulations allowed the loaf to be made only from water, oats, and the local rapeseed oil. However, from the mid-fifteenth century on, dispensation from fasting laws in general became more common, since people were less and less inclined, for reasons of costs or taste, to replace butter or lard with local or imported oil. In the second edition of his Traité des jeûnes de l’église (1693), Père Louis Thomassin wrote that in 1475 Pope Sixtus IV authorized the use of butter in Germany, Hungary, and Bohemia during Advent for the next five years. However, most sources cite a dispensing Butterbrief or “butter letter” sent by Pope Innocent VIII to the duke of Saxony in 1491. This allowance was not exceptional but part of the regular sale of indulgences, which were often linked to the financing of building projects, including the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Some historians believe that the papal letter simply gave official approval to a practice that was widespread anyway. Whatever the case, stollen developed into the now familiar treat rich with fruit and almonds and, in some modern industrial versions, overloaded with marzipan.
Although a regional variation, Bremer Klaben, is popular in northern Germany, the most famous recipe is undoubtedly the yeasted stollen from Dresden in Saxony, which was given a European Union Protected Geographical Indication designation in 1996. It is traditionally made several weeks before Christmas to give it time to mature.
See also breads, sweet and germany.
street food, ancient. Street food dominated the daily lives of the lower- and middle-income groups in ancient urban societies, such as those of Athens and Rome. Because the lower classes may have had no more than a sleeping space and certainly no kitchen, many of their daily food needs were met on the street, in the form of both sweet and savory pastries and other dough products. Honey boiled into syrup provided the sweetener for the many forms of deep-fried fritters that seem to have been common. See fried dough and fritters. One particular type (encytum) was pressed through a perforated bowl into hot oil and shaped into a spiral that was then smothered in honey, a technique still widely used in the Middle East today. Globi were round balls of semolina and cheese deep-fried in lard and covered in honey and poppy seed. Fritters like these are still found in many parts of the Mediterranean, from the churros of Spain and struffoli of Italy to the loukoumades of Greece.
It is quite certain that an early filo-like pastry, called itria in Greek and tracta in Latin, was utilized in ancient societies, and although no direct archaeological or literary evidence exists, it is almost certain that parcels or pies with both sweet and savory fillings were made and sold on the street. We know that deep-fried pastries called enkrides were sold on the streets of Athens because Aristophanes refers to “enkrides vendors” (Danaids Fr 269), and a character in Small Change, a play written by Pherecrates in the mid-fifth century b.c.e., is accused of snatching them hot from the stall! In Rome, food stalls called popinae were allowed to sell all manner of sweet and savory (vegetarian) snacks but were prevented, it seems, from selling meat products by the Emperor Nero.
Honey was also boiled down into toffee and mixed with nuts, fruit, and sesame seeds to make brittle or soft toffee-like sweets known as gastris in Greece. See brittle; gastris; and toffee. There were also thin and crisp biscuits called itrion and lagana, made either of flour or crushed sesame. The hard biscuit (in its original “twice-baked” context) also has a parallel in ancient food; dipyros, from the Greek di meaning “twice” and pyr meaning “fire,” was a product literally put to the fire twice. The buccellatum was a twice-baked small piece of bread used as a military ration on campaigns; something similar was quite likely consumed by the rest of the population, too. Both could be eaten only after soaking in wine or water. We also know that pancakes, both thick and thin, were eaten, and their shape is clearly suited to street eating. See pancakes. Although numerous references to cakes and sourdough-enriched breads are made in Greek drama, we have no information about them beyond the fact of their names. It is quite likely that they would have resembled simple forms of brioche.
See also ancient world; athenaeus; filo; greece; italy; and spain.
streusel (from a German word meaning “to strew” or “to scatter”) is a popular, easy-to-make, sweet crumbly topping for many kinds of baked goods and desserts. The basic ingredients are flour, sugar, and fat, which are combined to form a dry, somewhat lumpy mixture that is usually sprinkled in an even layer on top of a cake batter or yeast dough before baking. In a few modern recipes the flour is replaced by Bisquick (a commercial baking mix of flour, baking powder, salt, and oil), Grape-Nuts cereal, or raw rolled oats. Granulated white sugar is the most common sweetener, but brown sugar and confectioner’s sugar are also used. The fat is usually cold butter, although some recipes use melted butter, vegetable oil, or vegetable shortening. Additional ingredients can include breadcrumbs, chopped nuts, poppy seeds, grated orange and lemon zest, cocoa powder, nut extracts, and spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, allspice, vanilla, and salt. Occasionally a beaten egg is added to help hold the dry mixture together.
When baked, the streusel mixture forms a slightly crunchy, light- to golden-brown topping. Usually baked on top of sheet cakes, coffee cakes, and sweet breads, streusel can also be a topping for muffins, pancakes, shortbreads, cookies, cheesecakes, and French toast. Sometimes it is marbled through the batter for cakes and quick breads. Streusel is the classic topping for shoo-fly pie, and it can form the top crust of pumpkin pies, fruit pies, and tarts, as well as baked fruit puddings and fruit “crumbles.” Baked on its own, crisp streusel is also used as a filling between cake layers, and it is sometimes crumbled over ice cream, puddings, mousses, and yogurt.
Streusel is especially popular in Central European cooking, where it probably originated, with German Streuselkuchen (streusel cake) the most traditional recipe.
See also coffee cake; fruit desserts, baked; and germany.
strudel is a Central European pastry made by rolling paper-thin dough around a fruit filling with the aid of a cloth. The filling is frequently but not exclusively made from apples. The dough is an ausgezogener Strudelteig made from wheat flour, warm water, and oil, which is stretched in a manner similar to pizza dough to make it as thin and translucent as possible. It is impressive to see bakers in the several lands contiguous to the Danube stretching the dough. For those who are not adept, commercially available filo pastry or even puff pastry can be used. See filo and pastry, puff. Although strudel’s origins are often thought to be oriental, there is evidence from as early as the fourteenth century of a Hungarian pastry layered with very thin dough. This derivation is also suggested by Marx Rumpolt’s Ein new Kochbuch (1581), which offers a recipe for a “Hungarian Turte” that consists of 20 or 30 sheets of pastry made from flour and water, “thin as a veil,” each spread with butter or lard and placed over an apple filling. See torte. The first extant recipe for an Austrian curd-cheese strudel is to be found in the manuscript “Koch Puech” from 1696, now in the State Library in Vienna. This Milchrahm or Topfenstrudel is still a popular alternative to apple strudel today. Cherries, pears, and poppy seeds are other favorite fillings; there are also savory versions (particularly in Burgenland) filled with beans, cabbage, potatoes, or black pudding. Savory strudels are more likely to use potato flour than wheat flour. One of the most popular apple strudels in Vienna is made at Café Korb in the Brandstätte. The filling combines cooking apples, breadcrumbs fried in butter, raisins soaked in lemon juice, sugar, and cinnamon. Others recipes replace the raisins with walnuts.
See also austria-hungary; café; and middle east.
sub-Saharan Africa has never been known globally for its sweets. Meals traditionally include a filling starch served with a relish, sauce, stew, or soup. Ending meals with a dessert is still largely considered superfluous. One or two main meals a day are supplemented by snacking on fruits, nuts, and seeds, or on starchy foods like plantain or corn that have been roasted, boiled, or fried.
Honey
Initially, honey, berries, and other fruits were the main sources of sweetness in sub-Saharan Africa. See honey. The honeybee likely originated in Africa, and honey has always been prized; it is used medicinally as well as for food. In many places honey is still a part of the bride price a man provides to his future in-laws. Besides being consumed raw, honey is used to coat fruit and nuts and as the base for drinks such as Ethiopia’s alcoholic tej or nonalcoholic birz. It is also added to beverages and made into candy.
Refined Sugar
Today, refined sugar has replaced honey in urban areas. Sugarcane was introduced to sub-Saharan Africa by Asian and Arab traders, who brought it in the 640s, along with production know-how, to the Mediterranean and Middle East. Between the seventh and tenth centuries, Arabs and Islamic expansion helped carry sugarcane southward along the Swahili Coast of eastern Africa as far as Zanzibar. Portuguese explorers carried sugarcane to Africa’s northwest coast, where it arrived in West Africa in the fifteenth century. See sugarcane.
Ironically, although enslaved West and Central Africans provided most of the labor on sugarcane plantations in the New World, sugarcane cultivation was not initially significant in sub-Saharan Africa. See plantations, sugar. Throughout the twentieth century, heavy investment in sugarcane or beet sugar plantations and refineries in places like Sudan and southern Africa encouraged the development of a “sweet tooth.” Immigrants and traders also helped broaden the defining ingredients of some sub-Saharan African cuisines to make a modest place for sugary foods.
In the fifteenth through twentieth centuries, European colonial administrators, traders, teachers, and missionaries, as well as new immigrant populations, imported elite and high-status foods into sub-Saharan Africa. These included desserts made with imported ingredients like wheat flour, tinned milk, sugar, and butter. In the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as urbanization and industrialization spread, sugar became increasingly accessible. Today, as a preference among urban populations for sweet drinks, snacks, and frozen treats continues to grow, sub-Saharan Africa is a growing and eagerly sought-after market by both domestic and international sugar and sweets producers. Sweets are both consumed as snacks and shared on special occasions like birthdays or holidays.
Flavors, Popular Sweets, and Ingredients
Some common elements to traditionally popular sweets can be identified, such as a preference for fresh tropical fruits. Fruits also flavor desserts like fruit salads, fritters, cakes, and puddings. Fresh peeled sugarcane is chewed as a treat.
Fried doughnuts, dropped, twisted, or rolled and cut, are beloved in the region. See doughnuts. They are flavored with different spices and ingredients, such as coconut milk, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, orange, and vanilla, and go by many names: maandazi, koeksisters, puff puff, togbei, mikaté, gbofloto, botokoin, malasadas, and mofo baolina. Leavening agents include yeast, baking powder, baobab powder, palm wine, and beer.
Candies often combine ingredients such as peanuts, sesame, or coconut with sugar or honey, sometimes including a starch. Eastern Africa has kashata na nazi (coconut and peanut candy); Ghana has groundnut, coconut, or sesame (benne) “cakes,” which are similar in texture to peanut brittle. Sugar is melted in liquid, cooked without stirring, combined with crushed peanuts (or freshly grated coconut meat, or sesame seeds), pressed into a pan to harden, or shaped into balls or cones. For Sierra Leone’s kanya, peanuts are pounded into a paste, mixed with sugar or honey and browned pounded rice or rice flour, then rolled out and cut into shapes.
Fresh ginger is a popular seasoning. In Ghana overripe plantains are pounded and combined with ginger, chili pepper, red palm oil, and other seasonings to create a rich, sweet-spicy baked loaf known as ofam. Tombi (Mende for “tamarind”) is a Sierra Leonean treat combining sugar, chili pepper, tamarind, and seasoning cubes, thus blending sweet, spicy, savory, and salty tastes.
Areas with dairy products use yogurt or milk or cream in puddings, fools, custards, and dessert porridges, which often include fruits such as mango or papaya, eggs, coconut, and sugar. Senegal’s ngalakh is made from millet or wheat couscous, milk, yogurt, juice from the fruit of the baobab tree, peanut butter, sugar, and other seasonings. Sub-Saharan Africa’s caakiri is a pudding originally made with fonio or millet, but now commonly prepared from wheat-based couscous. Sometimes toffees are made from canned sweetened condensed milk. See toffee. Desserts are also made with nondairy ingredients, such as Ghana’s tiger nut pudding, made from chufa tubers and rice ground together.
In places like South Africa, with a significant number of European, Indian, or Asian immigrants, preserves, conserves, pastries, puddings, and other sweet preparations abound.
Sweetened beverages, including thin drinkable porridges, are popular throughout sub-Saharan Africa. These include beloved ginger juice or beer; hibiscus, tamarind, or baobab drinks; other juices and drinks made from fruit or corn; bottled non-alcoholic malted beverages (e.g., Nestle’s Milo or Guinness’s Malta); and soft drinks such as Coca-Cola, Fanta, and Sprite. Teas and coffee are often sweetened. A popular instant porridge or beverage in South Africa called Morvite is sorghum-based. Sweetened beverages are sometimes frozen and sold as icy treats.
In parts of West Africa, especially Ghana and Nigeria, sweetness is sometimes simulated by chewing the fresh, red, grape-sized berries of the indigenous plant Synsepalum dulcificum, whose juice coats the tongue for about an hour and tricks the brain into thinking sour or bitter foods are sweet. See miracle berry.
See also benne seed wafers and horchata.
Sucanat, a word derived from the French sucre de canne naturel (natural cane sugar), is an expensive and flavorful cane sugar that retains most of its original minerals. It was the first product of Pronatec AG, a company established in Switzerland in 1976 by Albert Yersin. Yersin had been influenced by Max-Henri Béguin (1918–2000), a Swiss pediatrician and pacifist who promoted organic, unprocessed foods.
Early advertising in the United States claimed that Sucanat “has more calcium than broccoli; more Vitamin A than Brussels sprouts; more iron than raisins; more potassium than potatoes; and about the same Vitamin C as fresh tangerines.” But, following a complaint by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus prodded Pronatec to tone down its rhetoric.
Nevertheless, Pronatec still claims that Sucanat is “the world’s first organic whole cane sugar,” made by “evaporating organically grown 100 percent cane juice.” The company does not, however, explain how Sucanat differs from traditional raw sugar, or how the method used to evaporate the water from Sucanat differs from that used elsewhere. See sugar. Because the cane for Sucanat is grown under “Fair Trade” conditions in Costa Rica, and the sugar itself is labeled “organic,” Sucanat appeals to a demographic of affluent consumers. Ethical vegetarians like the fact that no animal charcoal (bone black) is used in its processing.
sucket fork is a utensil for eating sweetmeats that was used in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries, with fork tines at one end and sometimes a spoon bowl at the other end of a common stem.
Sucket forks have an ancient history as a method of spearing and consuming sticky delicacies—succade—and are recorded at least a century and a half before table forks became widely adopted for eating savory foods. Smaller and more delicate in form than the typical late-seventeenth-century place setting (couvert) of knife, fork, and spoon, sucket forks were gradually replaced by sets of gilded sweetmeat knives, forks, and spoons. The design of these new tools for dessert matched the main course flatware, although they were smaller and more decorative. Late-seventeenth-century examples are often engraved.
The decline of the sucket fork was largely due to a switch in the ingredients of desserts. From the mid-seventeenth century on, sugar-based sticky candied fruit or ginger gave way to fresh fruit and flavored creams, and finally to ice cream, each of which called for a different type of tool. See candied fruit and ice cream. Delicate pastry and meringues, popular in the eighteenth century, also required distinctive implements. See meringue.
Sucket forks, with tines on one end and often a spoon bowl on the other, were used to spear and consume sticky delicacies, or succade. They are recorded at least a century and a half before table forks became widely adopted for savory foods. This pair of silver sucket forks was made in Boston in 1677 by William Rouse. museum of fine arts, boston. gift of john and mary coolidge
Although most surviving sucket forks are made of silver, examples are known with agate or rock crystal, or even enamel, handles. At the New Year celebration in 1587, Queen Elizabeth was given a little gold fork and spoon, trimmed with coral and diamonds, which was a very grand set for eating succade.
See also servers, ice cream; serving pieces; and suckets.
suckets were forerunners of modern candied and sugar-preserved fruits. The English term “sucket” (from the French succade, and Italian succata) was first used for candied peels of citrus fruits. See candied fruit. From the mid-sixteenth century on, the term had a wider meaning—almost anything could be made into suckets—not only pieces of fruits but also vegetables, roots, and nuts. A recipe from the Good Huswives Jewell (1597) mentions lemons, oranges, peaches, apples, and green walnuts. Pears and plums, stalks from angelica and marshmallow plants, roots from alisanders, borage, elecampane, sea holly, fennel, and ginger could also be used.
There were two principal types of suckets: wet and dry. Wet suckets were first cooked in a sugary liquid and then stored in jars, covered with the cooking syrup. Dry suckets were cooked until the sugary solution was incorporated into them; then they were dried (in fresh air, in an oven, or near the fire) and sometimes rolled in additional sugar. The recipe for dry suckets in The Arte of Perseruing, Delightes for Ladies (1609) is easy: orange peels are first boiled in sugared rosewater and then dried in an oven.
Similar recipes have survived from previous centuries. In the Middle Ages, dried, candied, glazed, and sugar-preserved fruits and pieces of ginger were already popular. Regularly enjoyed at the beginning, during, and at the end of meals in wealthy households, they were also used to flavor various sweet bakery products, pancakes, crepes, and cakes. Le ménagier de Paris from the late fourteenth century contains a recipe for “Orengat”: in a nine-day process, orange peels are first cooked in water and then in honey and finally stored for a month before eating. An Italian recipe collection (Liber per Cuoco) from the same period records a method for preparing “Ranciata”: the orange peels are first soaked for two weeks, then boiled in water, next dried for three days, then boiled in honey and spices, and finally left to air-dry for several days.
Because storing fresh fruit was difficult in the past, fruits were often processed in one way or another. Medical experts thought that fresh, unprocessed fruits were hard to digest and potentially detrimental to the human body. Sugar and honey were believed to neutralize harmful properties in fruits, and so methods such as poaching fruit in a sugar-sweetened solution and making jams were highly recommended. See fruit preserves and medicinal uses of sugar.
A special “sucket fork” was developed after the Middle Ages. Usually made of silver, the small utensil had a two- or three-pronged fork at one end for picking up fruit from syrup, and a spoon bowl at the other, for conveying the syrup to the mouth. See sucket fork.
The word “sucket” went out of use after the early modern period, but dry and wet sugar-preserved fruits continued to be made, and eighteenth-century cookery books contain numerous recipes for them, usually under the titles of “preserves” and “conserves.” Today, the tradition of old-fashioned, heavily sugared wet suckets lives on in ginger-root preserves.
See sugar.
sugar, as it is commonly understood, is simply sucrose, even if food chemists recognize many other sorts of sugars, including fructose (fruit sugar), lactose (milk sugar), maltose (malt sugar), and dextrose (corn sugar), to name some the most common types. While many of these sugars are widely used in the food industry, home cooks and pastry chefs depend on cane- or beet-derived sugar for flavoring almost all of their recipes.
Sugar is widely used to sweeten both desserts and candy, but it is also used to add a sweet note to many savory foods. Its chemical characteristics allow it to be dissolved, melted, caramelized, and turned into a multitude of candy textures, from barely chewy to hard and brittle. In dessert making, sugar affects moisture retention, texture, browning, and freezing, as well as taste. In many cases the lack of any discernable taste other than sweet is desirable, since refined sugar does not mask other flavors. Nevertheless, partially refined sugars can offer a panoply of other tastes, including butterscotch, toffee, caramel, wine, molasses, spice, and even bitterness. Understanding the different types and textures of sugar, and how best to use them, can add complexity, drama, and flair to cooking as well as to candy making and baking.
Sugar Production
The sucrose molecule is a disaccharide consisting of the monosaccharides glucose and fructose. See fructose and glucose. In general it is crystalline in form, though when a controlled amount of acid is added, sugar will partially break down into its constituent parts, resulting in a syrup, or “invert sugar.” Sucrose can be extracted from many plants, including certain varieties of palms, maple trees, and sorghum, but the overwhelming majority (about 75 percent in 2003) of the world’s sugar comes from sugarcane, with sugar beets making up almost all the remainder. See sorghum syrup; sugar beet; and sugarcane.
Sugarcane was first converted to a solid form in India as early as the sixth century b.c.e. Originally the cane juice was simply boiled to remove the water, resulting in a semi-crystalline raw sugar now called jaggery. By 500 b.c.e., documents mention granular, more highly refined crystals called sarkara, from which Indo-European languages derive the many variants of the word “sugar.”
Today, the milling process begins with harvesting the raw product. The cane or beets are shredded and pressed to remove the juices, then boiled in large steam evaporators. Eventually sugar crystals precipitate out of the syrup and are separated in a centrifuge. This process is repeated several times, with the sugar retaining more molasses each time. Often this darker sugar is reprocessed, so that eventually all the crystals, referred to as raw sugar, are 97 to 99 percent pure sucrose; the centrifuged liquid is molasses. In some cases, not all of the molasses is spun off, resulting in naturally brown sugars of varying intensities. Most raw sugar is refined further by dissolving it once again in water, chemically precipitating out any remaining impurities, then bleaching, filtering, and recrystallizing it, producing a substance that is 99.8 percent or more sucrose. See sugar refining. Although there are numerous culinary uses for this virtually pure refined sugar—such as in meringues, fondants, and syrups—the less-refined varieties, due to their more complex flavor, are often a better choice in many recipes ranging from cakes to stews. Also, in addition to removing impurities and color, the refining process can at times produce an undesirable element of slight bitterness not present in sugar that still retains a trace amount of natural molasses.
Refined Sugar
Once sugar has been refined, it is passed through sieves with a specific hole size that determines the largest grain in any given batch. Some sugars are also sieved to remove smaller crystals. All refined sugar has equal sweetening power (by weight), regardless of the degree of granulation. The one exception is confectioner’s sugar, because it contains a modicum of starch.
Loaf or cube sugar is granulated sugar that has been pressed into molds while still moist. It is subsequently dried to retain its shape. Most sugar was sold in this form prior to the late nineteenth century; consequently, old recipes sometimes call for it. See sugar cubes.
Rock sugar or rock candy is a confection of transparent colorless or amber crystals, sometimes sold on a string or as swizzle sticks for stirring coffee or tea.
Medium coarse, coarse pearl sugar, or sanding sugar consists of crystals approximately 600 to 800μm (microns) in size. It is sometimes referred to as “strong” sugar because large-grained sugars are usually crystalized from the highest-purity sugar solutions; consequently, this sugar resists color changes and inversion, making it ideal for preparing caramel, as well as for other uses in which a confectioner needs to avoid crystallization. The large granules, sometimes tinted, can also be sprinkled on finished baked goods, such as cookies, to give them a sparkling appearance.
Regular granulated or fine granulated (<1200μm) is the all-purpose sugar found in most sugar bowls and supermarkets. It is often not sifted, resulting in a wide range of crystal sizes. Regular granulated sugar is suitable for making syrups, but for most other baking a smaller crystal size is preferable.
Extra-fine sugar (200–600μm) is also called fruit sugar because it is used in fruit preserves. See fruit preserves. Many professional bakers like to use it as their all-purpose sugar when baker’s special (see below) is unavailable. When used in cakes, it yields a fine crumb and lighter texture because its smaller crystals provide more surface area to trap air. This is especially the case when creaming together sugar and fat. Cookies made with extra-fine sugar are smoother and have fewer cracks. A more finely granulated sugar also dissolves more readily, resulting in lighter, more delicate meringues. See meringue.
Baker’s special splits the difference between extra-fine and superfine, making it the perfect compromise for just about all baking. Home bakers can approximate it by grinding a coarser sugar in a food processor for a few minutes, even though the crystals won’t be as uniform as the commercially processed version. British “caster sugar” is similar.
Superfine, or ultrafine (<500μm) refers to the finest granulation of sugar. It is sometimes called bar sugar because bartenders use it to make drinks that require fast-dissolving sugar. Its ability to dissolve quickly also makes it ideal for meringues and cake fillings.
Powdered, confectioner’s, or icing sugar (<250μm) is made by crushing granulated sugar into powder. In the process, the sugar loses its granular shape, making it more hydrophilic. To prevent it from becoming lumpy, an anticaking agent is added; in the United States about 3 percent cornstarch is typical. The starch adds what is perceived as a floury taste and makes powdered sugar less suitable than granulated sugar for use with ingredients that are not to be cooked. Powdered sugar comes in various particle sizes, the most common being (in increasing fineness) 4X, 6X, and 10X, although 3X, 12X, and 14X also exist.
Nonmelting powdered sugar is coated with a fat to prevent it from melting when sprinkled on top of cakes or fruit. It gives off a slight, unpleasant mouth-coating sensation.
Vanilla sugar is made by flavoring granulated sugar with vanilla. In Europe it is widely used instead of vanilla extract. To make vanilla sugar at home, bury two to three vanilla beans in a pound of sugar, cover and let stand for at least one week. See vanilla.
Brown Sugar
Before the invention of centrifuges, molasses was removed from sugar crystals by packing them into inverted cones and allowing the molasses to drip out the bottom. See molasses. The color within these sugar cones would range from pale golden to brown, depending on the residual molasses. Different names came to be assigned to these different colored sugars, most originating with the Portuguese or Dutch, pioneers of the transatlantic sugar trade. See sugar trade. Today, the color of centrifuged sugar varies, depending on whether it is from the first, second, or third crystallization. However, the great majority of brown sugar is not made this way; instead, a small amount of molasses (and sometimes coloring) is added to partially or even fully refined sucrose. Home cooks can approximate the process by adding 3.5 percent molasses to white sugar to make light brown sugar, and 6.5 percent for dark brown. Recipes that call for brown sugar usually require the light version, unless otherwise specified. By volume, brown sugar has the same sweetening power as white sugar, but it weighs more due to the additional molasses. The added molasses also adds some moisture.
Because brown sugars derived from sugarcane and beets are made somewhat differently, there is a difference in taste and appeal. The former is made with partially refined sugar that retains some of its natural molasses. Since sugar-beet molasses is not fit for human consumption, brown sugar from beets is made with fully refined sugar to which either sorghum or cane molasses is added to achieve the requisite flavor and color. As a result, the molasses merely coats the grains. A simple test to determine if the sugar has only been coated is to stir a spoonful into a glass of water. After just a few minutes, the water in the beet sugar will turn a pale brown and the sugar crystals will be clear. With partially refined cane sugar that still contains its natural molasses, the water will remain clearer and the sugar crystals remain somewhat brown.
Sugar that still contains some of its molasses and isn’t clarified is often referred to as “unrefined,” which is not to say it hasn’t undergone a great deal of initial processing necessary to obtain crystals (boiling, centrifuging, and washing). Unlike refined, virtually pure white sugar, and even commercially produced brown sugars, batches of “unrefined” sugars may vary in color, flavor, and intensity.
Turbinado (from the Portuguese turbinar, “to spin”) mostly comes from the first batch of sugar to be crystalized and centrifuged. The sugar is washed to remove the surface molasses. Turbinado ranges from pale golden to a richer amber and retains a pleasant trace of molasses flavor. Sugar marketed as raw sugar can be turbinado or demerara. This same “raw” sugar is also made into cubes or crystals intended for sweetening hot beverages. Although turbinado sugar closely resembles refined white sugar in sweetening ability and composition, it can’t always be substituted for it in recipes because of the presence of impurities and a slightly higher moisture content. In the United Kingdom, finely granulated turbinado is referred to as “golden caster sugar.”
Demerara, named after a region of Guyana where the Dutch used to raise sugarcane, is a somewhat darker crystalline sugar that may come from the first or second centrifuge, depending on the producer. French cassonade is typically demerara, although other brown sugars are also occasionally called by this name.
Muscovado (from the sixteenth-century Portuguese mascavado, or “unrefined”) is generally a moist brown sugar produced in the second or third crystallization. Light muscovado has approximately the same molasses flavor as North American dark brown sugar, while dark muscovado is a little more intense and complex in flavor than dark brown sugar. In the United Kingdom, a molasses sugar is also sold that has an even greater molasses concentration. It is best used in gingerbread, fruitcakes, mincemeat, and barbecue sauces to add extra moisture or stickiness and flavor. See fruitcake; gingerbread; and mince pies.
Jaggery (derived from the Sanskrit sarkara by way of the Portuguese) is simply cane juice boiled down to the point where it will harden. It is widely used throughout South Asia to flavor sweet and savory dishes. Jaggery has a rich, earthy, and almost mineral taste. A similar product is made in Latin America under the name of panela (pilloncillo in Mexico and rapadura in Brazil). Jaggery can also be made from certain palm saps.
Wasanbon is an artisanally produced Japanese unrefined sugar made from a variety of locally grown sugarcane called chikuto. The processing is still done by hand and involves a multiday procedure in which the cane syrup is boiled down, the sugar crystals are kneaded several times, and the resulting sugar is drained in wooden tubs weighed down with stones. Wasanbon is highly sought after by local confectioners. See wasanbon.
Sugar from Other Sources
Palm sugar is made from either the sap or flower bud nectar of several palm tree varieties, including the palmyra, toddy, coconut, and nipa palms. The sweet liquid is boiled down to a thick fudge consistency and used widely in both South and Southeast Asia in sweet and savory preparations. Palm sugar has a milder and somewhat more vegetal flavor than raw cane sugar. See palm sugar.
Date sugar is produced from the sweet fruit of the date palm, which contains as much as 81 percent sucrose in its solids. It retains the date’s mineral complexity. See dates.
Maple sugar is made by boiling away virtually all the water from maple sap, resulting in a crystalline sugar that can be anywhere from 88 to 99 percent sucrose. It has a pleasing maple flavor and can be substituted pound for pound for raw cane sugar in most baked goods. See maple sugaring and maple syrup.
Liquid Sugar
Cane syrup is made from partially evaporated cane juice, resulting in a dark syrup with a noticeable but not overwhelming molasses flavor. It is widely used in Louisiana in recipes that elsewhere might call for molasses or dark corn syrup. See corn syrup.
Invert sugar syrup is made from regular refined sugar by chemically breaking apart the sucrose molecule into its constituent parts, fructose and glucose. It may be made commercially or as part of the candy-making process by adding an acid, such as cream of tartar, to a sugar syrup. The resulting liquid sugar is added to fondant creams, fudge, and other candies to ensure a smooth texture and discourage crystallization. See fondant and fudge. Because it is hydroscopic it ensures that chewy candies won’t dry out or become overly brittle.
Refiner’s syrup, called golden syrup in the United Kingdom, is made by combining sugar syrup and invert sugar syrup. The processing gives it a very mild caramel flavor, and the high ratio of monosaccharides makes it somewhat sweeter by weight than sugar. The syrup contains 15 to 18 percent water. In most recipes it can be used interchangeably with light corn syrup, offering a mellow, intriguing flavor. See golden syrup.
Molasses, traditionally the byproduct of sugar processing, is not only used for culinary purposes but also for animal feed and to make ethanol. Today, food-grade molasses, sometimes referred to as unsulfured, is generally made by boiling down sugarcane juice to about 80 percent Brix (20 percent water content). See brix. Consequently, it is sweet and complex in flavor, with notes of rum and earth. Blackstrap molasses, on the other hand, is the residual molasses spun off from the third sugar crystallization, which yields a darker, less sweet, and noticeably bitter syrup. Similar to molasses in both flavor and water content is the black treacle produced by British sugar refineries by repeatedly heating a molasses-rich, partially inverted sugar syrup. The syrup is valued by the British for baking and confectionery when rich flavor, dark color, and moist texture are required, as in gingerbread, fruitcakes, and licorice.
Making Sugar Syrups
Confectioners, bakers, and even mixologists use a wide variety of sugar syrups in their respective crafts. The sugar and water solution varies in concentration, depending on the use. Bartenders often use a “simple syrup” of one part sugar and one part water to flavor drinks. On the other hand, to make an Italian meringue or classic French buttercream, most of the water is boiled away to form a supersaturated sugar solution. As the density increases, the temperature of the solution rises. Confectioners can gauge the concentration by the temperature. Concentration can also be measured by density using a saccharimeter or the Baumé sugar weight scale. See saccharimeter and stages of sugar syrup.
Because supersaturated sugar solutions are unstable, the use of an “interfering agent” such as invert sugar (a little more than one-fourth the weight of the granulated sugar), butter, cream of tartar, or citric acid helps keep the solution stable by interfering with the crystallization. This technique is helpful when the syrup will be repeatedly dipped into, as when making spun sugar.
Caramel is made by cooking melted sugar to a temperature at which it begins to brown. At this point it begins to break down into complex compounds that contribute to a richer flavor; caramel is less sweet than white sugar and is pleasantly bitter. One-half cup sugar makes about a quarter cup of caramel (plus any residue that clings to the pot). If made in a nonstick pan and then pulverized, caramel returns to its approximate original volume.
General Uses of Sugar
Sugar, in one form or another, is utilized in just about every cuisine, not to mention its use in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and even energy production. See cosmetics, sugar in; pharmacology; and sugar, unusual uses of. In preparations both sweet and savory, its applications are manifold. Besides contributing to sweetness, viscosity, and body, sugar enhances the flavor, appearance, and texture of many foods.
How sugar affects texture in baking is especially apparent in cakes. In addition to facilitating the incorporation of air during the creaming of the sugar and the fat, sugar creates tenderness, because during baking it raises the temperature at which egg protein coagulates and starch granules gelatinize, allowing the gas cells to expand more before the batter has a chance to set. The result is a more open texture that weakens the cake’s structure so that it melts faster in the mouth. However, even though a cake high in sugar is more tender—that is, it falls apart more easily—it won’t have as soft a mouthfeel.
But cakes are just the beginning. In baked goods, sugar aids moisture retention; in custards, it raises the boiling point; and in frozen desserts, it lowers the freezing point. Sugar assists in the emulsification in chocolate, baked goods, and ice creams, and in fermentation in bread and beer. Sugar gives stability to beaten eggs. It delays staling in baked goods, discoloration in fresh fruit, and coagulation in egg cookery. It slows down mold growth in preserves and tenderizes baked goods by combining with the gluten-forming proteins in flour to reduce gluten formation. See flour. Cooks find sugar handy for savory dishes, too. It brings out and softens the flavor of starch-containing vegetables like peas and carrots and lends them sheen; it moderates the acidity in foods like tomatoes and enhances the caramelization of the natural sugar present in onions.
Although there are many substitutes and alternatives to sugar, when it comes to baking, confectionery, and even cooking, sugar is a sweet wonder.
See also artificial sweeteners; caramels; hard candy; medicinal uses of sugar; pulled sugar; popping sugar; sap; stevia; and servers, sugar.
sugar, biochemistry of. Sugar, to a chemist, refers not to a single compound, but to any one of a class of molecules called the saccharides. Many saccharides, though not all, taste sweet. Sucrose, common table sugar, is a crystalline white solid at room temperature. Its chemical formula is C12H22O11 and its formal chemical name is α-D-glucopyranosyl-β-D-fructofuranoside. Sucrose is a disaccharide, comprising two simple sugars, glucose and fructose, linked through an oxygen atom. See glucose and fructose. Glucose has five carbon atoms and a single oxygen atom arranged in a six-membered ring that is folded up like a lounge chair. Fructose is based on a not-quite planar five-membered ring, made up of four carbons and a single oxygen atom.
Sucrose is a naturally occurring chemical compound; in many plants it is the principal source of carbon used for growth. Table sugar is produced commercially by extracting and purifying sucrose from plant sources, particularly sugarcane and sugar beets. See sugarcane and sugar beet. Like many biologically active molecules, sugars are chiral (from the Greek kheir [χειρ], for “hand”). Chiral objects cannot be superimposed on their mirror image, like a pair of hands. The biological activity of two mirror-image molecules can be quite different; spearmint oil is the exact mirror image of caraway oil, but it tastes and smells unmistakably different. Simple sugars have two types of chiral forms, D and L. Sucrose links a D form of glucose to a D form of fructose. Humans (and other terrestrial organisms) selectively metabolize the D forms of sugars. Since both the L and D forms of many simple sugars, including glucose and fructose, taste sweet, the L forms are essentially low-calorie versions of their mirror images.
In addition to its sweet taste, sucrose has a number of physical and chemical properties that make it particularly useful to cooks and bakers. It is hygroscopic: in solid form sucrose readily absorbs water from its surroundings. Water trapped by sucrose in baked goods helps makes them moist. Water also binds preferentially with the sucrose, preventing starches from swelling and producing an undesirably coarse texture. Unlike many other molecular compounds, pure table sugar doesn’t melt at a precise temperature, but, fortunately for cooks, when table sugar is heated above 302°F (150°C) it undergoes a complex series of decomposition reactions that result in caramelization. See caramel and stages of sugar syrup. The decomposition process produces a rich array of compounds, including the buttery flavored molecule diacetyl, which contributes to the rummy, butterscotchy flavor characteristic of caramelized sucrose.
Sucrose is extraordinarily water soluble, due in part to the plethora of hydroxyl (OH) groups with which it is adorned. At room temperature, roughly 2 grams of table sugar will dissolve in 1 milliliter of water, and nearly 5 grams will dissolve in a milliliter of boiling water. By comparison, only about ⅓ of a gram of common table salt (sodium chloride) can be dissolved in a milliliter of room-temperature water. The ability to achieve such highly concentrated solutions makes sucrose a potent and inexpensive natural antimicrobial; simple syrup, a 1:1 table sugar to water solution, will kill E. coli. Bacteria that come into contact with such concentrated solutions undergo plasmolysis. The difference in osmotic pressure between the concentrated solution and the interior of the cell causes water to drain out of the cell’s interior, leading the cell wall to degrade and collapse. Makers of jellies and jams capitalize on the resulting antimicrobial activity. Pure granulated sugar has even proved effective in treating severely infected wounds.
Table sugar that is wet, even slightly, is sticky. Adhesion, or stickiness, requires that a material be able to bind to another substance at the molecular level, but also that it be able to bind to itself, like links in a stretchy chain between two gateposts. Viscous materials that can flow into all the submicroscopic crevices of a substrate also tend to be sticky. They make contact with a larger surface area of the substrate, increasing friction. The forces between molecules in a sucrose-water mix are strong and do not depend heavily on the relative orientation of the molecules, making these solutions more likely to be viscoelastic—thick and stretchy—and hence sticky.
Metabolism of Sugar
The metabolism of sugars is a complex process that eventually produces energy to run the body—carbon dioxide and water, the same products that result from incinerating sugar at high temperatures. Sucrose is essentially a biological fuel.
When humans consume sugars, the sugars are rapidly broken down into monosaccharides—simple sugars such as glucose, fructose, and galactose. Acid secreted in the stomach can catalyze the breaking of the covalent bond between sugar units; sucrose is exceptionally susceptible to this cracking reaction. The resulting glucose and fructose, along with any remaining undigested sucrose, are passed to the small intestine, where enzymes complete the digestion. Each enzyme is targeted to break down a specific complex sugar. Lactase is the enzyme specific for the digestion of lactose, found in milk, into the simple sugars galactose and glucose, while sucrase plays the same role for table sugar. Molecular chaperones then actively escort individual glucose molecules across the intestinal membranes into the bloodstream, while fructose is left to diffuse through the membranes on its own, through a slower process.
Once glucose makes it to the bloodstream, about one-third of it is stored in the liver as glycogen, a polymerized form of glucose. Another third is stored in muscle cells, and the remainder is immediately metabolized by cells for fuel. Cells first pull glucose into their interiors. Once the glucose is inside, an elaborate cascade of enzyme-catalyzed reactions turns it into two 3-carbon fragments (pyruvates). In aerobic metabolism, driven by the presence of oxygen, the pyruvates are moved into the mitochondria, where the citric acid cycle (which may be more familiar as the Krebs cycle often memorized in high school biology) further degrades the pyruvates into carbon dioxide and water. Side products of the citric acid cycle also go on to play a role in the synthesis of amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. Carbon dioxide is returned via the bloodstream to the lungs, where it is disposed of into the atmosphere. Water is used ubiquitously throughout the body.
Fructose meets a similar fate to glucose, albeit by a different route. About 60 percent of the fructose eaten (from any source, including the pure fructose in fruits, or fructose that results from the digestion of more complex sugars, such as sucrose) is enzymatically converted to glucose, feeding into the glucose metabolic pathway. The bulk of the remaining fructose is broken down into the same simple 3-carbon pyruvate molecules as glucose, by a mechanism that is distinct from, but interlaced into, the glucose pathway.
The Sugar Rush
When the levels of circulating glucose begin to drop, the body signals for the reserves of glycogen to be converted back to glucose. Two small proteins, glucagon and insulin, have key roles in the regulation of this process, which works to keep the levels of glucose in the blood within a tight range around a concentration between 100 and 150 mg/dL, roughly equivalent to that of half a teaspoon of sugar dissolved in a liter of water. Within 30 minutes of consuming pure sucrose or glucose on an empty stomach, blood sugar levels rise to a peak, the so-called sugar rush. Over the next two to four hours, glucose levels will slowly fall back to their starting values, or even below, serving as one of many triggers for the complex behavior of hunger.
All along the way, this complicated ballet of small molecules and enormous enzymes produces energy, which is used to drive the cellular reactions that synthesize molecular structures and machinery, and to keep the body at a normal operating temperature. The energy contained in the chemical bonds of glucose that are broken when it is metabolized is “stored” in a high-energy molecule, ATP (adenosine triphosphate). Cells can later draw on the energy stockpiled in ATP as they construct new molecules. The consumption of sugar charges our cellular batteries.
See also sugar; sugar refining; and sugar and health.
sugar, unusual uses of, include applications ranging from medieval art to warfare to Hollywood special effects and 3-D printing. One of the more creative uses is to preserve waterlogged ancient timbers, and even leather, by soaking them in a 67 percent sugar solution. This preservation method, in which the high concentration of sugar effectively ties up the water so that it is unavailable to microorganisms, has been used in Eastern Europe for many years, and it was recently used in the United Kingdom to preserve the remains of three medieval bridges found near Leicester.
The sugar in our daily lives normally comes in crystalline form, with its molecules of linked glucose and fructose packed perfectly into tiny, sharp-edged boxes in a shape called “monoclinic hemihedral” by crystallographers. Even in this commonly found form it can have unusual uses, especially in times of war, because within the boxes lies a hidden power. Because sugar burns to produce a large volume of gas (carbon dioxide and water vapor), it can be used as a component of explosives when mixed with an oxidizing agent and ignited. It can also be tipped surreptitiously into the petrol tank of an enemy vehicle, where some of the crystals in a bouncing vehicle may be carried in suspension to the spark plug, melting in the heat of the spark to stop the plug firing, although this effect is apparently much rarer than urban legend would have it.
The most unusual uses of sugar, though, require it to be transformed from its crystalline form to a glassy state, in which the molecules are disorganized, the sharp edges disappear, and the material becomes clear, hard, smooth, and transparent. This transformation can be accomplished either by melting the sugar or by adding a little water, as teenage girls learned to do in the 1950s when they soaked their petticoats in concentrated sugar solutions and then allowed them to dry. Most of the water evaporated, but in fact a tiny amount remained bound to the sugar, which maintained it in a glassy state that held the petticoats rigidly in shape.
In 2014 the Sugar Lab, a Los Angeles micro-design firm, launched a unique 3D printing system for edibles. Sugar sculptures are created by applying a mixture of water and alcohol to a sugar substrate, which hardens on contact with moisture. the sugar lab
Long before this, medieval monks used sugar in the glassy state to impart a gloss to their illuminated manuscripts. More recently, Pablo Picasso used it in the sugar-lift etching technique, in which the artist draws or paints directly on a copper plate with a thick sugar syrup to which black ink (and sometimes gum arabic) has been added. The plate is then allowed to dry. As with petticoats, some water remains bound to the sugar, setting it into a hard glassy state that retains the structure of the pen or brush marks. The plate is then covered with acid-resistant resin before being dipped in warm water, which removes the sugar to expose the areas where the artist has drawn, which can then be etched with acid.
Sugar in the glassy state has also found a use in Hollywood films, where its brittle nature and transparent appearance once made it an ideal substitute for window glass in stunts where an actor had to be defenestrated. Sugar has now been replaced for this purpose by synthetic resins such as Piccotex, which have the advantage of not gradually becoming cloudy in damp weather. Beer glasses made from glassy sugar are still available, however, and will actually hold beer for a limited time. They smash very satisfactorily when clinked together during comedy routines.
The most unusual use of glassy sugar must surely be as a substrate in three-dimensional printing, in which successive layers of material are used to build up a three-dimensional structure from a series of cross-sections, with the printing head moving in raster fashion to either lay down the material (via a syringe-like tip) or cut holes in it (via a focused laser beam, for example).
One of the earliest examples of 3-D printing using sugar was called CandyFab. In this method, a modified hot air gun is used as the printer head to melt different areas in successive layers of sugar crystals, with the unmelted sugar being cleared away between passes. In this way, complicated shapes such as a trefoil knot (i.e., a pretzel) could be constructed.
The CandyFab project stalled in 2009, but others have taken up the challenge. The Sugar Lab, a Los Angeles startup “micro-design firm” bought in 2013 by the printing giant 3D Systems, developed a system in which a syringe-like printing head applies precisely monitored mounts of an alcohol-water mixture to successive granular sugar layers, with the alcohol evaporating to leave just the right amount of water to convert the sugar to a glassy state. This technique allows even more elaborate shapes to be constructed than was possible with the CandyFab approach.
Both of the aforementioned projects are designed to produce unusual sugar confections, but 3-D printing with sugar has gone much further than that. It has even found application in the biomedical field to help build artificial organs such as livers. The technique, described in the September 2012 issue of Nature, uses 3-D printing to construct an interconnected network of glassy sugar fibers that mimics the network of blood vessels found in the real organ. Appropriate living cells are then allowed to grow on the fibers. Once the cells have filled the spaces between them, the sugar (actually a mixture of sucrose and one of its polymers called dextran) is dissolved away, leaving a network of vascular channels within the newly created “organ.” It may thus transpire that the sugar we eat will also be used to create the organs that help us digest it.
Sugar is also an excellent nutrient for microorganisms. In this form it has recently found its way back into the world of fashion in the form of biocouture, where bacteria are allowed to grow and multiply as a tough skin on the surface of a weak nutrient broth of sugar in green tea. After several weeks the skin can be harvested, dried, cut, sewn, and dyed to produce a most unusual line of clothing. The places of sugar in our lives are indeed manifold.
sugar and health have shared a connection from the earliest times. Originally considered the ultimate medicine to cure stomach ailments, fever, and the plague, sugar is now considered complicit in many chronic diseases. As early as 500 b.c.e., North Indian Sanskrit texts documented the processes of extracting sugar from sugarcane, with accompanying information on the medicinal uses of sugar and recipes for fermented drinks and rice pudding. Later Greek and Roman writings cited India as the source of sugar in Hellenic and Roman cultures. The Roman physician Dioscorides (40–90 c.e.) wrote that sugar “has the consistence of salt” and was good for the stomach, bladder, and kidneys. See medicinal uses of sugar.
A nurse tests a patient’s urine using dipsticks that change color according to the presence of sugar in the specimen. anthea sieveking, wellcome images
Between 600 and 800 c.e., the Indian sugarcane refining techniques began to spread toward China to the east and to the Mediterranean cultures to the west. The Venetians and the Genoese controlled the sugar trade northward into continental Europe. As sugar became available to wealthy Europeans in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, physicians began to prescribe it. The Arab medical scholar Constantinus Africanus (ca. 1020–1087 c.e.) prescribed sugar to quell a cough, relieve chapped lips, and cure stomach diseases, while the Byzantine emperor Manuel Comnenus (1143–1180) recommended it for breaking a fever. In the thirteenth century, the Dominican friar Albertus Magnus (ca. 1200–1280) mentioned sugar’s humoral qualities as moist and warm, and therefore “good for the stomach.” In the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries, the saying “like an apothecary without sugar,” describing a state of desperation, speaks to the role that sugar played in medical practice: it healed, it was a common curative, and it was considered good for one’s health.
Sugar in the Modern Age
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a few dissenting voices to the “sugar-as-nostrum” appeared, along with the spread of a new milling technique that eliminated the need to chop the sugarcane before pressing. The German physician Hieronymus Bock described sugar as “more an extravagance for the rich than as a remedy” (1539), and he and others noted sugar’s reprobate role in tooth decay, especially among the wealthy. See dental caries. By the mid-seventeenth century, European medical professionals had largely changed their position on sugar. James Hart’s The Diet of Diseases (London, 1633) described sugar as having dangerous effects on the body, causing hot blood, wasting, blackened teeth, and “a loathsome stinking breath.” Although Dr. Frederick Slare considered sugar to have curative powers, he noted in 1715 in one of his Experiments and Observations publications that it was “very high a Nourisher” and may make women “fatter than they desire to be.” Slare was one of the first physicians to link sugar to corpulence.
By the nineteenth century, sugar was no longer used as a pharmaceutical ingredient, and with the rise of commercial canning, it was consumed in ever-greater amounts as a preservative. The late nineteenth century saw the formal creation of the academic discipline of nutrition through newly established research laboratories and university departments of home economics and food chemistry. In the 1890s, the Seventh-day Adventist John Harvey Kellogg advocated for abstention from sugar as part of his regimen against “Americanitis,” his term for the national dyspepsia. Kellogg was so convinced of the unhealthiness of sugar that he went to court to protest the addition of sugar to his own toasted corn flakes cereal. See breakfast cereal. However, American medical professionals remained agnostic about sugar, which official early-twentieth-century food guides recognized as a concentrated source of carbohydrates. By 1920 annual sugar consumption in the United States had reached 100 pounds per capita; nevertheless, sugar was not considered in American nutrition policies as deleterious to health until after World War II.
Sugar, Sweet Substitutes, and Health
In the late nineteenth century, Constantin Fahlberg, a chemist at Johns Hopkins University, accidentally discovered the first chemical replacement for sugar: saccharin. See artificial sweeteners. Its use was widespread in Europe during World War I due to sugar rationing, and it remained a popular sugar substitute in the interwar period. However, in the United States, saccharin’s use was limited to diabetics until after World War II. By the late 1960s, bench chemists had discovered the sugar substitutes cyclamate, acesulfame K, and aspartame, but until 1982—when aspartame was approved for wider use in Europe and the Americas—only saccharin was government-approved as a sugar replacement. Chemical companies and food and beverage manufacturers promoted calorie-free sweeteners as healthier alternatives to sugar. Public demand for these replacements was so high that the threat of a saccharin ban by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1977—spurred by a study linking cancer and saccharin consumption—caused one million consumers to protest.
While this protest illustrates the modern American desire for the taste of sweet, it also shows that public perception of sugar was shifting. In the case of the “saccharin rebellion,” many American women saw sugar as bad for their figure, while saccharin allowed them to savor the taste of sweet without worrying about calories. In 1972 Robert Atkins published Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution, which promised weight loss by eschewing all carbohydrates, sugars in particular. However, the Atkins diet did allow, and even encourage, the use of artificial sweeteners. This vilification of sugar may have been more cosmetic and cultural than purely health related, but as the century progressed and “sugar” in the form of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), dextrose, maltose, cane syrup, and juice concentrates was added to virtually all industrial food products, doctors, dieticians, and nutritionists became concerned with the role of sugar consumption in diabetes, obesity, and “metabolic syndrome.”
First described as “Syndrome X” by Gerald Reaven in 1988, “metabolic syndrome” refers to the unhealthy profile of high insulin, high blood sugar, elevated triglycerides, and low levels of HDL cholesterol. While popular medical opinion at the time continued to attribute heart disease to a high intake of red meat and saturated fat, Reaven pointed to the perils of excess sugar and high glycemic-indexed carbohydrates. Between 2004 and 2006 the ubiquity of HFCS in soda and processed snack foods became fodder for both research scientists and science journalists, who drew links between the widespread consumption of HFCS and the so-called obesity epidemic. See corn syrup; fructose; and soda. In 2009, the pediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustig released a YouTube video titled “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” in which he stated that sugar is a leading cause of obesity, a toxin that upsets both endocrine and metabolic function in the body, and the cause of chronic diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Lustig published his findings in 2013, citing evidence that the consumption of refined sugar causes metabolic syndrome, illustrated by the enormous increase in the incidence of obesity and diabetes in the Western world.
Sugar is, and will continue to be, closely linked to human health. Diet experts will continue to study the amount of sugar we can eat while still remaining healthy, and academics will continue to research and debate the topic. Meanwhile, sugar consumption continues to rise worldwide. Delicious or deleterious? The jury is still out.
See also sugar, biochemistry of; sugar refining; and sugar trade.
sugar barons were the owners of extensive plantations in the Caribbean. From the mid-seventeenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century, they made huge fortunes growing and processing sugar.
Around 1642, after years of struggle, the tiny English colony of Barbados suddenly found itself the richest spot of land in the British Empire. James Drax, one of the original 50 settlers in 1627, had successfully grown sugarcane and processed sugar. See sugarcane and sugarcane agriculture. According to Richard Ligon, who spent three years in Barbados, from 1647 to 1650, there had been costly failures along the way, but with advice from Dutch planters in Brazil, and thanks to the “thriving genius of James Drax,” the difficult processes had been mastered. Drax’s first shipment of sugar arrived in London at a time of scarcity, largely caused by disturbances and crop failures in Brazil, and he made a fortune. Within half a dozen years, almost the entire island was planted with cane.
Drax established a 700-acre plantation in St. George parish and built himself a Jacobean-style mansion where he advertised his newfound wealth by giving the island’s most extravagant parties. See plantations, sugar. At one dinner, Richard Ligon counted at least five courses, each with up to 20 different dishes, washed down with gallons of wine, beer, sherry, and brandy.
Drax also led the way in changing the island’s labor force. The initial colonial concept had been for the West Indian islands to be white settler communities powered by indentured servants: poor whites from the British Isles who sold their labor (and, effectively, freedom) for five to seven years in return for passage, subsistence, and a plot of land at the end of the tenure. See colonialism. The islands were also seen as an outlet for surplus population and troublemakers, and thousands of prisoners of war, vagrants, felons, and prostitutes were shipped to the Caribbean. But the arrivals proved rebellious, drunken, and feeble, with about a third dying within three years, mostly from yellow fever. So Drax looked elsewhere, buying enslaved Africans from Dutch traders. See slavery. Slaves cost about twice the price of a white servant, but they were bound for life, and their offspring would be born as slaves of their mother’s owner. By 1654 Drax had about 200 enslaved Africans. According to Ligon, he “kept them in such good order, as there are no mutinies amongst them.”
Other planters followed Drax’s lead, and by 1660 there were some 20,000 enslaved Africans in Barbados, while the white population had declined from a high of 30,000 to 24,000. It took considerable capital to establish a sugar operation, and land prices increased dramatically. Few indentured servants who survived to reach the end of their tenure had the means to produce sugar; some continued in the north of the island, eking out a living growing cotton or tobacco, but many emigrated to less congested colonies nearby or to North America. Combined with the fearsome mortality rate, this led to a dwindling of the “middling” whites—by 1690 there were less than 20,000, while the enslaved population had risen to 60,000.
For the sugar barons—the small number of families who now owned most of the best land and controlled the top positions in the island’s government, judiciary, and militia—this numerical inferiority in a newly racialized system brought constant fear of rebellion and overthrow. See race. Indeed, there were a string of slave plots in Barbados during the last decades of the seventeenth century. The planters responded by building their homes as forts and using sadistic brutality against the blacks.
Drax invested his sugar profits in land and urban property in England and diversified into commerce and shipping, including shares in slave-trading vessels. In 1654 he left Barbados, saluted by the militia, and settled in London, from where he controlled his Atlantic network. He was knighted by Cromwell, and after the Restoration he was given a baronetcy by Charles II, which gives an indication of his political dexterity.
Drax’s eldest son’s health proved unequal to the climate of Barbados, so the Barbados estate was taken over by his second son, Henry. Henry lacked the drive and energy of his father, but his careful stewardship of Drax Hall and his relatively humane treatment of his slaves saw his wealth rise to match that of the grandest landed families in England. He reluctantly left Barbados in 1679 after his wife had suffered three infant deaths, and the family became absentee owners, as they remain to this day, still owning and running the Barbados plantation where James Drax pioneered sugar production.
The Codringtons
The profitable, though cruel and unstable, sugar plantation model was exported around the region, driven by a handful of families who often intermarried. James Drax’s sister married Christopher Codrington, a royalist refugee who arrived in Barbados around 1640. Their son, also named Christopher, consolidated his father’s estates in St. John’s parish and at the age of only 29 became deputy governor of Barbados, lauded as a young man of “liberal, debonaire humour.” He introduced measures to restrict alcohol consumption, increase the white population, build schools and hospitals, and attack widespread smuggling.
But Codrington’s youthful optimism foundered on planter inertia and self-interest, and was corrupted by the materialistic, cruel, and licentious culture of the sugar empire. In 1669 he was accused of murdering the nephew of the governor in a dispute over ownership of a plantation and expelled from the governing council. He responded by throwing himself into illegal trading, and he started moving his capital off the island. In 1683 he relocated to Antigua, where he was key in introducing Barbados-style plantations; he soon became the most powerful sugar baron and governor general of the Leewards, leading English forces in their constant battles with the French. The position provided Codrington with excellent opportunities for embezzlement, and he died in 1698 only just ahead of disgrace.
His son, Christopher Codrington III, had, like most sons of the sugar barons, been educated in England, where he became one of Oxford’s most accomplished scholars. He was also devout, a gifted lawyer and a decorated soldier. He inherited his father’s governorship and sailed to the Leewards determined to reform the chaotic legal system, curtail the despotic power of the biggest planters, and, above all, improve the brutal treatment of the enslaved workforce.
But within a few years, with all these hopes unfulfilled and with his health in ruins, Christopher III, like his father, was being accused of embezzlement, of siring a host of mulatto children, and of conspiracy to murder. He died in 1710, leaving the majority of his slaves and estates in Barbados, St. Kitts, and Antigua to his nephew William, who soon returned to England to enjoy the life of an absentee owner.
The Beckfords
By 1720, Jamaica, captured from the Spanish by a Cromwellian force in 1655 and having 10 times the combined area of all the other English sugar islands, had become the key sugar producer, helped as elsewhere by an influx of major planters from Barbados. For a hundred years it would remain the most important possession in the British Empire, its primacy for defense contributing to the loss by Britain of the North American colonies. But because of Jamaica’s mountainous interior, which gave hope to rebellious slaves, it was also the most savagely brutal of England’s slave colonies, with uprisings and their vengeful aftermath occurring almost every year.
For most of the eighteenth century the leading slave-owning family was the Beckfords, a dynasty started by a cattle rustler in the 1660s. Colonel Peter Beckford, as he became known, was energetic, physically fit, and utterly ruthless—all essential attributes for the successful sugar baron. His son, also named Peter, shrugged off murder charges and built a huge sugar empire, worth at his death in 1735 more than £300,000, at a time when the average income in Britain was around £15 a year. His main inheritor, William, further increased the fortune, before returning to England to build a lavish, stately home in Wiltshire called Fonthill Splendens, and to enter politics. Other sugar barons were by now doing the same, and by midcentury there was a substantial “West India Interest” in the House of Commons, able to steer imperial policy to their own advantage. William Beckford became a close confidant of William Pitt the Elder, and he was twice made lord mayor of London.
A generation later, however, the Beckford fortune was gone. Part of the Beckford family assets went to William’s brother’s son, William of Somerley, an artistic idealist far too soft to make a success of the brutal plantation business. By 1788 he was back in England, confined in Fleet Prison for debt. William’s main inheritor, becoming in 1770 the richest commoner in Europe, was a Gothic novelist and pampered aesthete who never visited Jamaica, where his attorneys were busy siphoning off his money. What was left was wasted in an orgy of eccentric and spectacular spending.
Other sugar baron families follow this pattern from entrepreneur to grandee to hapless inheritor. At the same time, growing competition from other sugar producers, particularly French and Dutch, and popular revulsion at the violence, rape, and drunken sadism of the slave system, saw the eclipse of the West Indian nabobs and the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833. With damage from hurricanes, the cutting off of vital supplies after the American Revolution, and the long-term effects of constant disease, war, and corruption in the West Indies, abolition was the end of the primacy of the Caribbean empire, and of the power of the sugar barons.
See also havemeyer, henry osborne; sugar; sugar refining; and tate & lyle.
sugar beet (Beta vulgaris), which, unlike sugarcane, thrives in temperate climates, has since the mid-nineteenth century been a commercially important alternative source of sucrose. At the time, it was an especially important source for northern nations lacking tropical colonies, or for those unwilling to purchase sugar produced by slaves.
The recognition of the beet’s industrial potential as a sweetener dates back to the beginning of the seventeenth century. In 1600, Olivier de Serres, a French agronomist, documented similarities between boiled beet juice and sugar syrup, thus making a scientific fact out of a phenomenon that had long been known in kitchens around the world. Andreas Sigismund Marggraf, a German chemist, reported in 1747 that he had extracted sugar from beets. In 1801, Frederick William III of Prussia provided funds so that Marggraf’s student, Franz Karl Achard, could establish a sugar beet farm and a beet sugar factory in Silesia. In 1811, facing complaints from cooks and consumers who could not get sugar from cane grown on British plantations in the Caribbean—there was a British blockade of Continental Europe and a Napoleonic ban on commerce with the enemy—Napoleon decreed that sugar beets be planted in France, that factories be established, and that schools provide instruction in the business. By midcentury, beet sugar was a major industry in Europe and competitive with cane sugar on the world market. Sales of beet sugar outpaced those of cane sugar in the 1880s. Beet sugar today accounts for about 20 percent of the world’s sugar production.
Many scientists provided support for the industry in the nineteenth century. Among them was Augustin Pierre Dubrunfaut, who wrote Art de fabriquer le sucre de betteraves (The Art of Manufacturing Beet Sugar, 1825), gave courses in the subject in France, and developed techniques for testing sugar quality. With funding from the Association of the German Beet Sugar Industry, Carl Scheibler established the Laboratory for Sugar Chemistry and Technology in Berlin. Harvey Wiley of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prepared a publication that allegedly “formed the basis of most of the work undertaken by private enterprise in this important industry.” He also sent USDA agents to inspect sugar beet farms and factories across the country.
A worker shovels beets at a sugar beet plant in Szczebrzeszyn, Poland, in 1974. Today about 20 percent of the world’s sugar supply comes from beets. forum / uig / bridgeman images
The techniques used for processing beet sugar are similar to those used for cane sugar, but with several important differences. Juice is pressed from cane, but it is extracted from beets by the diffusion method, which involves cutting the beets into thin slices and soaking the resulting “cossettes” in a series of warm-water tubs. The impurities are removed from cane sugar by washing the raw sugar in a refinery. With beet sugar, the impurities are removed from the juice by means of carbonatation, a process that involves the addition of such chemicals as calcium hydroxide, carbon dioxide, and calcium carbonate.
The next step of the production process for both beet and cane sugar involves evaporating the water from the sugar juice. The vacuum pan was the first important solution to this problem. Devised by the English chemist Edward Charles Howard, the vacuum pan made use of the well-known principle that a liquid placed in a partial vacuum will boil at a lower temperature than at atmospheric pressure. The multiple-effect apparatus joined several vacuum pans together in such a way that vapor released from the liquid in one pan was used to boil the liquid in the next, with each pan at successively lower pressure and temperature. Norbert Rillieux, a free person of color who was born in New Orleans and educated in France, imagined an energy-efficient apparatus of this sort in 1830 and oversaw its implementation on sugarcane plantations in Louisiana in the 1840s. The technology was introduced to beet sugar factories in Europe in the 1850s, and it is still used today.
The work of planting, cultivating, and harvesting sugar beets is arduous, and historically it was mostly done by poor people, many of them immigrants, women, and children who were willing to work for pathetically low wages. This practice was as true in the United States as it was elsewhere in the world. In 1933, Fortune magazine described beet sugar as an American industry with un-American working conditions, noting that the cultivation of sugar beets required vastly more labor than any other common crop. The trade journal Sugar agreed that the industry had been “shackled to ‘stoop’ labor, hired in battalions to work on hands and knees or stooped doubled all day long at thinning, weeding, topping and loading sugar beets,” and acknowledged that it “was almost the last American form of agriculture to leave the age old peasant level of farming.” Mechanization replaced much of this hand labor around the mid-twentieth century.
American farmers depended on European beet seed. Fearing that European farmers got the best seed, Americans pushed for a domestic source, and by the 1930s researchers had succeeded in creating a monogerm seed that produced one beet root rather than several, thus eliminating the need to thin plants in the field. Another new seed produced beets that were resistant to the curly top virus that devastated many fields.
A marketing study in the 1940s found that industrial users knew that sucrose was sucrose, whatever the source, but many domestic consumers thought beet sugar had an unpleasant odor. The problem was that cane sugar refineries operated continuously and consistently; beet sugar operations, on the other hand, were seasonal, and so the product was less consistent. Despite a massive ad campaign arguing that beet sugar was as good as cane sugar, this perception of difference lingers today, and probably explains why many beet sugar packages are now labeled “pure sugar” while cane sugar packages are labeled “pure cane sugar.” Today, some 80 percent of the world’s supply of sugar comes from cane, and 20 percent from beet. Russia is the largest producer of beet sugar.
While bagasse—the dried cane stalks left over from producing sugar—can be used as fuel, beet pulp and molasses are valued as animal feed. And in Iran and Turkey, cooked sugar beets are a favorite street food. Vendors sell the ruby-red beets by the piece, deliciously caramelized in a simmering, sweet broth.
See also sugarcane agriculture and sugarcane.
The Sugar Bowl is an aptly named college football game that was first played in January 1935, during the depths of the American Depression. For 40 years the game took place at the old Tulane Stadium in New Orleans, near the site of the sugar plantation of Étienne de Boré (1740–1820), where cane sugar was first successfully granulated in 1795. To make sugar syrup crystallize, de Boré combined a vacuum-pan process with Spanish molasses-making methods. But he did not invent this process; de Boré’s accomplishment was making sugar profitable as a commodity crop, and his entrepreneurial success made him famous.
Fred Digby (1912–1958), the sports editor of the New Orleans Item, is credited with being the driving force behind the annual football exhibition, and with calling it the Sugar Bowl. Although American “bowl” games take their name from the bowl-shaped stadium first designed at Yale University, the Sugar Bowl literalizes its name by using a sugar bowl as its logo. The irony of staging the Sugar Bowl at the site of a sugar plantation that utilized slaves may not be lost on the football players, most of whom are now African American, according to statistics compiled by the television sports network ESPN.
Ever since the Sugar Bowl was moved to the Superdome (now the Mercedes-Benz Superdome) in 1975, the Sugar Bowl has attracted ever-larger crowds, topping 70,000 in 2012. Now 80 years old, the Sugar Bowl has showcased 23 national championship teams—more than any other college bowl—and has distributed more than half a billion dollars to college athletic departments over the course of its history. Perhaps the greatest Sugar Bowl game was the wild offensive match in 2006 between West Virginia (the underdog) and Georgia, won 38–35 by West Virginia, which gained 502 yards to Georgia’s 501.
In a city renowned for its pralines and sweet blues and jazz, the Sugar Bowl remains a sweet spot in the New Orleans economy, as it is a most profitable enterprise.
This postcard, printed by the E. C. Kropp Company between 1935 and 1960, shows an aerial view of Tulane University football stadium in New Orleans, Louisiana, where the Sugar Bowl football game is played annually. library of congress
See also new orleans; plantations, sugar; sports nicknames; and sugar refining.
sugar cubes were first made in the early 1840s by Jakub Kryštof Rad, director of a sugar-beet refinery in Dačice, Moravia (now in the Czech Republic). Sugar cones, though beautiful, were hard to break into handy pieces, and lumps cut with sugar nips varied considerably in size and shape. See servers, sugar. Rad experimented with pressing moist, grated sugar into something resembling a modern ice-cube tray: once completely dry, the cubes were ready for use. His innovation was so successful that he obtained a five-year patent for it in 1843. However, a few years later he moved to another enterprise, and his technique was gradually forgotten.
Development of the Sugar Cube
The next sugar-cube breakthrough occurred in Cologne, Germany, at the Pfeifer & Langen sugar company, founded in 1870 and still flourishing today. In 1872 Eugen Langen developed his own technique for making sugar cubes, which relied on a centrifuge to create blocks of sugar that were then sawn into cubes. Patented in 1874, the method proved so effective that the British sugar giant Henry Tate bought exclusive rights for British production and introduced sugar cubes to the British public on a large scale. See tate & lyle. In 1894 Tate switched to another technique that had been invented in Belgium in late 1880. This process used special cylindrical turbines to manufacture tablets from powdered sugar that were then sawn into regular cubes, initially called “dominoes.” In 1902 the Tienen Sugar Refinery, Belgium’s largest sugar maker, adopted the technique, which it uses to this day to produce an extremely hard cube known as morceau dur, or Adant cube, after its inventor.
While this type of hard cube is still favored in Belgium, France, and some Arab countries, softer cubes molded from loose sugar are preferred in most other countries. The three predominant techniques for manufacturing softer cubes are the compression-based Chambon process (developed in France in 1949), the vibration-based Vibro process (invented in Sweden in the late 1950s), and the compression-based Elba process (invented in the Netherlands in 1970s; this process also produces tablets for hard sugar cubes). Other processes exist, including the still-used Hersey drum, patented in 1879 by Boston’s Charles H. Hersey. This was the first popular device to mold sugar cubes that do not require subsequent sawing. Originally called a molding sugar machine, it was perfected in 1929 to mold sugar into fancy irregular shapes.
This carved sugar sculpture, called Sir Henry Tate’s Mausoleum, was created by the artist Brendan Jamison in 2012. Henry Tate, the owner of the British sugar giant Henry Tate & Sons (later Tate & Lyle), bought exclusive British rights to a sugar cube manufacturing patent and introduced the British public to sugar cubes in the 1870s. courtesy of brendan jamison sculpture studio
The first wrapped sugar cubes appeared before World War I, although they proliferated only in the 1950s with the success of the Chambon process. Wrapped sugar cubes are still very popular in France and Belgium, and collectors avidly seek out the wrappers.
Uses of Sugar Cubes
Although the first sugar cubes created by Rad were sold in Vienna, Europe’s great center of coffee culture, they were labled “tea-sugar,” indicating that from the start sugar cubes were intended for use with tea. This may have been due to the old tea habit, especially popular in Russia and Persia, of drinking tea while holding a lump of sugar between one’s teeth and sucking the tea through it (the Russian term is vprikusku). A precisely cut sugar cube served this purpose even better than an irregular lump. The tradition, though gradually disappearing, still exists; Mosen Asadi, author of The Beet Sugar Handbook, mentions it as key to the continuing popularity of hard sugar cubes in modern times: “In most countries, people put a cube of sugar into a cup to sweeten their tea, so they want a cube that dissolves quickly. In some countries, however, people put sugar into their mouth where it slowly dissolves while they drink tea, so they want a hard cube” (2006, p. 455). Sugar cubes were fashionable at aristocratic tea parties, such as English afternoon tea; in the United States they were manufactured in the shapes of playing-card suits—diamonds, hearts, clubs, and spades—to be served at bridge parties.
During the American cocktail boom in the 1920s, sugar cubes were used for such classics as the Old Fashioned, for which a sugar cube is infused with Angostura bitters. In Europe, especially in France, the cubes became de rigueur for serving absinthe: a sugar cube was set on a slotted spoon over a glass, then cold water was poured over the cube to dissolve it. As the sugar dripped, it turned the green absinthe milky white. At midcentury the cubes became a vehicle for delivering the polio vaccine, and later for delivering LSD (indeed, “cube” or “sugar cube” is slang for LSD). See pharmacology and slang.
Today, when people tend to sweeten their drinks with artificial sweeteners, sugar cubes are essentially a niche product found mainly in bars and at proper afternoon teas. Tiny, multicolored and multi-themed sugar cubes (shaped into flowers, sea creatures, cats, elephants, etc.) are very popular in Japan, while in the West the dazzling white sugar-cube architecture by the Irish sculptor Brendan Jamison is featured in many art galleries.
See also artificial sweeteners; sugar; and sugar refining.
sugar in experimental cuisine —the movement in which chefs seek to understand the underlying science of their craft in order to control the various elements with which they work—is the basis of much investigation, notably to produce desserts that are less sweet than traditional ones. For many chefs, such “modernist” desserts not only harmonize with the savory side of the menu, they can also be more healthful, since their minimalism relies on intensified flavors rather than on abundant amounts of sugar and fat.
Will Goldfarb, one of the world’s leading pastry chefs and cofounder of the Experimental Cuisine Collective, identifies the evolution of nougatine as a key development related to sugar in experimental cuisine. In the 1990s the acclaimed French chef Michel Bras made nougatine (typically, a caramelized mixture of sliced or chopped nuts and sugar) by mixing crumbled pâte sablée dough into caramel; he then rolled it into a sheet as thin as filo dough to make nougatine with the crackling consistency of a crème brûlée crust. See crème brûlée. Working at Spain’s famed restaurant elBulli, Albert Adrià, the most advanced experimental pastry chef in the world, built on Bras’s recipe by substituting fondant and glucose for the sugar; he then went a step further, replacing the fondant and glucose with isomalt, a sugar alcohol. See fondant; glucose; and isomalt. Bras had played with the sugar in nougatine to make it easier to control; Adrià built on Bras’s work by attempting to control the confection’s hygroscopic properties and keep it a neutral color. With isomalt, Adrià was finally able to control nougatine’s texture as well as its sweetness, allowing him to play with flavors and shapes in multi-component desserts to evoke imagery such as landscapes. By revealing how various ingredients behave in baking and confectionery, Bras’s and Adrià’s experiments led to further developments in the experimental pastry kitchen.
For instance, isomalt, which is manufactured from sucrose in a two-stage process, is less sweet than other sweeteners, and it does not take on color until heated above 356°F (180°C). The fact that isomalt and other sugar alcohols like sorbitol don’t turn golden or brown means that pastry chefs can incorporate them into recipes in which a bit of sweetness is needed, but not a caramel color or flavor. At Mugaritz in Spain, chef Andoni Aduriz and his team spent five years developing “the Broken Egg, the Frozen Yolk, and the White Flowers,” a dessert featuring what looked like a real egg shell in both appearance and texture but was edible because it had been made of mannitol, a sugar alcohol. The dish also includes egg yolks cured in a mixture of sugar and salt that essentially cooks them.
Experimental pastry chefs often use sugar alternatives to sweeten their desserts, such as coconut nectar, palm sugar, birch sap, Stevia, granulated honey (prized for the texture it adds), and natural milk sugars. The natural sugars in parsnips, beets, and carrots have also made these vegetables popular in desserts in recent years. The experimental pastry kitchen is currently a hotbed of research, partly because the tasting-menu format of many high-end restaurants guarantees that pastry chefs have a role in the meal. Thus they can experiment with less risk than at traditional restaurants, where diners might reject an unusual dessert or choose not to order dessert at all.
See also pastry chef; plated desserts; and popping sugar.
sugar lobbies, made up of individuals or firms employed by the sugarcane and sugar-beet industries, act on behalf of these industries to influence government policies and actions that might affect sugar production, transport, labor, or sales and, therefore, profits. The U.S. government generally requires most lobbyists to register, to disclose who pays them and how much, and to list the matters they discuss with officials. The history of sugar lobbying in the United States can be traced back to the late eighteenth century, when Congress first imposed a tariff on imported sugar to generate revenue. Because tariffs are also protectionist, domestic sugar producers lobbied to maintain them and have done so consistently ever since. In the 1930s they also lobbied successfully for acreage allotments and support prices. That such policies remain in place today despite the higher cost of sugar to consumers can be attributed to the steadfast work and consequent political power of sugar-industry lobbying groups, and the obscurity and complexity of agriculture policy to the average American.
In 2013, 44 companies, trade associations, and organizations specifically mentioned the word “sugar” in their lobbying disclosure forms. These included sugar producers and processors such as the American Crystal Sugar Company and the Fanjul Corporation, and their trade associations, such as the American Sugar Cane League. Collectively, these politically powerful groups are known as Big Sugar. Others lobbying on sugar issues are international companies and associations that sell, transport, or trade sugar itself or foods and beverages that contain it. Public-interest groups concerned about the health effects of excessive sugar consumption also lobby on sugar issues. See sugar and health. These groups, however, are not equally influential. As commonly used, the term “sugar lobby” refers to Big Sugar.
Although lobbyists do not have to disclose their opinions on issues, it is easy to make educated guesses about what sugar lobbyists want from government officials, based on the primary elements of current sugar policies: price supports, marketing allotments, and tariff-rate quotas. These decades-old and seemingly immutable policies maintain the price of domestic sugar at levels higher than those on the world market. Big Sugar wants to keep protectionist policies in place and so far has succeeded in doing so.
Big Sugar gets its way through another mechanism: campaign contributions through political action committees (PACs). To cite just one example, the Florida Sugar Cane League’s PAC disclosed $155,000 in campaign contributions during the 2011–2012 election cycle. According to OpenSecrets.org, a site that tracks such expenditures, these funds supported politicians in Florida and 38 other states, with 44 percent of the contributions going to Democrats, 54 percent to Republicans, and 1 percent to an Independent. This PAC contributed to the campaigns of every congressional leader of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees. Other Big Sugar PACs followed similar contribution patterns.
The opponents of current U.S. sugar policies, whose efforts have proved unsuccessful to date, include companies such as Hershey’s and Kraft Foods that buy large amounts of sugar to use in their products and wish it were cheaper; food trade associations, such as the American Beverage Association; and business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that favor a free market in agriculture.
The strongest public argument for reform of current policies is the higher cost of sugar to consumers. In 2000 the Government Accountability Office estimated that elimination of sugar quotas and tariffs would save $1.9 billion annually. Passed along to consumers, this savings would come to only $6 per American, an amount too small to generate much outrage by elected officials or by the public.
Interest in sugar policy also comes from public-health groups such as the American Dental Association, the American Diabetes Association, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. During negotiations over the 2014 farm bill, these groups lobbied for a government-funded study of the health consequences of sugar-sweetened beverages, but failed to get it. See soda.
Because lobbying takes place in secret, it is difficult to know precisely how Big Sugar exerts its influence, but occasional examples surface. In 1998 the Starr Report revealed that sugar producers have unusual access to the highest levels of government. When President Bill Clinton entertained Monica Lewinsky on a national holiday, he interrupted their tryst by accepting a telephone call from Florida sugar tycoon Alfonso Fanjul. Fanjul was objecting to a proposed tax on Florida sugar growers for cleaning up the pollution his company’s sugar production was causing to the Everglades. The tax was not enacted.
Another example occurred in 2003, when the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended that added sugars comprise no more than 10 percent of daily calories. Sugar lobbies induced two senators to demand that the United States withdraw funding from the WHO if it did not rescind the proposal. International sugar lobbies visited the governments of sugar-growing nations, warning them of the dire consequences of such advice. The WHO withdrew the proposal.
Early in 2014 the WHO reintroduced the 10 percent recommendation and suggested that consuming added sugars at 5 percent of calories would be even better for public health. Sugar lobbies expressed immediate displeasure, but times had changed and the recommendation held.
Nevertheless, Big Sugar has a long history of getting what it wants. Its work has ensured that no reform of sugar policy is imminent. The 2014 farm bill left the U.S. sugar program virtually unchanged, and sugar policies will not be reconsidered for another five years. But it is safe to assume that lobbyists on all sides of sugar policy issues are already working to influence the outcome of the next farm bill.
See also sugar barons and sugar refineries.
sugar painting is a Chinese folk art involving the creation of real and fantastic animals such as horses and dragons, as well as birds, flowers, and, more recently, bicycles, out of caramelized rock sugar. Practitioners trickle the hot caramelized liquid from a metal ladle onto a marble board or slab, working fast and with a sure hand because of temperature constraints that make it impossible to conceal or correct mistakes. Generally found in urban settings at markets and in parks, as well as at temple fairs, sugar painting is especially popular with children, who sometimes spin a wheel to select their model.
Sugar use in religious rituals is ancient; actual records of molded sugar animals and figures exist from the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644), when sugar was also used medicinally and became a luxury item. See medicinal uses of sugar. By no later than 1700, weddings of rich and poor alike included molded sugar animals, people, and even buildings said to enhance the experience of women when they later—with luck—gave birth.
Sugar painting was especially fashionable in Beijing, Tianjin, Shandong, the Huai river basin, and Jiangnan, encompassing the great cities of Nanjing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou; it was also popular in Guangdong Province. However, the art largely disappeared after the 1911 revolution, except in Sichuan Province, where high levels of sugar production and relatively peaceful conditions enabled it to flourish. Folk artists adopted designs for sugar painting that drew on the arts of paper-cutting and shadow puppets. Efforts to preserve sugar painting include competitions, classes, and official recognition as part of local cultural heritage.
See also china; stages of sugar syrup; sugar; and sugar sculpture.
sugar rationing is the national mandatory allotment and distribution of sugar, particularly in wartime. Instituted by the state, sugar rationing, accompanied by institutional price controls, is designed to ensure an equitable distribution to all civilians. As a major commodity in the modern world, sugar has frequently been rationed by governments during times of war and food scarcity.
This 1917 poster compares America’s voluntary sugar rations during World War I to the compulsory rations of two pounds in England, just over a pound in France, and less than a pound in Italy. library of congress
The term “food rations” originally referred to a day’s worth of foodstuffs allotted to soldiers in the military. Although military rations existed in ancient civilizations, sugar, a rare luxury of the time, was not included. Government rationing of sugar for civilians began in the early twentieth century as modern warfare wreaked havoc on national economies. By then, industrialization had allowed citizens of all classes to consume sizeable amounts of sugar. In World War I, Great Britain and Germany instigated rationing in general, and sugar rationing in particular, to stave off dire food shortages, rampant inflation, and black markets that severely hampered citizens’ ability to procure sufficient supplies. While the United States placed controls on sugar manufacturers and wholesalers during World War I, it did not implement mandatory consumer rationing, opting instead for campaigns urging citizens to voluntarily reduce their sugar intake, an approach that was only minimally effective.
With the advent of the World War II, however, both Allied and Axis powers instituted government rationing of food and other vital goods such as rubber, shoes, and clothing. Sugar rationing began in 1940 in Great Britain and was not lifted until 1953, years after the war’s end. To maintain morale, Britain allotted each citizen between 8 and 16 ounces per week, depending on availability, regardless of the individual’s size or caloric needs. The Soviet Union implemented rationing in 1941, mainly for metropolitan areas. Rationing was not deemed necessary for rural peasants, who were closer to food supplies, though in reality they suffered severe food shortages. In the United States, sugar was among the first items to be rationed, beginning just months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and among the last to be lifted, in 1947. Sugar rationing in Australia began in 1943. In contrast to the Allied practice, Germany’s allotments of rationed sugar differed according to citizens’ caloric needs. Worried about maintaining a strong output of agriculture and manufacturing, the government allocated greater quantities of food in general, and sugar in particular, to manual laborers than to office workers and children. Rations also differed according to ethnic heritage, especially for German Jews, whose rations approached starvation levels.
Rationing accompanied by price controls was designed to combat high inflation and ensure an equitable distribution of scarce resources, which governments regarded as vital to citizens’ wartime morale. In the case of the United States during World War II, government officials viewed rationing as a way to ensure an equitable distribution of food regionally and also across socioeconomic boundaries. The rationing of sugar in particular helped maintain a needed check on citizens’ consumption, and it assisted in muting the resentment that would occur if the more affluent received greater quantities than those of more humble means.
Most people at midcentury regarded sugar positively. Sugar was not just a pleasurable treat used in baked goods and beverages, but it was also deemed a reliable source of calories and energy. Although health professionals were aware that sugar was devoid of nutrients, they did not condemn it as a dietary evil. Moreover, sugar, as well as meat, was psychologically important, functioning as a symbol of abundance and cultural well-being. U.S. wartime sugar stocks were much greater than Europe’s, averaging 24 pounds per person annually, but Americans still found it difficult to satisfy their collective sweet tooth.
During World War II, and in the United States in particular, there was a common assumption, reinforced by the media, that women consumed more sugar than men. See gender. Women were therefore told to cut down on their sugar intake for the good of the war. Although it is difficult to determine whether women actually consumed more sugar, evidence indicates that women did seem to feel the impact of sugar rationing more than men. For women, sugar carried implicit notions of femaleness that pervaded the culture, and the sense of deprivation regarding sugar was largely a result of the highly symbolic and important domestic activity of home baking being curtailed by wartime rationing. The symbolic importance of baking as part of women’s contribution to the household economy, and the felt absence of this important ritual of domestic nurture during the war, heightened American women’s sense of what they were sacrificing. Housewives reported that sugar was the item they missed most and found the hardest to do without.
While most countries have instituted sugar rationing only during wartime, some countries experiencing chronic food shortages, such as Cuba, maintain a system of government rationing, including of sugar.
See also politics of sugar.
sugar refineries create very pure white sugar from the raw cane sugar produced in sugar mills. Raw sugar varies in color from a deep brown to a light tan, depending on its purity. Although various grades of refined sugar are produced, they differ only in purity and color; usually, refined sugar is sparkling white and colorless in solution. See sugar.
Most refined sugar is produced in stand-alone refineries, so-called destination refineries, located close to major markets. Raw sugar is generally transported in large bulk carrying ships, and conveyed to and from the ships at a high rate, typically 1,000 tons per hour. In some cases, refined sugar is produced at small refineries attached to a raw sugar mill. The costs of production for the latter are lower, particularly because they have the benefit of using steam and electric power produced at the sugar mill, using sugarcane bagasse as fuel. In order to be cost competitive, the very large stand-alone refineries need to make use of economies of scale. The disadvantage of refineries at raw mills is usually their distance from markets, since transporting refined sugar in packs or closed bags or containers that prevent contamination tends to be much more costly than transporting bulk raw sugar. In addition, raw sugar mills do not process sugarcane all year round, but have season lengths of between three and ten months, so that the storage of the refined sugar can be a major issue.
The number of refineries declined during the last century, with the smaller refineries closing down and the remaining refineries expanding. New refineries need to produce about 1 million tons of sugar annually to be profitable, although most existing refineries are smaller. In the late 1990s, the European Union ended subsidies for exports of white sugar from beet sugar producers. As a result, over two dozen new refineries have been built outside of the European Union in the last 20 years to replace the exports and provide for the ever-increasing demand for sugar. Most of these new refineries have been built in the Middle East, close to available markets. The new refineries are generally much larger than average size, with two refineries in the Middle East each producing more than 2 million tons of refined sugar yearly.
The largest sugar refining company is now American Sugar Refining, Inc., which owns six refineries in North America, including a back-end refinery in Florida, as well as the Tate & Lyle refinery in London and a refinery in Portugal. See american sugar refining company and tate & lyle.
White sugar is produced to specifications laid down by the European Union and by major consumers, particularly soft-drink manufacturers. Differences in specification relate largely to color, but in most cases the grades of refined sugar all appear identical to the human eye. Sugars are also produced in different size ranges to suit customers. These include cube sugar, castor sugar, icing sugar, and large decorative, and sometimes colored, sugar crystals. See sugar cubes.
In addition to white sugar, most refineries produce various grades of specialty sugars. These are mainly brown sugars, often carefully prepared by the refiners to meet niche markets and command a premium price in retail consumer packs. Various grades include soft brown sugar, caramel sugar, yellow sugar, and treacle sugar. All are boiled from low-purity syrups as a product of the refining process, or blended by coating fine sugar with a refiner’s syrup to produce unique flavors and colors. These sugars offer the ability to sell non-sucrose components with the products and reduce the amount of low-value molasses produced. See molasses.
Some refineries also produce liquid sugars, usually solutions of white sugar. This is the preferred form of refined sugar for some industrial customers. The advantages of this form include less labor, no handling of bags, elimination of dust, enhanced cleanliness, and reliable quality control. Liquid sugar is usually produced at a concentration of 67 grams of sucrose per 100 grams of solution—low enough to ensure that crystallization does not occur and high enough to reduce the transport of water in the product. An alternative product is invert syrup, which has some of the sucrose inverted to glucose and fructose, the advantage being the increased solubility of these invert sugars, enabling the production of a solution of 77 grams of sugar per 100 grams of product. See fructose and glucose.
No discussion of refineries would be complete without reference to golden syrup. This is an invert syrup made by a special process to provide an appealing taste. Made famous by Tate & Lyle in England, it has been produced for well over 120 years and is well known for its logo of a lion and the slogan “Out of the strong came forth sweetness,” a reference to Samson’s biblical exploits.
See also sugar refining.
sugar refining is the process of converting raw sugar into a high-purity white sugar. Raw sugar is a fairly pure product, normally varying between 98 and 99.5 percent pure sucrose. The refining process is largely dictated by the need to remove color and the other non-sucrose components. Refining is essentially a separation process rather than a bleaching operation.
Non-sucrose components from the raw sugar end up in the molasses stream. The lower the purity of the raw sugar, the higher the quantity of molasses produced. Since some sugar is present in the molasses, the yield of white refined sugar is usually between 95 and 99 percent, depending on the raw sugar. One of the major aims of the refiner is to minimize the loss of sugar in the molasses. See molasses.
The Refining Process
About half of the non-sucrose components, including color bodies, are contained in the thin molasses film around the raw sugar crystals. The affination process involves mingling the raw sugar with a syrup, and centrifuging off the liquid in high-speed batch centrifuges. This is an important step when processing lower-purity raw sugars, but it requires more equipment and energy. Therefore, this step is usually omitted when higher-purity raw sugars are processed.
The sugar is dissolved in water to give a solution of about 66 grams of sugar per 100 grams of liquor. The next step in the process involves clarification and filtration of this liquor. In most refineries, this is achieved by one of two processes:
Both clarification processes remove between 30 and 60 percent of the color, depending on the dosage of chemicals and whether additional decolorizing chemical additives are used.
This stereograph from 1912 shows how high-speed centrifuges spun off all the uncrystallized sugar, or liquor, leaving the crystallized sugar behind in a mold. library of congress
Bone char was traditionally used to decolorize the liquor. It was very efficient but had numerous disadvantages related to the sizeable and expensive plant required, as well as the large inventory of char needed. Decolorizing is now almost universally accomplished by pumping the liquor through columns of either ion exchange resins or granulated activated carbon (GAC).
The decolorized liquor is concentrated to a level close to saturation (about 74 g sugar/100 g liquor) before the crystallization process to reduce steam usage. Crystallization is accomplished under vacuum to minimize the formation of color and reactions involving losses of sugar, which are enhanced at high temperature. The process is usually carried out in batch vacuum pans, producing between 20 and 50 metric tons of sugar in each cycle of about two hours.
The liquor is concentrated in the pan until it becomes slightly supersaturated. It is then seeded with very fine crystals of sugar to initiate crystallization, and growth of the crystals proceeds rapidly. When the pan is full and the crystals have grown to the required size, the mixture of sugar crystals and liquor (termed massecuite) is run from the pan and subsequently fed to banks of high-speed centrifuges. The sugar is retained on perforated screens, while the mother liquor is spun off under centrifugal forces about 1,000 times the force of gravity. A little over half of the massecuite consists of solid crystals. Any higher crystal content would cause the massecuite to be too viscous to flow out of the vacuum pan. However, there is still enough sugar in the run-off liquor from the centrifuges to subject it to a second crystallization step. In fact, this is repeated, usually four times, before the color of the crystal produced is no longer low enough to be included in the product white sugar and still meet the quality specification. The run-off from the fourth boiling is sent to the recovery house, where additional sugar is removed. This recovered sugar is recycled to the beginning of the process to be reprocessed. The liquor from the final boiling in the recovery house is a molasses, which contains some sugar, but it can no longer be economically removed.
The white sugar product is dried before being sent for packaging or dispatch. However, sugar has a great propensity to cake, forming lumps and in extreme cases creating “tombstones” in bagged products, due to a small amount of moisture on the crystal surfaces that causes partial recrystallization as conditions change. At points of contact between crystals, this surface crystallization causes intercrystalline bridging. The sugar ceases to be free flowing and is said to be caked. Even though the dried sugar has a very low moisture content (about 0.04 g/100 g sugar), the sugar usually has to be conditioned in large silos to reduce its moisture content by about half. The sugar is contacted by warm, low-humidity air in the silos over a period of 24 to 72 hours, during which time the small amount of water within the crystal slowly migrates through the crystal and out into the air stream.
Profitable Refining
The major cost in refining, apart from the raw sugar, is energy. Stand-alone refineries generate their own steam and in most cases their own power as well. For this reason, all refiners attempt to be as thermally efficient as possible. On average refineries use about one ton of steam for every ton of sugar processed. This ratio depends to a large extent on the quality of raw sugar being processed. Older refineries tend to be less energy efficient. Some of the newer refineries get well below the average steam requirement by process integration involving a somewhat greater capital investment. Refiners with access to cheap forms of fuel are at a big advantage. Historically, due to the relative paucity of fuel and capital in the cane-growing colonies, most final refining was done close to the eventual consumers.
Refineries in Venice, Lisbon, and Antwerp, and later in London and New York, would reboil the sugar and clarify it, in many cases using blood or egg whites to absorb the impurities. With industrialization came steam power and advances in chemistry that made sugar refining ever more efficient, dramatically decreasing the cost and availability of refined sugar to the masses in the developed world. See sugar refineries.
The energy used is also the major contributor to the carbon footprint of refined sugar. The carbon footprint is largely dependent on the carbon footprint of raw sugar, which can in fact be close to zero if significant amounts of power are exported by the sugar mill. On average, the greenhouse gas emission from producing white refined cane sugar is on the order of 600 grams of CO2 equivalent per 1 kilogram of sugar. This is much lower than that of many other foodstuffs.
The cost of labor is also an important factor, particularly in a packing station. Most refineries are now automated to improve efficiencies and to reduce labor complements.
Another important aspect in refining is the management of sugar losses. Raw sugar is accurately weighed into the refinery, and the amount of sugar produced is carefully recorded, so that the overall loss can be established with confidence. The task of the refinery operator is to reduce the losses of sugar in molasses, filter cake, packaging processes, and in any effluents. It is also important to control process temperatures and pH values to minimize losses of sucrose due to degradation reactions. Loss of sugar in molasses can be reduced by utilizing some of the non-sucrose components, which would otherwise contribute to the molasses quantity, in the production of direct consumer specialty sugars. This can be an additional profitable revenue stream.
There has been a trend over the last few decades for the average quality of raw sugar to improve. Historically, 96 grams sucrose per 100 grams raw sugar was the raw sugar standard, and some producers still convert production back to this reference point. Refiners realize that better raw sugar contributes greatly to both sugar recovery and energy usage, and they are now prepared to pay more for higher-purity raw sugar. As a result, the average quality of raw sugar traded has substantially improved.
See also boston molasses disaster; sugar; and sugars, unrefined.
sugar riots refers to a series of consumer protests during the French Revolution. In the winter of 1792, as the growing threat of European war prompted panic and stockpiling, ordinary Parisians took matters into their own hands. Much as other consumers had done over the past century, they attacked any merchant who charged more than a “fair” amount for goods and refused to pay more than the “customary” price. Their rhetoric—the demand that merchants think not about maximizing profits but about meeting their neighbors’ needs—was itself traditional. Nonetheless, their demands were new, for protesters in 1792 (and again the following year) extended the idea of a “moral economy” to sugar.
Over the course of the eighteenth century, roughly six and a half million enslaved Africans were forcibly shipped across the Atlantic. See slavery. Their labor made sugar into one of the first imports of truly mass consumption: between 1700 and 1790, more than 13 million tons went from the Caribbean to Europe. See sugar trade. Used in jams, jellies, bonbons, cakes, pastries, and (perhaps most important of all) added to coffee, tea, and chocolate to make those bitter stimulants palatable, sugar became an increasingly central item in all urban diets. While France’s sugar consumption overall grew more slowly than Britain’s, the situation in Paris was different—by the 1780s, average consumption may well have been twice what it was in Britain, perhaps as high as a pound of sugar per person per week. Louis-Sébastien Mercier did not exaggerate when he described the city’s breakfasts as global commerce in miniature: “China or Japan supplies the porcelain … the tea comes from Asia … and with a silver spoon dug from the mines of Peru, you serve the sugar that unfortunate Negroes, transplanted from Africa, have made grow in America.”
The 1789 French Revolution severely disrupted these international commodity flows. In 1791, slave rebellions swept across the plantations of France’s richest colony, Saint Domingue (modern-day Haiti). The radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat responded in his L’ami du peuple (The People’s Friend, 29 November 1791) by asserting that no one really knew what was happening in the faraway Caribbean: tales of arson and murder were just rumors spread by grocers as excuses for raising their prices. In the eyes of Parisian consumers, the high price of sugar was as much a political crime as an economic hardship. Expanding the well-established belief in a “famine plot” (the widely shared idea that grain shortages were never accidental) to the case of sugar, consumers charged wholesalers with price-gouging and with depriving patriotic citizens of necessary goods.
In calling the protests of winter 1792 “sugar riots,” members of the political elite attempted to invalidate consumers’ demands. Sugar and coffee, legislators said, were merely “fictional needs,” no more truly necessary than handkerchiefs or pocket watches. Yet the social developments that did so much to make the French Revolution possible—the fortunes made trading sugar and slaves, the popularity of café culture, the growth of mass consumption—had also introduced new necessities. In the autumn of 1793, when they yielded to popular pressure and imposed price controls on “necessary goods,” officials included white, brown, and crystallized sugar in that category.
See also café and legislation, historical.
sugar sculpture, the practice of molding and modeling sugar into dramatic forms, has delighted diners for centuries. Few materials are more transitory in nature than sugar. Despite its ephemeral qualities, this substance has been used for at least a thousand years to create edible art and miniature architecture for the table, often as an expression of status, power, and extravagance. Though short-lived, these works were often significant features of prestigious events such as coronation banquets, sacred feasts, and military triumphs. No historical sugar sculptures have survived, but enough archival material, in the form of written descriptions, illustrations, and tools, exists for us to gain at least a fragmentary understanding of their magnificence.
In medieval and early modern Europe, sugar was a luxury product, and confectionery table ornaments were confined to royal or ducal entertainments. These extravagant examples of luxurious consumption had their origins in the Islamic world three centuries before sugar became readily available in Europe. Early confectioners in the Middle East and North Africa, who were responsible for developing sugar’s roles as a preservative and a medicine, also pioneered the use of this unlikely material as an artistic medium. In 1040 the Persian philosopher Nasir-i Husrau (or Khusraw, 1004–ca. 1074) visited the Cairo court of the Fatimid caliph Alī az-Zāhir (1005–1036). In his travelogue Safarnāme, Husrau explains how he attended a lavish banquet hosted by the caliph for the entire population of Cairo. Nearly 160,000 pounds of sugar were used to create sweetmeats and table ornaments for the feast, including a massive orange tree, 157 statues, and seven tabletop palaces, all crafted from sugar.
The culinary historian Meryle Evans describes a much later Ottoman festival in Istanbul in 1582, at which confectioners known as sukker nakkasarli provided several hundred cast-sugar figures for a spectacular parade commemorating the circumcision of the son of the culture-loving Sultan Murad III (1546–1595). The figurines included giraffes, elephants, lions, fountains, and castles, some of which were so large that they had to be carried by four people. This tradition seems to have been very well established in the city and may predate the Ottoman invasion of 1453, as the sucker nakkarsali were from the ancient Byzantine Jewish community. The strong sugar trading links enjoyed by the Middle East with Venice almost certainly acted as the vector that brought the art of sugar sculpture to Europe. It is likely that knowledge of the techniques used for constructing edible art works of this kind spread from the Levantine centers of sugar production to Venice and then on to the European courts.
To create figurines and other sugar novelties, these early workers used two methods, both of Middle-Eastern origin. The first, sugar casting, exploited the ability of hot syrup to crystalize, or “grain,” as it cooled in wooden, plaster, ceramic, or metal molds. It was best suited to simple subjects. The second technique was to freely model or mold a pliable paste made from a mixture of powdered sugar, gum tragacanth, and water. A recipe for this material, known variously as pastillage, sugar plate, or gum paste, first appeared in print in Girolamo Ruscelli’s De’ secreti del reuerendo donno Alessio Piemontese in 1552, though it had almost certainly been in use for a number of centuries before this. Its ability to be freely modeled and printed with very fine surface detail made it a much more flexible medium than grained sugar. See pastillage and tragacanth.
Sugar sculptures of mythic, natural, and heraldic animals serve as ornaments for the banquet table at the lavish wedding of Princess Jakobea of Baden and Duke Johann Wilhelm of Jülich-Cleves, held in the great hall of the castle at Düsseldorf, Germany. Theodor Graminaeus (1530–1590?) made this etching in 1587. getty research institute
The first detailed accounts in Europe of table ornaments made from food materials are in descriptions of fifteenth-century court feasts. These sweet novelties frequently shared their place on the table with other decorative elements, such as ornamental pastry, elaborately folded napkins, and intricately carved fruit. Allegorical devices wrought from wax, almond paste, and sugar were frequently displayed between the courses of royal or ducal entertainments, often in the context of dramatic and musical performances. In France these table emblems were known as entremets, literally meaning “between courses.” See entremets. Although they were constructed from sugar or other foodstuffs, they were not necessarily intended to be eaten, as many were gilded and painted with inedible and sometimes toxic pigments. The most spectacular were frequently reserved for the finale of the meal. Pierre Jean-Baptiste Le Grand d’Aussy (1737–1800) describes a seven-course feast in 1458 given by Gaston de Foix (1422–1472) to Charles VII of France (1403–1461), at which the final course culminated in a spectacular display of entremets in the form of stags, lions, and other beasts, all embellished with the king’s arms.
In England, where the most common term to describe a device of this kind was a sotelte, such table ornaments were presented at table with the other dishes of each course. Related to the sotelte was a variation known as a warner, though like the French entremet, it was presented in the intervals between courses rather than with the food itself. Presumably warners were given their name because they alerted the diners that the next course was about to commence. Both warners and soteltes frequently incorporated texts or mottoes relevant to the occasion. In Appendicis ad Joannis Lelandi Antiquarii Collectanea Pars Secunda (1770) John Leland cites a great feast on Passion Sunday in 1504 to celebrate the enthronization of the scholar William Warham as archbishop of Canterbury. A warner was conveyed into the hall on a portable round table before the feast commenced. The board was divided up into eight sections, with eight embattled towers made of flowers, representing the Oxford colleges, with “the Kyngg sytting in the Parliament with Lordes about hym in their robes, and Saint Wylliam lyke an Archbishop sytting on the right hande of the Kyng; Then the Chaunceler of Oxforde, with other Doctors about hym, presented the said Lord Wylliam, kneelying in a Doctor’s habite, unto the Kyng.” Texts in Latin issued from the mouths of the figurines of Saint William and King Henry VII, extolling the archbishop’s virtues. After this initial allegorical display, the first course of 14 dishes of fish was served, followed by “a subtyltie, as the last dyshe served at the same course.”
By the sixteenth century these elaborate creations were frequently mounted upon disks of almond paste known as marchpanes. The scholar J. S. Brewer in 1875 transcribed a set of accounts listing the expenses of a royal sugar banquet given by Henry VIII at Greenwich in 1526. We are told: “Wages of 7 cooks, 4 days at 20d., for making a subtilty, with a dungeon and a manor place, set upon 2 marchpanes, garnished with swans and cygnets swimming about the manor, 13s. 4d.” and “to Hugh, master cook to the Princess, for cutting of a tower set on a marchpane, and 2 chess boards and chessmen, garnished with 100 fine gold, 5s.
”Other royal kitchen accounts from the reign of Henry tell us that court heralds were also involved in the construction and decoration of these works. Carved wooden molds were frequently used in their construction. A probate inventory of 1551 of the goods belonging to a deceased York cook called William Thornton lists an impressive array of these prints: “A print called Sampson; print with Fleurdelice; small leache print; print with Lion and Unicorn; standing print with hart and hind; print with one knot; close print with birds; … print with other arms on it; small print; print with wheatsheaf; print with dolfinge.
”Similar molds from this period made from wood and pewter survive in German and Portuguese collections. The quality of workmanship is usually exceptionally high. Subject matters include heraldic devices, biblical scenes, mythological figures, and animals. Some German examples even depict erotic scenes in bathhouses. The English antiquarian Richard Warner (1791) discusses some indecent table ornaments from this period, including “representations of the membra virilia, pudenaque muliebria, which were formed of pastry, or sugar, and placed before the guests at entertainments.”
In Italy sugar sculptures were known as trionfi di tavola. At the wedding of Costanzo Sforza and Camilla Marzano D’Aragona in Pesaro in 1475, they were used as edible props in a complex allegorical performance that took place during a 12-course feast. See wedding. Costumed performers playing the role of the messengers of the gods announced the dishes of each course, some bearing emblematic trionfi to the table. One, for instance, dressed as a figure representing “the influence of fortune,” carried a painted sugar pail filled with gilded sugar money on which was coiled a sugar snake. Each coin was printed with portraits of the bride and groom.
A remarkable manuscript with detailed miniatures of the entertainments at this feast, with some of the trionfi clearly illustrated, has survived in the Vatican Library (MS Vat. Urb. Lat. 899). This manuscript is exceptional, as very few images of these objects, other than a few hazy sketches, survive from this early period. It was not until the seventeenth century that detailed drawings and prints of sugar sculpture began to appear in any quantity. The evidence of these remarkable images indicates that these fleetingly ephemeral art works were made with the same consummate skill as sculpture in more orthodox materials.
In addition to professional confectioners, important artists were frequently involved in the creation of trionfi. The historian Rocco Benedetti (1574) gives a detailed account of a visit of Henry III of France to the Doge’s Palace in Venice, at which the king was presented with an assemblage of sugar statuettes made from old designs by the deceased artists Jacobo Sansovino (1486–1570) and Danese Catteneo (ca. 1512–1572). Sugar figurines at some feasts appear to have been identical to bronze miniatures cast by other mannerist masters, such as Giambologna (1529–1608) and Pietro Tacca (1577–1640).
The art historians K. J. Watson and Bruce Boucher suspect that molds for casting these figures in grained sugar could have been made from the original bronzes. In 1600, artists in Giambologna’s workshop were involved in a project to create sugar statuettes from his designs for the wedding banquet of Maria de Medici to Henry IV of France. Michelangelo Buonorroti il Giovane gives a detailed account of the banquet, held in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, where “among the constant changing table ornaments were sugar figures of the Labours of Hercules, the slaughter of lions and bulls, Nessus and Deinara and before the queen an equestrian statue of the king.” Since Henry was not present at the occasion (the couple were married by proxy), this sugar figure, created by Pietro Tacca, was the closest that Maria got to her groom on their wedding day. It was probably identical to Tacca’s miniature bronze of Henry mounted on a horse, which survives at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon.
Some of the finest images of baroque sugar sculpture are to be found in some albums of sketches by Pierre Paul Sévin (1650–1710), a French artist who lived in Rome between 1666 and 1688. A number of Sévin’s drawings, which are in the National Museum in Sweden, illustrate papal table settings laid out with trionfi of an intensely religious character. A feast for Maundy Thursday given by Clement IX in the Vatican in 1667 shows a table decorated with angels carrying the instruments of Christ’s Passion, all executed in a lively baroque style. However, some even more detailed images of Italian sugar sculpture from this period are shown in a series of engravings included in John Michael Wright’s Ragvaglio della solenne comparsa, which gives a detailed account of an ambassadorial banquet held in the Palazzo Pamphilli in Rome in 1686.
Wright’s book contains a folding plate nearly four feet long that shows 12 large trionfi in the style of Bernini, ranged down a long table, with vases of sugar flowers and smaller figurines of heraldic lions, unicorns, and eagles scattered in the spaces. Wright, a Scottish portrait painter who organized the event, describes the table: “Thro’ the middle of it, from one end to the other, ran a Range of Historical Figures (some almost half as big as the Life) which the Italians, call Trionfi: They are made of a kind of Sugar-Paste, but modelled, to the utmost skill of a Statuary; So that they are afterwards, sent as Presents to the greatest Ladies; and their use at Entertainments, is to gratifie the Eye, as the Meat, Musique, and Perfumes, do the other Senses.” His observation that these complex and highly articulated figures were modeled from sugar paste, rather than cast from hot sugar syrup, is not surprising.
The emergence of porcelain figures and ornaments for the table during the course of the eighteenth century failed to eclipse these grand sugar tableaux. The new ceramic decorations merely came to share the table with their sugar prototypes. Numerous designs for dessert tables featuring garden plateaux laid out with sugar parterres, sculpture courts, and edible flowers were published in most European countries. A gradual fall in the price of the sugar resulted in a fashion for cheap, mass-produced sugar table ornaments among the merchant class. Richard Warner describes this downward percolation of what had formerly been a phenomenon exclusive to the royal courts: “It seems probable that the splendid desert [sic] frames of our days, ornamented with quaint and heterogeneous combinations of Chinese architecture, Arcadian swains, fowl, fish, beasts, and fanciful representations drawn from Heathen mythology, are only the remains of, or, if more agreeable to the modern ear, refinements on, the Old English Sotiltees.”
After the French Revolution, the French pâtissier Marie-Antonin Carême (1784–1833) published many eclectic designs for table ornaments, or pièces montées, to be constructed in pastry, spun sugar, nougat, and other edible materials. See carême, marie-antoine. His hugely influential drawings ranged across a wide spectrum of styles and included designs for ruined classical temples, neo-Gothic spires, Russian churches, and even Swiss cottages. However, his chief influence was to combine the formerly separate roles of confectioner and pastry cook. Many see Carême’s work as the start of something new, but in terms of sugar sculpture, it was also the end of something very old. In addition to using pastillage and grained sugar constructions, Carême popularized spun sugar techniques, though it was left up to a number of his followers to develop the related techniques of sugar pulling and blowing. As the nineteenth century advanced, the genre declined into sentimental kitsch, its chief expression being the iced Twelfth Night and wedding cakes of the Victorian period. See twelfth night cake and wedding cake. The privations of the two world wars initiated enormous cultural changes, and the sugary excesses of the patrician table became sociably unacceptable.
In the 1960s a resurgence of interest in old confectioner’s skills, chiefly among amateur cake decorators, initiated the modern sugar craft movement, which has now burgeoned into a global phenomenon with its own major support industry providing instruction manuals, classes, raw materials, and equipment. More recently, professional pâtissiers such as Ewald Notter and Jacquy Pfeiffer have developed the use of isomalt (hydrogenated isomaltulose) as an additive to cane sugar to produce impressively clear blown and pulled sugar constructions. See isomalt. This aspect of the craft has become increasingly popular in China, where it is frequently practiced in public by street vendors. A number of serious artists have also been attracted to the genre, most notably Belfast-born Brendan Jamison, who constructs architectural caprices from carved sugar cubes. See sugar cubes.
See also cake decorating; competitions; stages of sugar syrup; sugar painting; and venice.
sugar trade, which arose from the increasing demand for sugar that began in the early sixteenth century and has continued unabated ever since, parallels the political, economic, and cultural ascendance of European and Euro-American nation-states on the global stage since 1500. It is perfectly accurate to associate the growing global importance of sugar with the “rise of the West,” as the astronomical success of the transatlantic European trade in semi-refined cane sugar produced by slave labor in the Caribbean and Brazil that began in the sixteenth century provided the economic motor for the expansion of European empires in the early modern era and, as some have argued, for the Industrial Revolution that followed. Moreover, a direct link exists between the entrenchment of cane sugar in culinary habits across social and economic divides of Western Europe in the eighteenth century and the modern culture of sweetness.
In 1961, describing the transcendent place of sugar in the American diet, French critic Roland Barthes wrote, “Sugar is a time, a category of the world” (p. 28). Although he was concerned with characterizing something of the uniqueness of the mid-twentieth-century American diet, sugar consumption today is on the rise across the globe. The sugar trades that supply global demand in the twenty-first century are diverse and complex, at least in part because sugar, in its purest form as sucrose, can be derived from many plant sources, of which the two most common are sugarcane and the sugar beet. See sugarcane and sugar beet. The refining of sugar is pivotal to its history and to its worldwide spread, as it has permitted sugar to take on the transportable and marketable crystalline form that we recognize today. Although other refined sweeteners such as saccharine and high-fructose corn syrup have largely replaced beet- or cane-derived sugar in soft drinks, processed baked goods, and other pillars of contemporary Western food culture, sugar, nonetheless, is exceptional.
Beginnings
Although the origin of sugarcane is in the South Pacific, the first general indication of the appearance of a form of sugar that was transportable long distances, and thus susceptible to being widely traded, was in northern India before 500 b.c.e. The earliest Sanskrit reference to manufactured refined sugar (as opposed to other forms of cane sugar, such as cane juice) occurred sometime between the seventh and fourth centuries b.c.e., with the earliest datable reference appearing in a manual on statesmanship written between 324 and 300 b.c.e. There are multiple references in Sanskrit after that date that testify to the widespread cultivation, refinement, and consumption of sugar, as much for medical uses as for culinary ones. See medicinal uses of sugar; sugar refining; and sugarcane agriculture.
Both the knowledge of sugarcane and sugar products themselves diffused from India to China via the Indo-Chinese trade. Sugarcane was grown in northern Vietnam (Tonkin and Annam) during the period of the Indian Mauryan Empire (322–185 b.c.e.) when trade connections between India and China were being strengthened. Sugarcane was also cultivated elsewhere on the Malaysian Peninsula and traded into southern China from these locations from the third century b.c.e. By the third or fourth century c.e. loaf cane sugar was a commodity that was both imported and produced in Szechuan and elsewhere in southern China, with the first concrete reference to sugar manufacture within China appearing during the later years of the Han dynasty (206 b.c.e.–220 c.e.). By the Tang dynasty (618–906), the cultivation of sugarcane was well established in several locales in China; by the earlier period of this same dynasty, it was firmly entrenched in Chinese culinary practices, alongside other sweeteners such as palm sugar and honey. See honey and palm sugar. During the latter part of the Tang, loaf cane sugar was also imported from Iran into China via the Silk Road. By the medieval period widespread evidence exists for the exchange of cane sugar and agricultural knowledge of sugarcane cultivation between centers in the Middle East, North Africa, and China. For example, the travel accounts of Marco Polo (1254–1324) and Ibn Baṭṭūṭah (1304–1378) attest to the extensive culinary uses of sugar at the Chinese court and the knowledge Chinese cane growers gained from as far away as Egypt.
Medieval Islamic Sugar Trade
How did the Middle East emerge to be a center of sugarcane cultivation, and how did vibrant medieval trades in sugar develop concurrently in the Middle East and in both Islamic and Christian Europe? These trades depended on the diffusion of sugar westward from Asia, from India in particular, a process that occurred in gradual steps; the development of sugar industries and of export trades in sugar represented only the final stage. Knowledge of the sugarcane plant in Europe and the Middle East greatly preceded the commercial production of sugarcane and cane products in those places, which occurred only many centuries after commercial sugarcane production had been established in India.
The first wave of diffusion from India was to Persia in the sixth century. Once established in Persia, sugarcane spread with alacrity throughout the Middle East and further west, in waves that corresponded to Arab expeditions of conquest after the death of Muhammad around 632. Sugarcane was one of the most profitable of a broad array of crops, which included citrus fruit, eggplant, and spinach, dispersing from India through the Middle East to the Mediterranean and North Africa via Islamic conquests in the so-called Arab Agricultural Revolution.
There is evidence that a minor sugar industry existed in Mesopotamia in the decades before Muhammad’s death, but only in the tenth century do records point to sugar being a major industry in important Muslim areas of the former Persian Empire such as Hormuz, the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and south of the Caspian Sea. Sugar was also introduced to the Arabian Peninsula, Eastern Africa, and Zanzibar in the ninth and tenth centuries. Although it was being produced in Abyssinia by the twelfth century, a sugar industry did not develop further inland in sub-Saharan Africa. In North Africa, references to sugar export industries existed in Morocco and Tunisia as of the tenth century; while in Egypt, which became a center of sugar production and export, cultivation began in the tenth century, although large-scale sugar plantations did not develop in Upper Egypt until the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
The diffusion of sugar making to Islamic and Christian Europe, the strengthening of sugar trades bringing sugar into northwestern Europe, and the development of European culinary practices using sugar took two broad paths, one in the west and the other in the east of the continent. On the Iberian Peninsula in the west, sugarcane arrived in Spain soon after the Muslim conquest in 711, although the first references to a Spanish sugar industry date only to the ninth and tenth centuries. Southern Spain—Granada up to Valencia, in particular—became a hub of sugar production. In the eastern Mediterranean, the Norman conquest of Sicily in the twelfth century was responsible for spreading knowledge of sugar making and sugar consumption practices northward into Continental Europe, as sugar had been cultivated in Sicily in small amounts after the Arab invasion of 655, and in larger amounts after the growth of an export trade in the tenth century. The expansion of the northwestern European demand for sugar led to greater sugar cultivation in the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean (in Palestine, Cyprus, Rhodes, and Crete, for instance).
The Mediterranean sugar trades were largely in the hands of Italian merchants. Venetians dominated the eastern Mediterranean, whereas Genoese merchants controlled the Spanish sugar trade in the western Mediterranean, encouraging the expansion of production, even into the Algarve in Portugal in the early fifteenth century. In the sugar centers of the eastern Mediterranean, sugar often made up the same cargoes as the spices that Venetian merchants were bringing into Europe. See venice. Although of the two groups of commodities, sugar was of significantly less value than spices, even the relatively lower-valued crystalline form of cane sugar remained an elite good in Europe and the Middle East, consumed, as in China, in an array of culinary and medicinal ways. Venetian merchants shipped crystalline sugar by sea from the ports of Beirut, Alexandria, and Tripoli westward to Italy, Marseilles, and Aigues-Mortes in southern France, Catalonia, and England. Maritime trade networks taking sugar into Europe were connected to land-based distribution systems leading inland into Provence, Lyons up to Flanders from port cities in southern France, and into the Alps and Germany from Italy. Land-based networks also took Sicilian, Egyptian, and Cypriot sugar east to Baghdad, the Arabian Peninsula, and Yemen.
Decline of Mediterranean Sugar and the Rise of Atlantic Sugar
The decline of the Mediterranean sugar industry between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries was paralleled by the concomitant rise of the Atlantic sugar industry, which, nonetheless, was not the principal cause of the waning of the trade in Mediterranean sugar. The temperate climate of the Mediterranean, as well as other impediments of geography such as a lack of rainfall, had always constituted obstacles to the successful development of large-scale production in Europe of what is essentially a tropical crop. But the key causes of this decline were European and Middle Eastern warfare, recurrent waves of the bubonic plague, the stagnation of technological development, and restrictive production and trade policies in certain important centers such as Egypt. In addition to these factors weakening the trade in Mediterranean sugar, the Portuguese, who had newly colonized the island of Madeira, began to cultivate sugar there in 1433 and by midcentury were exporting it back to Portugal. The production of sugarcane on the islands off the western coasts of Africa, colonized by the Portuguese and Spanish with the goal of exporting sugar to Europe, continued apace in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, as Portuguese overseas expansion intensified. After Madeira, the Spanish introduced sugar production to the Canary Islands, and the Portuguese to the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea, where a subtropical climate ideally suited to sugarcane production and an enslaved African workforce were, for the first time, associated with the plantation model that had been developed in the Mediterranean. See plantations, sugar and slavery. By the first decade of the sixteenth century, São Tomé sugar was being exported to Antwerp that, with Bruges and Lisbon, was the most vibrant hub of sugar refining and international sale in Western Europe, reflecting the dominance of the Spanish sugar trade in the sixteenth century, when the Netherlands were politically integrated into the sprawling Habsburg Spanish Empire. The southern provinces of the Netherlands, which contained Antwerp, remained under the control of Spain after confederation of the northern United Provinces in 1580. After this date Amsterdam, the new vibrant capital city of the United Provinces, began to compete with Antwerp in sugar refining and the sugar trade. See sugar refineries.
By this time sugarcane production had been established in the new Iberian Atlantic world, transported by both the Portuguese and Spanish across the Atlantic Ocean almost from the beginning of their transatlantic expeditions. Christopher Columbus, a Genoese navigator with sugar-trading experience in Madeira, sailed under the Spanish flag and brought sugarcane to the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean on his second voyage (1493), while the Portuguese colony of Brazil was home to sugar plantations before 1516. See brazil. By the mid-sixteenth century Caribbean sugar made up 10 percent of the sugar imported into the Antwerp sugar market, whereas 50 percent was still from São Tomé; by the end of the century, though, Brazilian sugar had overtaken all competitors and furnished 85 percent of Antwerp’s sugar. By this time the crowns of Spain and Portugal were united, thereby greatly facilitating the integration of Brazilian sugar into Spanish sugar markets across Europe. More important, Brazil, with its capacity for plantations of a scale heretofore unseen in Mediterranean and Atlantic island settings, and with a propitious climate, provided the model that would successfully diffuse outward. Two other factors played key roles in the success of this Brazilian model: first, after initially depending on enslaved Amerindian peoples to make up the labor force on sugar plantations, the Portuguese turned in greater numbers after the 1570s to imported enslaved Africans, thereby hugely expanding the Portuguese transatlantic slave trade and rendering the trade in sugar more profitable. Second, technical innovations in milling in the first quarter of the seventeenth century improved the efficiency of sugarcane processing on plantations.
Sugar production on the Spanish Caribbean possessions of Hispaniola, Cuba, and Puerto Rico developed slowly in the sixteenth century and could not seriously compete in European markets with Brazilian sugar. Nevertheless, by the eighteenth century it was the British and French island possessions in the Caribbean which, by far outstripping Brazil, had become the locus of the Atlantic production of sugar, as well as of the burgeoning global empires of Britain and France. This process began with the diffusion northward of the Brazilian model of sugar plantations and its slow and erratic establishment in the Lesser Antilles in the second half of the seventeenth century, aided in no small part by the arrival on Barbados, Martinique, and Guadeloupe of Dutch refugees from Brazil in 1656, who had been ousted by the Portuguese from their 30-year occupation of Brazil. Dutch refugees were vectors for both European and African knowledge of sugarcane cultivation and sugar processing according to the “Brazilian model.” By the late eighteenth century British and French Caribbean sugar production had exploded and reached its peak, largely due to increasing British investment in the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and to the attribution in the early eighteenth century to sugarcane cultivation of vast tracts of land in the Greater Antilles: the two most productive sugar islands were British Jamaica and French Saint-Domingue (the western third of the island of Hispaniola). Expanding sugar production in the Caribbean led to the global transformations that defined European empires in the eighteenth century. It fueled the triangular transatlantic trades linking sugar production in the Caribbean with the African sources of slave labor that ensured sugar could be profitably produced, and with European consumers via complex merchant networks that also shipped textiles and other manufactured goods, foodstuffs, and naval stores, as well as sugar byproducts and other tropical commodities, around the Atlantic world.
By this period sugar consumption had become deeply entrenched in Western Europe and in European colonies in the Atlantic world and across the globe. The lowering of the price of sugar that slave labor permitted meant that sugar was no longer exclusively an elite good, but one that had begun to permeate all social classes. Expanded sugar consumption entailed not only an increased direct consumption of the many grades and qualities of sugar and sugar by-products now available (including treacle, molasses, and other sugar syrups, as well as rum), but also the creation of new forms of sugar consumption (such as in the new dessert course, in baked goods and preserves, and with tea) that were widely shared among social classes. See molasses and rum. Cane sugar consumption also stimulated the production and sale of a whole array of manufactured goods that accompanied these new culinary forms (such as sugar tongs, sifters, spoons, and bowls), reflecting the depth of its widespread adoption in European culinary cultures. See servers, sugar.
Emergence of the Sugar Beet
The depth of the cultural absorption of sugar explains why the wars, revolutions, and transformations to the institution of plantation slavery that occurred over 40 years at the end of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century, disrupting the transatlantic trades in cane sugar and cane sugar byproducts, did not stem the overall consumption of sugar, but instead profoundly altered the way it was produced. The first of these events was the 1791 Haitian Revolution, when the enslaved plantation labor force of the French colony of Saint-Domingue successfully overturned the social, political, and economic structures of power—including slavery—and, almost overnight, upset the supply of cane sugar in the single most productive sugar colony in the world. Concurrently, rising abolitionism in Western Europe eventually led to the end of the slave trade and the emancipation of slaves by the 1830s in the British colonies and 15 years later in the French ones. The new types of Asian and Indian immigration that were devised by colonial authorities after the collapse of slavery were not, however, profitable labor alternatives when it came to sugar production. Eventually, both these phenomena led to an overall decline in the cane sugar productivity of the traditional sugar colonies. While cane sugar production continued in Spanish and Portuguese colonies of the Atlantic world, especially in Cuba in the late nineteenth century and in British Guiana, these regions did not completely fill the vacuum left by the British and French Caribbean colonies, which were also facing competition in global sugar markets by colonies located in tropical Asia and Asia Pacific, where European empires were extending themselves in new ways and with renewed vigor in the nineteenth century.
However, the competition to cane sugar that would have the longest-lasting impact on global sugar markets occurred with the emergence of the sugar beet during the Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815). The ability to extract and refine sucrose from the common sugar beet (Beta vulgaris)—grown in Europe since at least the end of the fifteenth century—had been developed in Germany in the mid-eighteenth century, launching a fledgling industry there. But it was the British blockade of Continental Europe, cutting French transatlantic access to its remaining sugar colonies in the Caribbean, which prompted Napoleon to initiate a French sugar beet industry. By 1813 France was producing 7.7 million pounds of sugar from sugar beets. The resumption of transatlantic shipping in 1815 temporarily brought the growth of this French industry to a halt, but it quickly picked up in the postwar years, due chiefly to its competitive advantages compared to cane sugar in this period. From being a largely French industry within Europe, sugar beet production grew slowly in Austria, Hungary, and Russia.
Unlike sugarcane, which required a tropical climate and was primarily grown in monocultural plantation settings, sugar beets could be comprehensively incorporated into preexisting European agricultural systems: leaves and roots were used as cattle feed, and the crop was used in rotation with other crops, which increased yields overall. For these reasons, the European sugar beet industry—again unlike sugarcane—became inextricably bound up with the globalization of agriculture in the nineteenth century, in which free trade was the political economic watchword of the new imperial superpowers. While Britain had emerged as the largest global consumer of sugar in the eighteenth century—due in no small part to the fact that France controlled the lucrative re-export trades in sugar within Europe, leaving Britain to consume its own colonial production—the country’s sugar consumption only increased in the nineteenth century, thanks to cheap European beet sugar imports. By the end of the century sugar beets provided just over 50 percent of the world’s refined sugar, and sugarcane just under 50 percent.
Modern Sugar Trade
The proportions of cane sugar and beet sugar reversed in the early twentieth century as a result of changes in the system of agricultural tariffs; however, the real challenge to the growing dominance of beet sugar was posed by the rising power of the American market for sugar, which had been gathering strength since the late nineteenth century. In this period of American expansionism, U.S. investors and imperialists, who (often in tandem) maintained active political and commercial interests in Caribbean and Latin American territories as well as in Hawaii, promoted the expansion and intensification of cane sugar cultivation in these territories to profit from this domestic market. They also lobbied for the removal of import tariffs on cane sugar. See sugar barons and sugar lobbies. Nowhere was this pattern more fully and successfully put into practice than in Cuba, which, by 1918, had grown to be the world’s largest sugar producer, based entirely on sugarcane. The global context for Cuba’s rise was the devastation of Europe’s sugar beet production during World War I.
The first half of the twentieth century saw the extension of both the sugar beet and sugarcane industries within the continental United States (according to geographic variability). Fledgling sugar beet industries similarly developed in Britain, across the British Commonwealth (including Canada), Brazil, and elsewhere. In all these cases, production was intended for domestic consumption, with Commonwealth countries also supplying Britain. Steeply rising rates of sugar consumption across the globe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had the effect of multiplying the countries that grew sugarcane or sugar beets for domestic consumption, as well as increasing the demand on external markets for sugar. For instance, China began growing sugar beets in the early twentieth century. Nevertheless, by the end of the century, Europe alone dominated the global sugar beet industry, producing four-fifths of the world’s supply. India and Brazil, on the other hand, currently dominate sugarcane production, whereas Cuba is still the biggest Caribbean producer, despite the post-1989 loss of its markets after the disintegration of Communist-bloc countries in Eastern Europe. While cane sugar today dominates the world’s sugar supply, almost two-thirds of all sugar is now consumed in the country where it is produced, testifying to vigorous demand across the globe and to the national sugar industries that have been developed to meet it. The global sugar trade, which once had stimulated the world’s appetite for sugar, no longer supplies it.
See also belgium; china; legislation, historical; middle east; netherlands; north africa; portugal; spain; spanish-american war; and sugar.
Sugar Trust was the popular name for the American Sugar Refining Company (ASRC), a powerful conglomeration of sugar manufacturers that dominated the U.S. sugar industry from the 1880s onward. Although the ASRC was technically a trust for only a few short years, the popular press continued to refer to the company as the “Sugar Trust” for many decades. Like John D. Rockefeller’s famous Standard Oil Trust, the Sugar Trust symbolized ruthless corporate competition for a generation of muckraking journalists and populist politicians. Opponents were especially worried that the Sugar Trust’s actions raised sugar prices for consumers, and political cartoons sometimes personified the Trust as a bloated bully cruelly stealing penny candies from innocent children. Concerns about the Sugar Trust came up in debates over tariffs, corporate regulation, and even U.S. expansion into the Caribbean and Pacific at the turn of the twentieth century.
The Sugar Trust originated in a period when U.S. business leaders were experimenting with new ways to maximize profits and minimize the economic booms and busts that had characterized the nineteenth century. Before the late 1880s, no single firm dominated the sugar refining industry. Multiple independent firms—some corporations and some private partnerships—competed to sell their sugar. But a few large companies, mostly on the eastern seaboard, had made large capital investments in modern refinery equipment that they hoped to protect by limiting competition. Headed by the sugar magnate Henry Havemeyer, the largest refiners explored legal ways to consolidate their control over the competition. See havemeyer, henry osborne. In 1887, under Havemeyer’s leadership, 17 of the nation’s 23 sugar refining companies combined into a trust. The new organization, the Sugar Refineries Company (SRC), controlled 75 percent of the sugar refining business in the United States. A board of trustees managed all of the participating companies, and they issued inflated stock certificates in exchange for the original capital stock. The new company reorganized the entire industry and closed a number of refineries, so that by 1891 only four of the original refineries remained in operation.
Just three years later Congress prohibited this type of merger through the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890). The “Sugar Trust” quickly regrouped as the American Sugar Refining Company (ASRC), making use of a brand-new provision of New Jersey incorporation law that authorized “holding companies.” The holding company, like the trust, enabled the board of directors to control prices, allocate market shares, and otherwise coordinate the industry. The ASRC hastily acquired a number of the remaining independent refineries on the East Coast, which prompted the Department of Justice to begin an investigation. This inquiry led directly to the Supreme Court case United States v. E.C. Knight, which was decided in favor of the ASRC in 1895. This ruling set an important precedent, making it difficult for the federal government to regulate corporate mergers for the next several decades. For this reason, the “Sugar Trust” continued to symbolize lax antitrust enforcement among muckrakers and reformers.
Throughout the 1890s, the Havemeyer-controlled ASRC engaged in ruthless price wars with its main competitors, especially those operating on the West Coast. One competitor, the German-born Claus Spreckels, imported duty-free raw sugar from Hawaii to refine in his California factories. Spreckels had invested heavily in Hawaiian plantations, developing an irrigation system and recruiting laborers from Asia to work the fields. The conflict with Spreckels was neither the first nor the last turf battle for the Sugar Trust, although the major sugar refiners periodically reached agreements about dividing the market among themselves and setting prices. After Havemeyer’s death in 1907, the ASRC began a process of vertical integration, through which they gained control not only of their competitors, but also of resources at every stage of sugar production from seed to table. Especially after World War I, the ASRC expanded its control of Caribbean sugar plantations with help from New York investment bankers. The ASRC continued to be a powerful player throughout the twentieth century, eventually acquiring a controlling interest in Spreckels’s operations. In the early 1970s ASRC changed its name to Amstar and began investing heavily in the high-fructose corn syrup industry. See corn syrup. The company changed hands and went through a number of reorganizations, and since the early 2000s the company, with a diverse investment portfolio, has been called Domino Foods. Even though the phrase “Sugar Trust” has steadily fallen out of use since the 1910s, the company has repeatedly faced federal antitrust lawsuits at nearly every stage of its history.
See also american sugar refining company; sugar refining; and sugar refineries.
sugarcane looks very much like any other grass in the savanna. Some variants of it still grow wild in the fields, waving in the tropical winds of its native New Guinea. Tall and segmented like bamboo, with its reed-like stalk filled with sweet sap, Saccharum officinarum is at the origin of the main cultivated sugarcane species known today, all of which are hybrids. Cane has been known for at least 2,200 years and is a curiously adaptable plant. A perennial with a deep root system, it can flourish and grow upwards of 15 feet tall. Cane likes a climate where temperatures are above 70°F (21°C) and thrives in places where temperatures register above 81°F (27°C). When temperatures fall below 52–55°F (11–13°C), cane dies. It requires water but will do well when properly irrigated. It is tolerant of a wide range of soil conditions and can grow on both hillsides and on flat land.
No one knows whether cane moved by man, by weather, or by spontaneous generation, but cane was growing in India by about 550 b.c.e., and possibly in China by approximately 200 b.c.e. It was in India, though, that the sugar-bearing reed gained importance and became one of the first plants to inspire humans to technology. It was discovered that crushing and then boiling it could concentrate the sweetness of the plant. Sugarcane presses were used like oil presses. Cane was crushed, the juice was boiled, and a catalyst was added to precipitate out impurities. The sugar mills and the basics of processing sugar from cane juice remained virtually the same for millennia; however, as the process became more refined, so did the sugar, ultimately yielding the white crystals that we know today. See sugar and sugar refining. Early texts suggest that the cane was transformed into many different grades of sugar, with special medicinal effects attributed to each. See medicinal uses of sugar. Rock sugar called khand (thus, our word “candy”) was first described for the West in 326 or 327 b.c.e. by those in the retinue of Alexander the Great as “stones the color of frankincense, sweeter than figs or honey.”
History was changed forever by the introduction of sugarcane to the New World in 1493. Demand for the sweet substance produced by this perennial grass led directly to plantation slavery and its terrible abuses. missouri botanical garden
Sugarcane’s Travels
Sugarcane’s voyage to the western Mediterranean was a slow one that would take more than a millennium. Cane took 700 years to make its way from the Indian subcontinent to Persia by 600 c.e., and from there to the Middle East—notably, Egypt, Syria, and the Holy Land, where it arrived by the eighth century. There, cane and the technology of processing it into sugar became known by the Crusaders, who produced sugar in small quantities. By the thirteenth century, cane had progressed from the Holy Land into the Mediterranean, brought under Islam’s star and crescent. Monopolies rose and fell as Venetians, Genoese, and others vied for control of the increasingly lucrative trade. By the mid-fifteenth century, sugar had crossed the Mediterranean, leaving refineries in Crete, Cyprus, and other outposts, and had reached the Atlantic islands. By 1432 it was being refined in Madeira, around 1480 it was being established in the Canary Islands, and in the last decades of the fifteenth century it was being grown and processed on São Tomé. By then slave labor had been added into the deadly equation, and the die was cast for sugar’s conquest of the New World tropics. See slavery.
The Four Curses of Sugar
Throughout its march around the world, sugarcane brought with it what the historian Peter Macinnis has called the four curses of sugar:
Sugarcane and the slavery that it brought would soon transform the Western Hemisphere.
New World Sugar
Sugarcane was brought to the Western Hemisphere from La Gomera in the Canary Islands by Columbus on his second voyage in 1493. Columbus was familiar with the plant because his mother-in-law owned a sugarcane plantation in Madeira. Cane flourished on Hispaniola, and in his diaries Columbus remarks on the abundance of the harvest, although at that time there seems to have been no attempt made to cultivate it on a large scale. Small backyard plots were established in numerous locations—so many that when future colonists arrived, they thought the plant was native to the region.
Brazil would transform New World sugar and turn it into a commodity that would change the way that sugar was grown, and thus change the complexion of the Western Hemisphere. See brazil. The Dutch, who were at war with the Portuguese in northeastern Brazil, perfected the plantation system there, using enslaved African labor and large land holdings. See plantations, sugar. In the mid-seventeenth century, they were instrumental in creating the Sugar Revolution that transformed the Lesser Antilles to the monoculture of sugar.
The Sugar Revolution
The Dutch plantation system was brought to Barbados in the 1640s. Within two decades, what came to be known as the Sugar Revolution had begun in the Caribbean, transforming the region from a backwater of colonists trying to survive growing tobacco, cotton, indigo, and other crops to a haven for those in search of riches.
Richard Ligon was among those who set out for the region in 1647. His True and Exact History of The Island of Barbados, published in 1650, details early sugar production on the island. It may also be the first work in the English language to describe rum and its effects. The process of refining sugar was simple and remained relatively unchanged since ancient times. The raw cane was crushed in wind- or water-driven mills, and the resulting liquid—the trash called bagasse—was removed and used to fire the burners that heated the cane juice. The heated juice was clarified with a small amount of lime, and then ladled into copper boiling pans of successively smaller size, each over increasingly higher heat. Once the syrup reached the last boiling pan, it was allowed to evaporate until reduced to a thick syrup. This syrup was allowed to cool and was then further cooled in troughs before being poured into large casks or hogsheads that were perforated in the bottom to allow the molasses to drip out. This process was called the Jamaica Train method. Byproducts of sugar production were molasses, which could be reboiled after having dripped from the hogshead, and rum, which was prepared from the first skimmings of the copper pans or made from molasses. Both became valuable commodities in themselves. See molasses and rum. The raw sugar and molasses were shipped off to the mother countries in Europe, where the raw sugar was further refined, thus guaranteeing economic and political control over the colonies that produced the sugar.
Sugar created great fortunes in the Caribbean, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the expression “as rich as a Barbados planter” became a term for extreme wealth; the period was one of lavish excess on the part of the plantocracy, and of abject misery for the enslaved. See sugar barons. The Sugar Revolution marched through the Caribbean from south to north, first conquering the Lesser Antilles, then moving northward through the French and then Spanish islands until the Caribbean region was virtually given over to the monoculture of sugar. The eighteenth century was characterized by the model of large slave holdings and offered little change in technology. The nineteenth century added innovations such as the use of horizontal rollers, evaporating pans, and steam engines to turn the mills. By the early nineteenth century the discovery of beet sugar and its subsequent production heralded major competition for cane sugar. See sugar beet. The elimination of the transatlantic slave trade and the gradual abolition of enslavement in the British and then the French, Dutch, and eventually Spanish and Brazilian colonies also contributed to the end of the sugar epochs in the Caribbean.
The Continuity of Cane
Although sugar has never again been as transformational as it was during its early years in the Caribbean, it remains a major commodity. In Louisiana, where cane had been grown since colonization, it became an important crop in the early nineteenth century following an exodus of planters from Saint Domingue, and in the mid-nineteenth century the sugar industry began to take off in the state. Technological innovations like the vacuum pan evaporator, patented by Norbert Rillieux in 1843, replaced the Jamaica Train method and made Louisiana sugar profitable. Today, southern Louisiana remains sugar’s capital in the United States, and sugar from cane remains one of that state’s major industrial crops. In the 2010–2011 crop year, Brazil was the world’s largest producer of sugarcane, followed by India, China, Thailand, the United States, Mexico, and Pakistan.
Sugarcane continues to be one of the world’s most important crops. Although cane’s four curses have changed somewhat in the twenty-first century, they still apply. Having transformed the destinies of two hemispheres, sugar contributes to the world’s economy, and to its health, in ways that are still being determined.
See also colonialism; sugarcane agriculture; and sugar trade.
sugarcane agriculture likely originated in India and New Guinea. It is difficult to determine when cane sugar first became the principal cultivated sweetener, although evidence exists that it achieved dominance on the subcontinent of India more than 2,500 years ago, and it was in that country and China that commercial sugar was first produced from sugarcane. It was not until the early eighteenth century, however, that sugar began to be used by the general population in Western Europe. Sugarcane was unknown in the New World until Columbus introduced it on his second voyage in 1493. Today, it is highly adapted to a wide range of tropical and subtropical climates, soils, and cultural conditions and is propagated in over 100 countries, occupying more than 20 million hectares of land worldwide. There can be little doubt that as a source of food and renewable energy, and as a supplier of income to millions of people, sugarcane ranks among the top agricultural crops in the world.
Sugarcane is a tall perennial tropical grass with tillers—shoots that arise from the base of the plant to produce unbranched stems (stalks) from 2 to 4 meters or taller, and around 5 centimeters in diameter. The grass is cultivated for these stalks or canes, from which the sugar containing juice is extracted. The plant is described as a strongly growing grass with a C4 carbon cycle photosynthetic pathway and a high chromosome number exceeding 125.
Sugarcane Improvement and Variety Development
The first improvements in sugarcane resulted from the selection of sweeter, less fibrous types suitable for chewing. Sugarcane breeding is widely acknowledged as the principal method for improving productivity and lowering costs. Sugarcane varieties are the lifeblood of most major sugarcane industries. Further, variety diversification is essential to the survival of most sugar industries worldwide. The modern varieties, such as HoCP 96-540, HoCP 00-950, and L 01-299, have many different and often specific traits, such as high cane or sugar yield, good ratooning or stubbling ability, low fiber, and good sucrose extraction, which give them an advantage over the older varieties, such as CP 65-357, CP 70-321, and LCP 85-384. The variety must also have tolerance to disease and insect pests, be adapted to the local climate and soil environment, and fit into the management system in use. A variety might start out well but suddenly give way to a change in insect pests or disease pressure or to a new introduced pest or disease. Six to twelve or more years are generally required to develop a new variety using conventional breeding and selection techniques from the year the cross is made until its release as a commercial variety. Through the application of biotechnology and the use of genetic transformation and molecular markers, the industry is on the threshold of a potential revolution in sugarcane improvement.
Harvesting sugarcane is highly labor intensive, as crops ready for harvesting deteriorate rapidly. This 1938 photograph, taken by Russell Lee as part of a U.S. government project to create a pictorial record of American life, shows a Louisiana sugarcane worker at a rare moment of rest. library of congress
The ultimate goal of any effective sugarcane breeding and selection program is the development of new varieties capable of producing high sugar and other products of economic importance (such as ethanol) at a lower cost than can be attained with existing varieties.
How Sugarcane Is Propagated
Sugarcane is propagated vegetative, usually from setts (pieces of stalk that can be planted as single setts, multiple bud or eye setts, or as a whole stalk). Labor permitting, whole stalks are typically cut into shorter segments, containing three-budded setts, in the planting furrow. Approximately 5 to 10 centimeters of packed soil is placed over the setts. Sett germination varies with the season, variety, and treatment. Germination can be expected to be about 80 percent under normal conditions. However, with cool temperature, that is, below 61°F (16°C), germination and emergence of the setts can be drastically reduced.
Factors Affecting Sugarcane Cultivation
Sugarcane agricultural practices are influenced by many factors, including climate, soil composition and structure, irrigation and drainage requirements, varieties, pests and diseases, management, and availability of skilled labor and harvesting methods. Growers need to carefully consider such factors as variety, quality of the seed cane, row spacing, planting depth, fertilizer placement, sett treatment with fungicides and insecticides, planting time, and availability of water either from rainfall or irrigation. The main requirements for a high-yielding sugarcane crop are water, heat, sunlight, and adequate nutrition. The performance of a variety depends on its genetic potential, the quality and cleanliness of the planting material (pest- and disease-free), climate suitability for growth, time of milling, and, most important, the level of management provided. Varieties must be selected on the basis of proven performance (whether for sugar, fiber, or ethanol). Priority must be given to selecting the variety with the required agronomic and milling characteristics and with pest and disease resistance or tolerance. For the subtropics, where freezing temperatures occur, stalk freeze tolerance has to be taken into account. Sugarcane should be planted into well-drained and prepared soil corrected with lime as required. Cane should be planted when rains are reliable to conserve moisture for rain-fed cane; where irrigated, it should be planted only after irrigation has been installed.
Sugarcane Crop Cycle
The sugarcane production cycle typically lasts five to six years in most countries, during which time four to five annual harvests are made, but under irrigation and with the right variety, the cycle can be extended to over 30 harvests. The sugarcane’s life cycle begins in year one with the plow-out of old stubble from the previous crop cycle, followed by a period of fallow to prepare seed bed for a new planting. This fallow period can be as little as one to two weeks in the tropics to approximately one year in the subtropics. After the variety has been selected for planting, seed cane of that variety is machine- or hand-planted either as setts or whole stalks. After the plant crop has been harvested, it is normal to allow the crop to regrow once or several times so that two or more harvests are taken from the original planting, a procedure known as ratooning or stubbling. At the end of the cycle, the crop is ploughed out, and the field is replanted with sugarcane or another crop either more or less immediately, or after the period of fallow.
Sucrose Accumulation and Maturity
In the stalk, starch formation and storage occupy a greatly reduced role, presumably due to breeding and selection for varieties with enhanced stored sucrose levels. Sucrose, therefore, dominates as an accumulating end product and is transported from the leaves to the stalk via the phloem. Sucrose accumulation can be increased by factors such as environmental stress (incident sunlight, water, nutrients, and temperature), application of chemical ripeners, and planting density or arrangement. The phenomenon of ripening occurs when growth or stalk elongation ceases or slows, along with the accumulation of sucrose in tissues developed during the growth phase. Therefore, conditions that promote growth are not conducive for sucrose accumulation. Plant maturity also has a role in the relative rate of sucrose accumulation since, in the early stage of growth, plant tissues contain high levels of nitrogen, moisture, invert sugars, and enzymes, while operating with enhanced nitrogen metabolism and respiration rates. The process of aging eventually produces conditions where there is a gradual exhaustion of nitrogen and water with lowered reducing sugars, namely glucose and fructose, and reduced activities of the enzymes, resulting in the accumulation of sucrose. Thus, cane maturity is a function of variety and nitrogen and moisture status, but it is unpredictably complicated by climatic parameters such as light, temperature, rainfall, and humidity. Adding to this complexity is the fact that different varieties of sugarcane possess different sensitivities to the stresses that alter the rates of photosynthesis, structural growth, and sucrose accumulation. In some sugarcane-growing regions of the world, normal ripening does not occur for whatever reason, and interest is widespread in developing chemical methods to induce or increase ripening, or to enable its synchronization with harvest. Most chemical ripeners are growth regulators or herbicides that are applied in sublethal doses, which induce ripening by chemically restricting growth, allowing the plant to accumulate sucrose.
Harvest Management
One of the most important (and expensive) aspects of sugarcane production is the harvesting and the cane’s transport to the mill for processing. Hand cutting is still practiced in many parts of the world, particularly when cane is burned before harvesting. The move to green cane harvesting has brought with it a move to combine (chopper) harvesting, which is increasingly practiced by larger growers. Whole-stalk harvesters are still used in some areas but have been largely phased out in favor of chopper harvesters. Good harvest management is crucial to the profitability of both the cane grower and the miller. The grower invests significant time and money to produce the crop, but poor harvesting and transport operations can result in dramatic losses of recoverable sugar, both from physical losses of cane in the field and deterioration in cane quality before milling, especially if the cane is burned before harvesting and cut into short billets by the chopper harvester. Yield in the subsequent ratoon or stubble crop can also be depressed by poor harvesting practices. The harvesting and transport costs form a large proportion of the overall cost of cane production. Very careful consideration must therefore be given to both the selection and management of the harvesting and transport systems.
Environmental Management
Today, environmental management is a key priority at local, national, and international levels. The selection of suitable land for growing sugarcane and many aspects of farm management must be suitably managed to minimize adverse environmental impacts. The adaption of appropriate farming practices will ensure the long-term sustainability of soil and water resources, minimize impacts on downstream environments, protect or enhance regional biodiversity, and develop positive community relations. Most industries, particularly intensive agricultural industries like the sugar industry, must address a range of environmental concerns. Many of the environmental issues faced by the sugar industry are shared with other intensive agricultural industries. Some environmental issues arise from practices specific to the sugarcane industry, most notably, the practice of burning fields prior to harvesting to reduce the quantity of extraneous material delivered to the mills with the cane. Others, such as mill effluents and boiler emissions, arise from the nature of sugar as an industrial crop and the fact that, because of the costs of transporting cane, processing must be performed close to the point of harvest. All industries are required to follow local environmental legislation, which is different in each country. Essentially, they focus on management of emissions into the air, water use, liquid effluents, and solid wastes.
See also sugar and sugar refining.
sugarplums, in their traditional form, are sweetmeats made of dried fruits—not necessarily plums (prunes), but also figs, apricots, dates, and cherries in any combination—formed into an oval or round shape and rolled in sugar. Chopped almonds, honey, and spices such as aniseed, cardamom, fennel seeds, and caraway were sometimes included, further varying the basic recipe.
The association of sugared fruits with goodness has a long history. Fresh fruits preserved in honey were eaten for pleasure in ancient China and India, and throughout the Middle East, ancient Egypt, and classical Greece. In Europe, during the rise of the Roman Empire, sweetness in the form of preserved fruits became a metaphor for civilization and the virtues of the rule of law, a concept as much philosophical as practical. See ancient world.
The historian Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat writes that in France, as early as 1344, “candied fruits of many colours” were served as the eighth and final course at the coronation banquet of Pope Clement VI in Avignon. Arab hospitality has included similar offerings as “part and parcel of Ottoman hospitality rituals from the seventeenth century onwards.” The food historian Mary Işın notes that in The Book of Ceremonies prepared for Emperor Constantine VII in ninth-century Byzantium, mention is made of preserves and jellies prepared with plums, quince, citron, apple, and pear. At her marriage feast in seventeenth-century Istanbul, Mehmed IV’s daughter received from the groom “30 mules laden with sugar plums and sweet-meats.”
Meanwhile, the fabulous courts of medieval Italy—particularly those of Mantua and Florence—were setting new standards in luxurious feasting, exporting a taste for extravagant sugar fantasies using confectionery skills learned from the Arabs along with expertise in candying fruits. Candied fruits begin to appear as emblems of luxury in romantic literature as cane sugar replaced honey in the preparation of fruit-based sweetmeats, gaining popularity in northern Europe on the tables of the rich through supplies of loaf sugar exported through Venice and Genoa. See candied fruit.
Throughout non-temperate Europe, recipes for fruit preserves published in cookbooks increased the interest in the use of sugar as far north as Scandinavia and Russia, where native fruits—hedgerow berries as well as orchard fruits—were available to the poor as well as the rich. See fruit preserves. In Britain, techniques for preserving fruit appeared in books such as Mary Eales’s Receipts, but the name “sugarplum” was also in general use from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century to denote a comfit or dragée, a preparation of dried fruit or nuts given a hard shell by panning, a labor-intensive process of coating in layers of sugar to produce a luxurious sweetmeat. See comfit and panning. The word “sugarplum” also came to be a synonym for a bribe. By the 1830s, mechanization of the sugaring process brought “sugarplum candy” in manufactured form within the means of the general public while keeping the original (spurious) association with the fruit.
Sugarplums entered popular culture thereafter as a symbol of goodness and kindness, while sour plums can be taken as symbols of discontent. As bringers of joy, sugarplums wrapped in silver foil are hung on the tree at Christmas and given as presents; the Sugar Plum Fairy appears as the spirit of goodness in Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker; and good children in Clement Moore’s poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (best known from the first line, “’Twas the Night before Christmas”) have “visions of sugarplums” dancing in their heads.
The original concept of the sugarplum as luxury pleasure-giver continues in the form of real candied plums—particularly those of Carlsberg—wrapped and boxed for Christmas. At the popular (cheap) end of the confectionery business, the idea of the original sugar-rolled, chopped-fruit sugarplum survives in Britain in the form of fruit pastilles—sugar-dusted, plum-shaped, fruit-flavored, chewable sweeties. In Scotland, never a land to follow the English lead, “soor plums” is the name given to hard candy with a very sour flavor, known south of the Scottish border as “acid drops.” Scottish confectioners claim that the name commemorates an incident when plum-thieving English soldiers were worsted by the Scots—’twas ever thus. Meanwhile, in the United States, confectionery manufacturers jumped on the sugarplum bandwagon with plum-shaped, plum-flavored candies marketed as “sugarplum candy.”
See also Christmas; spices; and venice.
sugars, unrefined—sometimes called raw sugars—are produced by boiling the juice from sugarcane, sugar beet, sorghum, maple, or palm sap to the point of crystallization. See stages of sugar syrup. Once cooled and solidified, the resulting sugar is usually brown, because molasses adheres to the crystals. See molasses. However, depending on the manufacturing process, the sugar may be lighter or almost white in color. Modern sugarcane mills produce an off-white raw sugar—sometimes called turbinado, muscovado, demerara, or rapadura sugar—while more rudimentary techniques result in a wider range of colors because they are less efficient at removing molasses and impurities. See sugar and sugar refining. Refining refers to the process by which the remaining molasses particles are removed from the sugar crystals in order to make a perfectly white sugar. During the nineteenth century, sugar was refined by remelting the raw sugar, mixing it with lime, skimming off impurities, and finally filtering it through charcoal, sometimes of animal origin. In the twentieth century, non-animal forms of charcoal have become increasingly common. Soft brown sugars commonly used in cooking are not necessarily unrefined but may in fact be refined sugar with molasses added for color, flavor, and to increase the moisture content.
Until recently, consumers have placed a premium on whiter sugars, assuming that they were both sweeter and more pure. Refined sugar prices have fallen steadily since the nineteenth century, when advances in milling and refining brought economies of scale. Cheaper prices for refined white sugar have also helped to make it a popular choice. However, raw sugars now enjoy a growing niche market, selling at a premium price. Contemporary consumers sometimes prefer the unrefined product because it retains a mild molasses flavor, is less likely to have been processed using animal byproducts, or is perceived to be more natural or healthy.
For a variety of political and cultural reasons, people have continued to make and eat brown, unrefined sugars, despite the predominance of the refined product. Farmers and small-scale manufacturers in Asia, Latin America, and Africa have continued to make unrefined sugar from cane, sorghum, or palm sap on a small scale, using what might be called handicraft techniques. See palm sugar and sorghum syrup. The juice is extracted using small mills, which might be animal, water, or motor powered. The juice is then boiled in open pans, often with lime or other ingredients to help remove plant matter and impurities. After skimming, the juice is left to cool in cones, loaves, or other shaped molds, or is sometimes formed into balls or cakes. The process requires experience and skill, but it is not particularly capital intensive. The resulting sugars typically have a distinctive flavor and may be somewhat more healthful than refined sugar because they retain more mineral nutrients.
Consumers sometimes prefer unrefined sugars because they hold symbolic, religious, or nostalgic meanings. Gur and khand are unrefined sugars that continue to be eaten in India, even after the colonial government began to promote the refined sugar industry in the 1930s. See india. Mahatma Gandhi called for Indians to refuse factory-made sugar, suggesting that villages could resist British colonialism by making their own gur. Hindu consumers preferred khand and gur for religious reasons, since refined sugar might have been processed with animal bones. And cane farmers and millers preferred making unrefined sugars because they did not have to pay excise taxes, and their products were not subject to price controls. In the Philippines, unrefined sugar of this variety is called panocha, and during the period of U.S. colonial administration in the early twentieth century it continued to be popular despite colonial efforts to encourage modern sugar production. As in India, farmers made panocha in part because it was exempt from excise taxes. In Japan this type of sugar is called kuro zatō and kokutō. Panela, a cake-shaped version of unrefined brown sugar, is common throughout Latin America. Piloncillo is formed into a cone shape and is used in Mexico. Mexican merchants began importing piloncillo into the United States in the 1910s and 1920s to sell to Mexicans, many of whom had, ironically, arrived to work in the beet sugar fields. Mexican workers in the United States ate piloncillo, which sold for nearly three times more than refined beet sugar in the 1920s, mainly for religious and patriotic celebrations, and because its unique flavor reminded them of home. For example, piloncillo is an important ingredient in capirotada, a bread pudding traditionally made for Lent in Mexican and Mexican American cookery. See latin america. A variety of other plants besides cane have been used to produce unrefined sugar. Jaggery, an unrefined sugar made from palm sap, is common across Asia and Africa, for example. Most of these unrefined sugars can be purchased in ethnic grocery stores.
See also maple syrup; sugar beet; andsugarcane.
summer pudding is one of Britain’s best puddings. It uses bread and fruit and is made in a pudding basin, but only the fruit is lightly cooked, which makes it unlike other British puddings. This dessert was customarily made with raspberries and red currants, which give a pleasing, slightly sharp taste; now white currants, strawberries, blackberries, mulberries, and sometimes pitted cherries are used. The fruit is briefly cooked with a little sugar until the juices begin to run and the sugar has dissolved. The basin is tightly lined on the bottom and sides with slices of day-old white bread; when cool, the fruit is added and covered with a layer of bread to enclose it completely. The pudding is chilled overnight with a weight on top to compact it. To serve, summer pudding is unmolded onto a dish, cut into wedges, and served alone or with cream. The fruit juices soak into the bread, turning it a deep red, making the domed pudding truly spectacular and inviting. See pudding and united kingdom.
It is difficult to discover when recipes for summer pudding first appeared, and when this name was first used. Cassell’s New Universal Cookery Book (1896) includes a recipe called Hydropathic Pudding, but the author notes that this pudding goes by many names. She adds plums to the fruits that may be used, and also gives an alternative preparation that calls for filling the bowl with layers of thinly sliced bread and fruit. She concludes that the pudding is “useful for those who cannot take pastry or rich puddings, or for children,” a view echoed by Alan Davidson, who found it was served in health resorts where pastry was forbidden (giving rise to the name “hydropathic pudding”).
A sundae is a luscious, cold dessert made of ice cream covered with toppings, such as syrup, whipped cream, berries, nuts, sprinkles, or chunks of candy. A sundae is a rhapsody of taste that is both complex and amazingly simple. Although a sundae may contain many ingredients, making this dessert requires minimal cooking skills. A little imagination is the most important ingredient, and a homemade sundae can taste even better than one served in a restaurant.
Soda fountains and ice cream parlors served sundaes in the 1890s, but historians cannot pinpoint the treat’s origins. See soda fountain. In 1897 a soda fountain manual contained a peach sundae recipe and noted that other fruits and fruit-flavored syrups could be used to make the dessert. In 1900 a trade paper included eight sundaes in a list of treats every soda fountain should serve.
Over the years, sources have identified the sundae’s birthplace as Buffalo, New York; Evanston, Illinois; Two Rivers, Wisconsin; Norfolk, Virginia; Plainfield, Illinois; Ithaca, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; New Orleans, Louisiana; or New York City. A persistent legend attributes the sundae’s creation to blue laws that forbade the sale of soda, but not ice cream, on Sundays. However, there is no firm evidence to support this thesis. Two Rivers, Wisconsin, and Ithaca, New York, have been identified most often as the sundae’s birthplace, and blue laws were not a factor in either city.
In Two Rivers, Wisconsin, Edward C. Berners owned a popular ice cream parlor. One night a customer named George Hallauer ordered a dish of vanilla ice cream. Craving something more than ice cream, Hallauer impulsively asked Berners to pour chocolate syrup over it. Berners thought the combination was a bad idea, but he deferred to his customer. Hallauer liked the dish so much that he ordered another. Other customers tried the new treat, and word of the sensational dessert spread like wildfire through Two Rivers and nearby towns.
In Ithaca, New York, a young minister habitually stopped at Platt and Colt’s soda fountain for a dish of ice cream after his Sunday sermon. One Sabbath the pastor, yearning for a new taste treat, ordered a dish of ice cream with cherry syrup on top. On 5 April 1892, an ad in the Ithaca Daily Journal hawked the “Cherry Sunday, A New Ten-Cent Ice Cream Specialty Served Only at Platt and Colt’s.” A few days later the paper described the Cherry Sunday as “ice cream served in a champagne glass with cherry juice syrup and candied French cherries on top.” Although these newspaper items do not conclusively prove that Ithaca was the birthplace of the sundae, they offer more evidence than other towns have produced.
Soda fountains and ice cream parlors were serving sundaes as early as the 1890s. This classic fountain-style glass is filled with an ice cream sundae—ice cream topped with hot fudge sauce, whipped cream, and a cherry. renee comet
The Ithaca newspaper called the treat a Sunday, but other printed sources used sundaye, sondie, sundi, sundhi, or sundae. According to ice cream lore, religious leaders objected to the use of “Sunday” because they felt that the Sabbath should not be commercialized as the name of a soda fountain treat. Hence, sundae became the standard spelling.
The ice cream sundae is a delightful dish loved by millions. Chocolate, hot fudge, caramel, butterscotch, strawberry, and marshmallow syrup are popular sundae toppings, but they are only the tip of the flavor iceberg. Sundaes are most often built on a foundation of vanilla ice cream, but any flavor can be used. Sundae lovers are not bound by rigid recipes. They can choose their ingredients and experiment until they find just the right combination to satisfy their taste.
See also butterscotch; caramel; ice cream; marshmallows; and sprinkles.
See gummies.
sweet and sour is a combination of two basic flavors found in many food cultures. The culinary equivalent of guerilla warfare, it is a gastronomic ambush so pleasurable it makes even seemingly unpalatable foodstuffs taste good. Proof is provided by the food writer Mary Taylor Simeti, who recorded her friend Maria Grammitico’s memories of a dish—veal tripe in agrodolce—served at the conclusion of a wedding feast in Sicily: “Towards midnight you’d eat again … first you make a sauté of garlic, onions and celery … [then] you put in the innards, and then you added a bit of sugar, and when it was time to take it off the fire, you added vinegar.”
While sweet-sour flavors please the adult palate, the infant palate rejects sourness, even when sweetened, as nature’s warning of toxicity. As a digestive, the combination of sweet and sour bestows a feeling of well-being, real or imagined. The true value of a balsamic, the sweet-sour grape-must vinegar of Modena that provided duchesses with dowries, lay in medicinal rather than culinary use, though spiciness and complexity of flavor enhanced its primary purpose. In France and Germany, the digestive properties of sweet and sour are particularly appreciated in combination with mustard seeds, a palate-stimulator also found in Italy in the honey-sweetened, vinegar-sharpened fruit mustards of Cremona. See grape must and mostarda.
Further evidence of the pleasure-giving properties of sweet-sour can be found in the effect of lemon juice in creamy desserts, in vinegar taffy, in the Nordic taste for sweet-sharp dressings with salt-cured herrings, in China’s sour-sweet saucings for pork and duck, in America’s liking for sweet-sharp dressings on salads, and in the spiced chutneys and sweet-sour fruit sauces of British tradition.
sweet meals, occasions when the majority of the dishes are sweet, are highly culture specific, both in terms of the time of day when they are eaten and the foods served. Some are little more than snacks, while others are full-blown meals. Americans will happily make a meal of Cocoa Puffs cereal or French toast early in the day, but a sweet supper is considered peculiar. To most East Asians, a sugary repast isn’t a meal at all, an attitude they share with the French. An Austrian, on the other hand, wouldn’t think it odd to indulge in a slice of Gugelhupf for breakfast, a main dish of fruit dumplings for lunch, or pancakes for dinner (although probably not all in the same day). See gugelhupf and pancakes.
In the elite kitchens of medieval and renaissance Europe, the distinction between sweet and savory was nebulous; sprinkling just about any food with sugar was commonplace. See dessert. There were, however, events where most, if not all, of the food was something we would call “dessert” or “confectionery.” Pompeo Molmenti documents many of these sorts of meals in the sugar-refining capital of Venice. As early as 1493, Beatrice d’Este, visiting from Milan, describes a meal “composed of diverse things all made with gilded sugar, which numbered three hundred; with infinite plates of confectionery.” In the sixteenth century, meetings at the Doge’s Palace were accompanied by “storti, buzolai pignocadi, confetti pasterelli [probably cakes or tarts, ring-shaped cakes, and candied spices], and other confections.” Perhaps the most famous sweet meal was served to the French king Henry III in 1574 during his Venice sojourn. Molmenti notes that the fête featured some 1,260 sweetmeats, and even the tablecloth and napkins were made of sugar paste. See venice.
In seventeenth-century France, as coffee, tea, and chocolate made inroads into aristocratic foodways, it was up to the confectioners and pastry chefs to come up with a snack to accompany the sugar-laced beverages. According to Nicolas de Blegny’s 1691 guidebook to Paris, visitors to the city’s cafés could expect biscuits, marzipan, and craquelins (a large cracker) as well as sweet wafers and waffles on the menu. See café. Depending on the occasion and the status of the host, these snacks could turn into elaborate spreads, referred to as a colation by the titled set, according to Pierre Richelet, in his 1728 Dictionnaire de la langue françoise ancienne et moderne (he adds that they are called gouté by the commoners and the bourgeoisie). Somewhat earlier, in his L’art de bien traiter (1674), the cookbook author known only as L. S. R. gives a menu for a late-night colation that includes fresh and dried fruit, marzipan, and biscuits, but also venison paté, tongue, sausages, and cheese (colation also encompassed the meaning of “meal,” as it does in English). As late as the nineteenth century, these sorts of sweet meals could be quite elaborate. Le glacier royal (1844) gives menus for balls and soirées that might include five kinds of pastry, another five of ice cream, a selection of creamy desserts, and various soft drinks, as well as spiked punch. See ice cream and punch. For those on a diet there is consommé; for the rest, ham and tongue “sandwichs.”
In eighteenth-century England, mostly sweet meals began to form around the habit of serving tea, a beverage that had generally usurped the role of coffee in English society. See tea. By the 1750s afternoon tea had become an institution, with cookbooks suggesting a variety of tea wafers, tea cakes, crumpets, and buttery buns to serve for the occasion. Tea gardens and tea rooms proliferated along with the pleasure gardens then popular. In the nineteenth century, mass-manufactured biscuits, such as the “sponge tea cakes” manufactured as early as the 1830s by Huntley & Palmers and others, came to play a significant role in the afternoon ritual. See biscuits, british. By the Edwardian era (1901–1910), our current idea of afternoon tea had become institutionalized. The American magazine Good Housekeeping noted that, in 1906, London’s Cottage tea rooms offered a tea-time menu of “homemade cakes, scones and various sandwiches, not forgetting the proverbial English ices and iced coffee,” which, putting aside the ices, is not so different from what London’s Claridge’s Hotel serves today.
In the late eighteenth century, the French, in one of their periodic bouts of Anglophilia, briefly adopted the English habit of taking tea, although with a twist. According to the Irish novelist Sydney Morgan, who visited France a little after Waterloo, “The most usual, and indeed the most fashionable evening collation [in Paris] is ‘le thé,’ which, without being strictly the English tea, or the French goûter, formerly taken between dinner and supper, combines much of what is best in both—the exhilarating beverage of souchong and hyson, with confectionary and ices, found only in France.” Apparently le thé was often served a little before midnight. Later in the century, the petit bourgeoisie transposed the sweet snack into the afternoon hours, and it eventually moved into the public realm when salons de thé began to open in the late 1800s. See salon de thé. Today, this mid-afternoon pause (goûter in French) of coffee and pastry is still relatively common.
In Central Europe, as in France, English tea was in vogue around the dawn of both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. That said, there seem to have been a lot more pastries and coffee served than actual tea. François Le Goullon, the French chef to Anna Amalia, duchess of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in the late 1700s, includes a wide variety of both Central European and French sweetmeat recipes in Der elegante Theetisch, but not much information on tea. The popular little volume, first published around 1800, was still in print three decades later. The English tea revival in the Edwardian era filled German- and Czech-language cookbooks with dozens of recipes for Theegebäck (tea cakes) as well as Kaffeegebäck for the afternoon get-together or Jause. As perhaps nowhere else, the afternoon snack of coffee and cake remains an Austrian institution and is best savored at one of the country’s Café-Konditerei (café-pastry shops). See austria-hungary and vienna.
Sweet foods are hardly limited to the Jause in the former domains of the Habsburg Empire. A typical Austrian hotel breakfast buffet will include cold cuts and cheese, but also a variety of sweetened breads, Gugelhupf, and even tarts and cakes. But that’s just the beginning. A unique aspect of Central European cuisine is its long history of serving a sweet main course for either lunch or supper. This practice dates from an era when a variety of flour- or grain-based dishes were served on the many meatless days prescribed by the Catholic calendar. See mehlspeise. Though less common than it once was, a meal of soup followed by sweetened dumplings, strudel, pancakes, noodle pudding, or similarly filling dishes is considered normal.
In the United States, as in most cultures, there was and continues to be a strict division between foods considered appropriate for dessert and those served as the primary course in a meal. This distinction shifted as the country became more industrialized and urbanized. Today, few would consider a piece of apple pie and a hunk of cheese sufficient for supper, or mutton chops, tripe, and minced codfish appropriate for breakfast, as was common in the mid-nineteenth century. By the twentieth century, American suppers were supposed to be savory, even as breakfast became increasingly sweet, with sugary cereal, pancakes, waffles, doughnuts, and the like highlighting the morning meal. See breakfast cereal. Brunch, essentially a substantial sit-down breakfast eaten either late morning or in the middle of the day, is made up of both sweet and savory main dishes featuring eggs in one form or another, whether whole, as in Eggs Benedict, or incorporated into the batter of French toast or pancakes. Though early brunch menus of the 1960s emphasized savory dishes, it is now quite normal to eat only sweet foods at brunch. Other than these variations on breakfast, Americans frown upon a wholly sweet meal, even though manufacturers have made a valiant effort to convince dieters to forgo lunch and dinner in favor of “meal replacement shakes” and “bars.” Admittedly, given how much sugar is consumed in “savory” foods in the United States, the distinction between sweet and savory meals may be as irrelevant as it was in the Italian Renaissance. See united states.
See also banqueting house; breads, sweet; france; italy; and sugar sculpture.
sweet wine has a history that goes back to before the production of the first cane sugar. Then, as now, it required propitious conditions and specialized techniques, making it scarce. From the Middle Ages in Europe until very recently in the West, sweet wines conferred high status upon those who consumed them. Legends ascribe curative powers to sweet wines and declare them appropriate for the deathbeds of kings, thereby increasing their aura of the miraculous.
There is something genuinely miraculous about sweet wines, because yeast tends to convert all the sugar in grape juice into alcohol (and various fermentation byproducts), resulting in dry wines. Despite all the advances in winemaking technology during the last century, sweet wines still sometimes come about by accident when yeast fails to do its job properly. However, it is not by chance that many low-priced red and white wines on supermarket shelves that seem to be dry are actually slightly sweet. The sweetness in these wines has been added, usually in the form of grape juice concentrate, to make them taste more immediately appealing. Here we find a parallel to “savory” convenience foods with added sweetness.
When people speak of sweet or dessert wines, they are usually referring to white wines that have a much greater sweetness, at least 10 percent (a sweetness comparable to cola), if not 20 percent or more. Sweet wines are every bit as diverse as dry wines, thanks to three basic factors: the grape varieties used; the vineyard location, or “terroir”; and the harvesting and winemaking techniques used. A very particular combination of these three factors underlies each of the classic sweet wines.
Straw Wine
Excluding sweet fortified wines, three main methods are used to produce sweet wines. See fortified wine. Straw wine is made by drying the grapes on straw mats for a couple of weeks outdoors, or over several months indoors, until desiccation has concentrated the sugar content of their juice to the point where the yeast cannot convert it all into alcohol. Hesiod described this technique around 700 b.c.e., and it is still widely used in the Mediterranean Basin, most importantly in various regions of Italy for Vin Santo, but also for Recioto di Soave and the red Recioto della Valpolicella in Veneto, and for Vinsanto on the Greek island of Santorini. From farther north come the rare Austrian Schilfwein and Vin de Paille of the French Jura and Hermitage on the Rhône. Locally prevalent grape varieties are usually used for their production. Malvasia delle Lipari from the Aeolian Islands off Sicily is a rare example made from an ancient grape variety (Malvasia) and is the closest among contemporary wines to what Hesiod described. Straw wines tend to have a high alcohol content of 13 to 16 percent and a raisin-like flavor, and are often amber in color from deliberate oxidation.
Desiccation on the vine is a rare variation on this theme, most importantly as the main method for the production of sweet Moëlleux white wines from the Chenin Blanc grape in the Vouvray and Coteaux du Layon appellations of the Loire Valley in France (noble rot also plays a role in many top vintages). These wines tend to have around 11 to 13 percent alcohol, pronounced acidity and freshness, and aromas reminiscent of candied citrus and caramel.
The most famous sweet wines were produced by this method in Constantia, South Africa, between about 1700 and 1865. Arguably, Constantia was the first global wine, since it was exported not only to Europe during that period, but also to the Far East. In the early 1980s the Klein Constantia estate recommenced production under the name Vin de Constance, using the Muscat grape and closely imitating production methods described in the eighteenth century.
Noble Rot
The second method for producing sweet wines is to allow noble rot—the fungus Botrytis cinerea—to accelerate desiccation of the grapes by perforating their skin. Simultaneously, an enzyme released by the fungus oxidizes many substances in the grapes. A wine utterly different in aroma results, one that is also richer in flavor and body to that made from similar grapes unaffected by noble rot. A little bit goes a long way, hence the common practice of marketing these wines in half bottles.
Château d’Yquem in Sauternes, Bordeaux, is often cited as the classic example of a wine made from nobly rotten grapes. Its claim as the best such wine is hotly debated (Château Climens is the most obvious challenger in Sauternes, and they are legion in other regions). Like the dry white wines of Bordeaux, Sauternes is also produced primarily from a blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon grapes. It does not have nearly as long a history as is commonly supposed, the method of harvesting Sauternes by pickers making successive passes through the vineyards removing only the nobly rotten grapes having been developed only at the beginning of the nineteenth century at Château d’Yquem. Because making wine from rotten grapes was counterintuitive, European winemakers discovered the possibilities opened up by noble rot comparatively late in the history of winemaking.
After fermentation in small new-oak barrique casks, Sauternes has an alcoholic content of 13 to 15 percent. The alcohol and the tannins extracted by the wine from the oak cask during up to four years of maturation balance the sweetness of the wines, which have a rather low acidity content. Sauternes from top vintages can age for decades, the aromas changing during this process from fruit compote, marzipan, and vanilla to dried fruits and orange marmalade. As with all high-quality sweet wines, although the analytical sweetness level doesn’t change during the aging process, the level of sweetness one perceives reduces with time.
In recent years numerous attempts to copy this style have been undertaken, with varying degrees of success, in regions from California’s Napa Valley to Australia’s Riverina. The most widely acclaimed wines of this kind are made in the Neusiedlersee region on the eastern bank of the eponymous steppe lake in Burgenland, Austria, where Alois Kracher perfected this style during the 1990s. Humidity from the Neusiedlersee and many smaller nearby lakes encourages the rapid spread of noble rot, and given ideal autumn conditions, large quantities of lush sweet wines can be produced here with ease, as in Sauternes.
Confusingly, most sweet wines from this region are marketed under the designations Beerenauslese or Trockenbeerenauslese, which in their German homeland refer to wines in which the high grape sweetness content is balanced by high natural acidity, but there is no oak flavor, and the alcoholic content is low (usually below 8 percent, but often close to the EU’s legal lower limit of 5.5 percent). There is thus a totally different flavor profile in the majority of sweet wines from the Neusiedlersee, with their higher alcoholic content and moderate acidity.
This confusion doesn’t afflict the Neusiedlersee-Hügelland region on the western bank of the lake, which developed its own distinctive sweet wine, Ruster Ausbruch, in the early seventeenth century. Today, these wines are made from grape varieties ranging from the Hungarian Furmint to the French Chardonnay. Traditionally, they were made in barrels of neutral oak or acacia, and fermentation was encouraged to continue until a fairly high alcoholic content was formed. However, during the quality renaissance of the 1990s, producers like Feiler-Artinger pioneered Ausbruch, with a lower alcoholic content and new oak flavors.
A similar stylistic diversity can be found in contemporary wines from the Tokaj region in eastern Hungary’s Bodrog Valley. That wine industry experienced radical change following the end of communism in 1989, due both to foreign investment and homegrown pioneers like Istvan Szepsy. Traditional-style Tokaji Aszu wines tend to be amber in color with a higher alcoholic content (12 to 14 percent) than modern-style wines, which are invariably paler and are sometimes marked by oak aromas from ageing in barrique casks. Today, the Furmint and Hárslevelü grapes dominate, but in earlier centuries many others were also used.
Cellar techniques are also crucial for the wines’ distinctive style. Today, as when Máté Sepsy Laczko first described their production in 1630, Tokaji Aszu from top producers is made by fermenting the grape juice together with the skins and pulp, as in red winemaking. This intensifies the spicy aromas and increases the textural complexity of the wine. Today the designations 5 and 6 Puttonyos on the label are used for Aszu wines of ascending richness and sweetness, with a 6 Puttonyos wine (minimum 15 percent unfermented sugar) being sweeter than Sauternes. In March 2014 the designations 3 and 4 Puttonyos were abolished and the minimum sweetness of 5 Puttonyos raised from 12 to 13 percent—a rare example of standards being raised.
The very rare Tokaji Essencia is once again among the most sought-after sweet wines in the world, as it was for three centuries, until about 1950, when the effect of the communist economic system began to undermine the winemakers’ hitherto strong commitment to quality, a situation that became much worse after the crushing of the uprising of 1956. A minimum of 45 percent unfermented grape sweetness in the finished wine is required for this category. At this sugar concentration, fermentation is very slow and difficult. The result is a wine of overwhelming intensity, the dried fruits, honey, and spice flavors lingering long after it has been swallowed. The texture is also close to that of liquid honey.
The entire category of sweet wine is now in a paradoxical state. The golden age of sweet wines in the West ended roughly half a century ago due to changing culinary habits (notably nouvelle cuisine) and wine fashion, yet the world’s most expensive white wine remains a sweet wine. It is the very rare and enormously concentrated Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese from Egon Müller-Scharzhof in Germany’s Mosel. Systematic production of sweet Riesling wines of this kind began in Germany at Schloss Johannisberg in the Rheingau when the accidental delaying of the 1775 harvest resulted in the entire crop being infected with noble rot, leading to wines of a hitherto unfamiliar type. This method spread rapidly through Germany following the international sales breakthrough the Rheingau achieved with its wines of the 1811 vintage.
These wines, in ascending order of richness and sweetness designated Spätlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese, and Trockenbeerenauslese (often abbreviated to BA and TBA), tend to be low in alcohol with an interplay of grape sweetness, acidity, and aromas that is either exciting or tense, depending upon your taste. The spectrum of their aromas is arguably wider than for any other sweet wines, spanning the entire range of flowers, dried and fresh fruits, honey, and spices. Balsamic notes and aromas like beeswax, marzipan, and toast develop after bottle aging, and the finest of these wines will age for 30 (Spätlese) to more than 100 years (TBA).
Nowhere in the world did new winemaking technology more profoundly change sweet wine production than in Germany, not least because sterile filtration technology was developed there during World War I. Its later use in the wine industry enabled the addition of Süßreserve, or clarified grape juice, to “improve” simple wines, finally leading to the boom in cheap and sweet Liebfraumilch during the 1970s and early 1980s. Sweetness went from being an attribute exclusive to Germany’s finest wines to something they shared with the nation’s cheapest, a development that was fatal for the reputation of sweet German wine, which began recovering only at the turn of the twenty-first century. More recently, this method of popularizing simple wines has been applied to everything from Californian Chardonnay to red Australian Shiraz.
Ice Wine
The last method of sweet wine production is also a German invention. Ice wine is made by harvesting and pressing frozen grapes so that much of the water they contain remains in the press as ice. This results in juice too syrupy for the yeast to ferment to dryness. It took two centuries from the first recorded chance production of such wines until widespread systematic production of Eiswein began in Germany with the 1961 vintage. Ice wines can be as rich as BA and TBA, but they lack the honey and spice character of those wines (which come from noble rot). However, they are even higher in acidity, and this characteristic, combined with their high sweetness and tropical fruit aromas, makes them spectacular or extreme wines, depending upon your viewpoint.
Ontario, Canada, began ice wine production during the early 1980s, and when the 1989 Ice Wine from Inniskillin winery won the Grand Prix d’Honneur at the VINEXPO wine trade fair in Bordeaux in 1991, it was a breakthrough not only for that style of wine from Ontario but for Canadian wine as a whole. Today, Canada has slightly higher legal minimum standards for ice wine than Germany, and Ontario is the biggest producer of ice wine in the world. Recently, China also began ice wine production by employing Canadian experts, and like everything else new in China, it is being done on a major scale.
sweetened condensed milk is the product obtained by partly evaporating the water from milk and adding a sweetener, usually sugar. The condensed milk created by modern canning technology was long preceded by Indian sweets made from milk boiled down to a thick concentrate, sometimes with sugar added partway through the cooking. The same idea may have independently given rise to the Norman confiture de lait and some Iberian precursor of today’s Latin American dulce de leche, but documentation is sparse.
The industrial product arose not as a delicacy in its own right but in response to the importance placed by nineteenth-century dietary advisors on the single most perishable form of milk: fluid milk for drinking. In 1856 the American inventor Gail Borden Jr. devised a method of slowly evaporating the water from milk in a vacuum pan and pumping the thickened milk into large open cans. See evaporated milk. His invention arrived in time to benefit from lurid 1858 journalistic exposés of the filthy “swill dairies” then providing milk to many New York City consumers. In 1861 Borden unveiled a more sterile and transportable version that used sugar as a preservative and could be sold in hermetically sealed cans. This heavy, syrupy sweetened form, which earned him a lucrative contract to supply milk to the Union Army during the Civil War, is what has been known as “condensed milk” ever since. Like its predecessor, it was meant to be heavily diluted in order to approximate the milk’s original water content.
Within a few decades, other innovators were selling unsweetened evaporated milk and uncondensed fluid milk produced and distributed by improved sanitary methods. Both appealed much more to people who liked the taste of fresh milk. Sweetened condensed milk might have shrunk to the status of a rare emergency ration. Instead, it eventually reached a market for its own sake, precisely because of qualities not found in fresh milk.
At least some consumers in the industrialized temperate-zone world came to see the powerful sweetness and viscous body of condensed milk as pleasures, not drawbacks. It could be spread on bread or toast like honey, spooned onto hotcakes or biscuits like maple syrup, or used as a ready-made, endlessly adaptable dessert sauce. See honey; maple syrup; and sauce. As early as 1866, Jennie June’s American Cookery Book suggested serving it with fresh strawberries as an alternative to cream. By the early twentieth century, both home cooks and professionals working for food manufacturers were experimenting with other uses, turning condensed milk into various kinds of puddings or pie fillings. Purists denounced such shortcuts. In 1932 the food writer Sheila Hibben mocked expedients such as an uncooked filling made from “Screech Owl Condensed Milk”—a clear reference to Borden’s “Eagle” brand—mixed with lemon juice and poured into a graham cracker crust. Already, however, these shortcuts were indispensable in many kitchens. Many Florida Key lime pie recipes today are only marginally more elaborate than the “Screech Owl” version.
For generations, milk seldom reached most English or European colonies of the tropics and subtropics in anything but canned form. Sweetened condensed milk thus acquired many popular uses. In (and beyond) Latin America, cooks learned to place unopened cans in boiling water for several hours until the already thick milk condensed further into a close reproduction of dulce de leche. Condensed milk, sometimes mixed with evaporated or fresh milk, also became a popular base for flans. It usually figures in fillings for the Mexican version of American-style cheesecake, pay de queso. Throughout the Caribbean it appears in eggnog-like holiday punches, such as the Puerto Rican coquito. See dulce de leche; egg drinks; and flan (pudím).
English colonists in Africa and Southeast Asia relied on condensed milk in sweet sauces (e.g., the custard sauce for trifles) and desserts resembling cornstarch puddings that involved Bird’s custard powder mixed with condensed milk. See custard. It also went into resoundingly popular versions of coffee and tea, hot or iced, in Thailand and several neighboring countries. The famous Malaysian and Singaporean teh tarik, or “pulled tea,” often sold by mamak (Muslim Tamil) street vendors, is made by adding condensed milk to freshly brewed tea and rapidly pouring the combination between two containers to raise a froth.
Condensed milk was a well-known standby among the British in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and other treaty ports of the late Qing Empire. Both in China and abroad, cooks still favor it for a few uses. Condensed milk is an almost invariable sauce for some versions of mantou, small steamed or fried yeast buns that originated in northern China, and it sometimes sweetens the formerly salty egg filling in modern reworkings of lai wong bao, another kind of steamed bun. See china.
The French brought sweetened condensed milk to Vietnam, along with avocado trees and yogurt. Today avocado and condensed milk are a familiar pairing, with the milk used as a sauce for avocado halves or blended in an extravagantly rich milkshake. Meanwhile, Vietnamese-style yogurt made by inoculating a combination of fresh and thinned condensed milk with yogurt cultures has come to the United States with immigrant Vietnamese communities. See yogurt.
See also india; southeast asia; and thailand.
sweetness preference refers to the predilection for sweet tastes observed in numerous species, including humans, from infancy on. Our sense of taste is unlike any of our other senses, in that we are born with established likes and dislikes for its fundamental qualities. This fact reveals that there is something quite crucial about taste that cannot wait for the normal processes of postnatal experience and learning. From an evolutionary standpoint, sensitivities to sweetness (as a signal for calories), bitterness (toxins), and saltiness (sodium) are likely to have important roles in regulating the intake of nutrients and avoidance of toxins. This interpretation is supported by findings in rats of strong inverse associations between degree of toxicity of taste compounds and their palatability.
Most taste qualities—sweetness, sourness, bitterness, and umami (glutamate taste)—can also be shown to elicit stereotyped hedonic responses (facial expressions, suckling responses) very shortly after birth in humans. In particular, unambiguously positive facial expressions are observed when sugar is placed on the tongue of human newborns. This contrasts with the similarly obvious dislike shown to bitter or strongly sour tastes. Moreover, the same positive facial responses to sweetness may be observed in both rodents and apes. Infants also find sweet tastes pacifying in the face of painful hospital procedures such as drawing blood. Cross-cultural studies indicate that sweetness per se evokes nearly identical patterns of largely positive responses in adults—in this case, in the form of ratings of liking over increasing sucrose concentrations—even when their diets are substantially different. All these findings strongly suggest that our responses to sweetness as a quality are innate, with minimal input from our experiences with foods.
Sweetness Preferences and Evolution
The evolutionary explanation is that our survival depends on our ability to take in energy from our diet, and one of the major sources of such energy is carbohydrates, which include sugars. See sweets in human evolution. Sweetness, therefore, is an excellent signal for the presence of energy. In order to maximize energy intake, preferences generally rise with sweetness intensity. Human newborns not only respond positively to sugars, they also discriminate among different sugars, consuming more if given free access to those that are more sweet (sucrose and fructose), as compared to less sweet glucose and lactose. Moreover, the fact that sweetness preferences can be observed in very many species across diverse animal classes argues strongly for the importance of sweetness as a nutritive signal. In mammals, the only species that do not respond positively to sweetness are obligate carnivores such as cats. See animals and sweetness. Any mammal species that consumes plants is thought to show sweet preferences—signaling the adaptive importance of plant-derived carbohydrates.
Jacob Steiner, an Israeli scientist interested in the physiology of the senses, observed unambiguously positive facial expressions when he placed sugar on the tongue of human newborns, suggesting that our responses to sweetness are largely innate. © jacob steiner
Food Preferences Determined by Sweetness
One reason why both children and adults prefer so many sweet foods is that sweetness is a major factor in the development of food preferences. Thus, repeatedly experiencing a novel food flavor with a sweet taste leads to an increase in liking for that flavor, over and above pairing the flavor with just water. This observation remains true even when the flavor is tasted afterward without the sweet taste being present. The interpretation of this effect is that sweetness in intrinsically positive, and the flavor becomes—by association—also positive. In addition, though, a sensation of sweetness may be a signal to the body that energy is being provided, something most clearly shown when flavors are paired with a caloric sweetener. Again, liking for the flavor increases, but only when the sweetener provides energy—that is, the increase does not occur with nonnutritive sweeteners such as aspartame or saccharin. Similarly, such conditioned flavor preferences do not operate in the absence of hunger, so that need for energy determines whether or not additional energy from a sweetener is sufficiently positive to generate a preference for an associated flavor. For the same reason, the reverse is also true: the pleasantness of a sweet taste relies on our metabolic needs, and ingesting calories to meet those needs reduces the pleasantness of a subsequently experienced sweet taste.
Sweetness remains generally positive into adulthood, even in the form of sugar dissolved in water. On average, we tend to prefer sucrose in water at 10–12 percent (by weight), which corresponds to approximately the concentration of sugar in many ripe fruits. This equivalence has fed the argument for the evolutionary significance of sweet preferences. However, it is clear that this average preference value hides considerable person-to-person variation. The scientific data actually support the existence of a “sweet tooth” in perhaps half of the population, as well as of substantial numbers of people who increasingly reject sweetness as it becomes more and more intense, even if weaker levels remain liked.
How such differences arise out of the newborn’s universal acceptance of sweet tastes is not known. Evidence exists that greater liking for sweetness is linked to the higher consumption of both added sugars and sweet foods, suggesting the importance of experience and learning. Thus, among African Americans, higher rates of sweet liking have been reported, and one interesting habit in such populations is for mothers to feed their infants sweetened water. In both adults and children, the experience of a highly sweet version of a product produces an increased preference for that version. Variations in sweet liking act to influence the degree to which we develop liking for foods. For sweet likers, the pairing of a flavor with a sweet taste will result in a liking for that flavor; for those who show relative sweetness dislike, the result may be no increased liking or even a learned dislike for the flavor.
Sweetness plays an important role, too, in aiding the acceptance of foods or drinks that are initially too sour or bitter or spicy to consume. Adding cream or milk, plus sugar, a common combination for novice coffee drinkers, not only reduces the bitterness, but also provides the necessary positive tastes to produce liking for the coffee flavor itself. This is why, even if you drink your coffee white and sweetened, the smell of black coffee brewing is so appealing. This also explains why the transition in coffee drinking is overwhelmingly from sweetened coffee to unsweetened coffee, rather than vice versa. Other prominent examples of this kind of positive association are beer and wine, where consumers typically commence drinking sweeter versions and then graduate to drier (less sweet) wines or more bitter ales.
Genetic factors are also important in determining to what extent we prefer sweet tastes. Sensitivity to sweetness, as measured by the threshold at which we can detect it, shows unremarkable variation across individuals for either sucrose or saccharin. However, the pleasantness of very sweet solutions of sugar has been found to be partly heritable, as have the pleasantness and frequency of consumption of selected sweet foods. This finding is consistent with the fact that the sweet liker/disliker distinction is not associated with different degrees of sensitivity to sweetness, but rather seems to be confined to how much we liked increasing sweetness. Craving for sweet foods such as chocolates, while apparently not related to bodily needs, does, however, also seem to be partly heritable.
Sweetness in Food Contexts
Although overall most people highly like foods that are dominated by sweetness, our diets do not consist of foods that are overtly and predominantly sweet. Nor do we like unlimited amounts of sweetness—for each food, there is a “just right” level. From infancy onward, our experience of sweetness is usually within foods or drinks that have a characteristic sweetness level. Hence, our response to sweetness in foods becomes highly context-dependent. We are less likely to hear the complaint from children that a food is too sweet, but as we become more familiar with a particular level of sweetness within a food or drink, that level becomes the preferred one. Most tea or coffee drinkers will have an opinion about how much sweetener to add. If you take no sweetener, then any is too much. If you take two spoonsful, then any variation up or down will leave you dissatisfied. In other words, “appropriate” sweetness levels are learned.
More generally, preferred sweetness in foods is often linked to other food ingredients, such as the acids in fruit and the fat in desserts, cakes, and all things creamy. We tend to prefer our sweetness in balance with these other qualities. Indeed, there appears to be a genetic determinant to whether or not a particular degree of combined sweetness and creaminess is preferred. Whereas sweet, creamy sensations are generally liked, how much sugar or fat is required for greatest preferences varies, due to genetic markers of overall taste intensity.
As noted above, when sweet tastes are paired with odors and flavors, they become more liked, at least if you are not someone who dislikes sweets. This process of association also produces the interesting, commonplace phenomenon of odors that smell sweet, such as caramel, vanilla, and strawberry. See aroma. It is thought that sniffing an odor that has been previously paired with a sweet taste evokes that taste from memory, thus providing the experience of sweetness. The relevance of this phenomenon is twofold. First, it demonstrates that the sweetness experience consists of more than just “sugar on the tongue”—our past experiences are also crucial. Second, these odors can work in much the same way as “real” sweetness by, for example, making a sweet beverage or food more sweet, or a sour one less sour.
Sweet Preferences and Overall Diet
What effects do our preferences for sweetness have on our diet? When asked to eat until they are comfortably full, most people will consume much greater quantities of sweet foods than savory or salty ones. This phenomenon appears to have more to do with the taste, rather than a need for the energy that a sweetener might provide, since it occurs even if we use sweeteners that do not provide calories. In fact, in modern Western diets, sweet taste and energy consumption have been increasingly decoupled. Because it is so innately rewarding, sweetness does not always need to be accompanied by calories for it to be pleasurable or influence food consumption. It is the quality of sweetness itself that our bodies respond to, since its meaning has previously been unambiguous. Hence, sweet tastes can exert effects on palatability and consumption in the absence of any effect sweetness has on our metabolism. This fact has an upside in terms of its effects on calories consumed. Dieters who eat foods that are sweet—but without calories (for example, sweetened with aspartame)—are better able to comply with their diets and lose weight.
It is not difficult to think about the universal pleasure derived from sweetness in terms of drug like properties. It is known that sweetness palatability is mediated by the same opioid (morphine-like) biochemical systems in the brain that are believed to be the basis for all highly rewarding activities. Drugs that block the activity in brain opioid systems to eliminate the effects of heroin and other opioid drugs will also reduce food palatability and intake, especially of sweet foods.
Such parallels, however, merely illustrate that sweet tastes are rewarding. That the majority of foods self-selected by children in Western societies are primarily sweet reflects the innate pleasure that sweetness provides; of course, this choice may also indicate just how available and promoted sweet foods are. In terms of the body’s needs, a high preference for sugars makes sense when energy needs are high. However, very little evidence exists that strong preferences for sweet foods in childhood necessarily lead to adult obesity, or even to continued high consumption of sweet foods beyond puberty, as they often are consumed (or at least traditionally have been) in childhood.
See also addiction and sugar and health.
sweets in human evolution are a subject of considerable study among scientists ranging from molecular biologists to cultural anthropologists. Our mammalian and primate heritage predisposes us to liking sweet taste for a number of reasons. See sweetness preference. Mammalian milk contains the sweet-tasting disaccharide lactose (glucose linked to galactose in β1-4 glycosidic linkage). The higher lactose and much higher oligosaccharide content of primate milk makes it even sweeter than cow’s milk or the milk of other dairy animals. We belong to a lineage with a long history of frugivory, defined by a taste for ripe fruit, and like our closely related ape cousins the chimpanzees and bonobos, we tend to love honey. Even early in our evolution our ancestors sought out ripe fruit, favoring the sweetness that develops as plants accumulate sugars in their maturing fruit to entice consumption by seed dispersers. The sweet taste of fruit is mostly due to glucose, the disaccharide sucrose (glucose linked to fructose in α1-2 linkage), and the monosaccharide fructose, which tastes even sweeter than sucrose. See fructose; fruit; and glucose. Most primates exhibit the hedonic “gusto-facial reflex” when tasting soluble sugars. Interestingly, larger primates appear to have lower detection thresholds for sugar.
Honey
Chimpanzees love to eat honey from a variety of bee species, including African honeybees (Apis mellifera) and stingless bees (Melipona, Meliponina, Meliplebeia, and Trigona spec.). Chimpanzees use stick tools to dip into the honey of stingless bees, but they raid the much larger hives of honeybees by rapidly reaching into the nest to rip out a comb before fleeing. African honeybees will fiercely defend their hives by stinging any intruder, including large apes. Humans use fire and smoke to gain access to both wild and domestic beehives. It is unknown when humans started using fire. The oldest evidence from Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa is dated at 1 million years ago, though it is conceivable that the use of fire is as old as the genus Homo (2 million years). Honeybees react to smoke by engorging themselves with honey, and the smoke severely limits pheromone communication among the bees. Thus, approaching a beehive with an ember wrapped in dry grass or leaves to generate continuous smoke allows humans to harvest large quantities of honeycomb and brood comb (for extra protein and fat). Humans are the only species capable of harvesting honey in such quantities. It has recently been proposed that humans have been raiding honeybee hives for possibly more than a million years. This hypothesis is supported by the phylogenetic analysis of two distinct lineages of the African greater honeyguide (Indicator indicatoer), a bird that lives symbiotically with humans. The greater honeyguide points out the location of beehives so that humans can raid the hives and make wax comb available to the bird, the only vertebrate capable of digesting wax. Living hunter-gatherers in Africa and Asia report that honey is among their most favored foods. See honey.
Plants and Sugars
Most plants use photosynthesis to fix carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into sugars. Plants build their rigid cell walls out of cellulose (long polymers of β1-4 linked glucose). Cellulose is difficult to digest, but animals such as ruminants and primates with specially adapted fermenting guts (leaf monkeys and gorillas) can extract substantial energy from cellulose with the help of cellulose-digesting microorganisms. Humans can digest disaccharide sucrose and poly-glucose starch (which, unlike cellulose, consists of glucose in α1-4 glycosidic linkages). See starch. Grasses such as rice, wheat, barley, millet, and corn also store sugars as starch in the endosperm of their seeds. The mere act of chewing starch introduces salivary amylase enzymes, which cleave starch into shorter and sweet-tasting oligosaccharides (malt). There is genetic evidence for human adaptation to the consumption of starch, as human populations with longer histories of grain agriculture have larger copy numbers of functional amylase genes in their genomes. (All humans have higher amylase gene copy numbers than any of the great apes.) Grain seeds themselves contain amylases (hydrolases). Germinating the seeds serves to activate the amylase enzymes; when the crushed seeds are mashed in warm water, sweet-tasting malt is generated. However, the human love for sugars and sweet taste can be a liability, as it favors a taste for one of the major byproducts of sugar fermentation: the ethanol found in alcoholic drinks. See fermentation.
“Human-Made Honey”
Fire can also be used to cook and concentrate sugar-rich plant juices into syrups or solid crystalline sugar. Many different plants are used to these ends, but most famously, the ancient people of Papua New Guinea domesticated the sugarcane plant, which spread to India, China, and North Africa and was much later named Saccharum officinarum by Europeans. See sugarcane. Other plants used for sugar extraction include various species of palm trees, agave, and beets (the sugar beet was specifically bred for its high sucrose content). See agave nectar; palm sugar; and sugar beet. Boiled-down plant juices provide raw sugars that usually have a brownish color. This raw sugar can then be further refined. See sugar refining and sugar, unrefined. In the twentieth century, the production of sugar has shifted from natural sucrose to enzymatically treated cornstarch generated in wet mills that turn starches into pure glucose syrup, which can then be enzymatically transformed into fructose. Industrial food companies mix glucose and fructose in a 50:50 ratio to generate high-fructose corn syrup. See corn syrup. This product represents an ironic convergence with honey, which also consists mostly of 1:1 free glucose and fructose. Honeybees cleave the nectar sugars with their salivary enzymes as they chew nectar into mature honey; this process allows honey to be 80 percent sugar, a concentration not achievable with the disaccharide sucrose found in nectar alone.
Prehistoric honey hunters risked multiple stings to track down wild beehives in rock crevices and tree hollows. This image of a honey gatherer being attacked by a swarm of bees, found in the Cuevas de la Araña caves in Valencia, Spain, is believed to be 8,000 years old. interfoto / alamy
An Evolutionary Liability
People in Cameroon use a plant they call “forget” (oubli). This African vine (Pentadiplandra brazzeana) makes a small protein that mimics the taste of sugar. Legend has it that children given berries from this plant forget the milk of their mother. Several other African tropical plants have evolved powerful peptide mimics of sugar. Similarly, leaves of the South American stevia plant are added to mate dulce, traditionally made by the Guarani Indians of Paraguay, and they have also become the basis for a popular low-calorie sweetener. See stevia. Modern synthetic chemistry has tried out a variety of artificial sweeteners with mixed results. See artificial sweetners. Ironically, the tsunami of artificially sweetened drinks and foods seems only to have accelerated obesity trends. Furthermore, concerns have been raised that dissociating sweet taste from energy may, as University of Washington epidemiologist Adam Drewnowski and colleagues put it, “disrupt the balance between taste response, appetite and consumption, especially during development.”
Our profound love of sweetness has given rise to the many ways in which we obtain sugars from plants. As we live surrounded by ever more readily available sugar, we are paying a steep price for our sensory bias. Rates of obesity and acquired insulin resistance (type 2 diabetes) are skyrocketing around the world. Humans will have to learn how to live with and love sugar and sweetness responsibly. Some health advocates go so far as to demand that sucrose be labeled a dangerous drug. See addiction and sugar and health.
sweetshop is a British English term for shops selling mostly, though not exclusively, sugar- and chocolate-based confectionery. The word has mildly childish overtones, and the color, sparkle, and glitter of hard candies and foil wrappers, as well as the seemingly endless choice of fruit drops, toffee, licorice, and other sugar-based items, are intensely attractive to children. In practice, such establishments may also sell a range of other items, including ice cream, newspapers, and tobacco. The North American candy store and the French confiserie also display the enchantment of boiled sugar in massed form, as do Turkish shops specializing in lokum, or Turkish delight.
Although many items also found in sweetshops—such as comfits, pulled sugar, and marzipan—have long histories, it is unlikely that anything remotely equivalent to the modern British sweetshop existed until about 400 years ago. The various confections developed along multiple routes, including fruit preserving, and sweets were also associated with apothecary shops, as druggists regularly coated their herbal and medicinal compounds with sugary shells or distilled them in syrupy concoctions. See fruit preserves and pharmacology. Making items from sugar and other ingredients was also affected by guild regulations in some locations, notably France and Central Europe, where sugar confectioners were not allowed to work with flour. Thus, some types of confectionery were more highly valued than others. See guilds.
The sweetshop, as it is known in England—and, by extension, in the rest of the British Isles—developed from shops kept by confectioners in the early modern period, at a time when sugar was still expensive and had medicinal overtones but was becoming more popular and available. The antecedents of the traditional sweetshops so magical in modern memory lie in eighteenth-century Western Europe and Great Britain. Lavish architectural appointments, including cabinetry, mirrors, and lighting, defined the fancy confectioner’s shop from early on.
These shops, which catered to a well-heeled clientele, displayed candied fruits, nuts, dragées, and delicate chocolate confections like jewels upon fine porcelain plates and cut-glass pedestals. In Britain, in addition to candies, early sweetshops often featured baked goods such as cookies, cakes, pies, and other pastries. Cheaper sugar led to backstreet sugar-boiling establishments and inexpensive candy from street barrows or little shops for the poor. The nineteenth century saw the American invention of the soda fountain at the local pharmacy, extending the link between confectionery and apothecary and setting the precedent for the wide candy aisles found in chain drug stores today. See soda fountain. Ironically, the advent of these chains and the factory-made candies purveyed within them caused the demise of many local candy shops in the twentieth century.
Self-sustaining sweetshops, in their purest form, are now rare in the United Kingdom and depend largely on purchased stock. Elsewhere in Western Europe, they usually involve some specialty confections made onsite. Chocolate truffles in Paris, glacéed fruit in Florence, and shops dedicated to sculptured marzipan in Vienna turn regional confections into destinations. See candied fruit and truffles. Often these establishments feature some part of the production on view, so that customers can watch bonbons being dipped in chocolate or taffy being pulled on a hook. Sweetshops often contain these house specialties alongside an array of boxed chocolates, panned fruits and nuts, jellies, ice cream, licorice, and caramels, with dizzying variety. These are places of childhood delight beyond the realm of reality, where all of the possible dreams of youth may be fulfilled for a few coins at the penny-candy counter. See penny candy. It is no wonder that the common aphorism for ultimate human pleasure remains as constant “as a kid in a candy store.”
See also children’s candy; chocolate, boxed; comfit; hard candy; licorice; lozenge; marzipan; medicinal uses of sugar; pulled sugar; and toffee.
Switzerland is a place where one is never far from a bakery or pastry shop, even in rural towns and mountain villages, a fact that reflects the country’s sweet tooth. Most meals finish on a sweet note, even if that means only fruit, yogurt, or a square of chocolate. But the Swiss do not have a taste for extreme sweetness; fruit- and dairy-based desserts are popular, and local specialties continue to reflect the country’s poor, mostly agrarian roots. Breads, cakes, tarts, pies, and other baked goods make frequent appearances on Swiss tables. Whether a croissant in the morning or pastry with coffee during an afternoon work break, sweet things occupy a special place in the rhythm of Swiss life. The baked goods sold at pastry shops—mille-feuilles, baba au rhum, fruit tartlets, and chocolate slices—generally reveal a strong French influence. See baba au rhum and pastry, puff. Most shops also sell petits fours; more sophisticated ones add chocolate bonbons to their offerings. See bonbons and small cakes.
Special occasions (which can be merely having friends or family over for lunch) call for store-bought products that are more elaborate than one might make at home, but Swiss home cooks are proud bakers, too, and over the centuries rich and distinctive traditions have developed from canton to canton. Common elements typically found throughout the country include the use of nut flours, particularly almond and hazelnut; jams and other fruit fillings or toppings; and spices, including cloves, anise, and cinnamon. Homemade cakes tend to be one-layer affairs that might be topped with a dusting of confectioner’s sugar or light lemon icing; elaborate icings and ganaches are more of the domain of pastry chefs. See icing. Loaf cakes (called “cake” in both the French and German sides of the country) are among the most popular home-baked goods, since they can be served as an after-school snack or as dessert, and an individually wrapped slice fits well in a lunch bag. Popular flavors include chocolate, lemon, marble, and almond (financier).
The names of many pastries and cakes reflect the city or canton where they originated, even if they are enjoyed equally throughout Switzerland. Brunsli, or bruns de Bâle, made with egg whites, chocolate, almonds, and sugar formed into a rough dough, is one such specialty, originally from Basel but now consumed throughout Switzerland during the Christmas holidays (alongside cinnamon stars, anise cookies, and Mailänderli/milanais, a simple butter, flour, and sugar cookie cut into shapes). Appenzeller Biberli, a lightly spiced dough shaped as a round or a rectangle and filled with almond paste, originated in Appenzell but now enjoys country-wide popularity. It is available in supermarkets year-round but is most prevalent at the holiday season, when pastry shops use a special mold to impress an image of St. Nicholas or other seasonal design on the cookie’s top. The treat bags that children receive for St. Nicholas Day or Christmas might contain a biberli or its unfilled cousin, a type of gingerbread, either soft or hard, that is often formed into traditional holiday shapes. See gingerbread.
The Swiss chocolatier Daniel Peter invented milk chocolate in the mid-1870s, when he mixed dried milk powder with chocolate. Seventy percent of the chocolate consumed in Switzerland remains milk chocolate. The Swiss company Suchard trademarked their milk chocolate Milka bar in 1901. The brand’s well-known symbol, a purple cow, is not visible in this 1950s poster.
Carrot cake (Rüeblitorte) is a specialty from Aargau, while Zug is known for its Kirsch-flavored cake (Kirschtorte). Walnut tart (Engadiner Nusstorte), from the Grisons, is widely popular throughout the country, sold as tartlets or full-size tarts in both pastry shops and supermarkets. A close cousin of the American pecan pie, its pâte sablée shell is filled with a cooked mixture of honey and walnuts. Open faced or covered with another layer of dough, Engadiner Nusstorte is rarely made at home. Pear bread (Birnbrot) from Glaris has also made its way to the rest of the country; its filling includes dried pears, Kirsch, nuts, and spices, encased in a thin layer of yeasted dough. Basler Leckerli, originally from Basel, is a hard cookie that incorporates honey, candied citrus peels, and spices into the dough.
Dairy products are common, and nearly every dessert menu offers the possibility of adding a side of lightly sweetened whipped cream to ice creams or tarts. Seré, a fresh cheese, is commonly used in mousses and cakes made at home. Meringues à la crème de Gruyère originated in the canton of Fribourg, where the town and eponymous cheese of Gruyère are located, but this dessert is popular well beyond the canton’s borders. Meringue shells are served with a double cream so thick that it will not drip if the bowl is turned upside down, along with a sprinkle of sugar. In the summer, raspberries are often added. See meringue.
The Swiss chocolatier Daniel Peter invented milk chocolate in 1875, when he mixed evaporated milk powder with chocolate. While dark chocolate, from bonbons to bars, is widely available, 70 percent of the chocolate consumed in Switzerland remains milk chocolate. See chocolate, post-columbian and peter, daniel. With a per capita consumption of about 12 kilos, or 26 pounds, Switzerland ranks first in the world (although this statistic is a little misleading, as it includes purchases made by tourists, which are considerable). The carac, a ganache tartlet typical of the French part of Switzerland, covered in green fondant and adorned with a chocolate pastille, is a prime example of a chocolate pastry-shop treat. Beautiful chocolate sculptures adorn the windows of urban pastry shops, and sophisticated bonbons are popular as gifts. However, the everyday chocolate of the Swiss is most often a piece of a supermarket-bought chocolate bar, eaten on its own after a meal, or as a snack, with bread.
See also black forest cake; christmas; france; holiday sweets; and pie dough.
syllabub is an English sweet milk or cream dish containing wine or cider and served as a light froth or curd. It was one of the wet sweetmeats of the banquet or dessert course. See dessert. Although syllabub is first mentioned in literature in 1537, recipes do not appear in print until the following century; some of them indicate that it was occasionally made in the field by milking a cow into a bowl of cider or wine. More often, however, the cream and other ingredients were agitated with a whisk, or shaken in a bottle, to create an aerated curd. In the early versions of the dish the mixture was left to rest overnight and allowed to separate into a clear liquid below, with froth above. In the late seventeenth century, glass pots with spouts were used to serve this sort of syllabub. The alcoholic whey at the bottom was sucked through the spout and the froth eaten with a spoon. One popular variation known as whip syllabub was made by spooning off the bubbles created by whisking and laying them on a sieve to drain. The resulting froth was extremely delicate and was floated on top of sweet wine or whey. Syllabub glasses, with bell tops to support this topping of foam, evolved during the course of the eighteenth century, replacing the older spout pots. A later development was the everlasting or solid syllabub, really an alcoholic whipped cream, made with a higher ratio of cream to wine. It was also favored as the topping for layered trifles. See trifle.
Syringes known as “wooden cows” were sometimes used to squirt the milk or cream into the wine and lemon juice mixture. The botanist Stephen Hales (1677–1761) is credited with inventing a labor-saving syllabub engine, which, “with the help of a pair of bellows, blows up cream into syllabub with great expedition.”
Syllabub went out of fashion during the course of the nineteenth century, but the everlasting variety, at least, was revived in the 1960s by the food writers Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson, and the dish is now frequently encountered on restaurant menus.
See also cream; milk; and whisks and beaters.
symbolic meanings of the sweet are many-layered. Foods can accrue symbolic meanings through being shaped into representational forms, through association with their history of use, or through the semantic content ascribed to their characteristic flavors. Sweet substances achieve symbolic meanings in all of these ways, and the content of those meanings manifests some notable consistencies throughout history. One can consider the symbolism of sweet substances in terms of the significance of the taste itself, the meanings attached to the substance that yields the taste, and the uses of sweet foodstuffs in decorative or commemorative shapes.
Honey provides the oldest sweet, having been collected and consumed both in earliest recorded history and probably in prehistory as well. (There are Neolithic rock paintings of honey gathering in areas as far-flung as India, Spain, and southern Africa.) See honey. This intensely sweet substance has a distinctive property that invites attribution of significance beyond its flavor, for it is virtually unique in being a foodstuff that does not decay. (It will crystallize, but the crystals can be redissolved.) This is probably one reason that many ancient peoples—in South Asia, Europe, and the Americas—considered honey food for the gods, since it seemed, like the gods themselves, to be eternal. To the ancient Hebrews, honey—pure, incorruptible, untainted by human manufacture—also symbolized truth. See judaism.
Human beings, and indeed mammals generally, naturally like sweet flavors. See sweetness preference. Perhaps this is because mother’s milk is sweet, or perhaps it indicates an adaptive disposition, since sweetness in nature is often a sign of edibility, in contrast to bitterness, which is often, though not always, an indicator of poison. Whatever its origins in nature, the tendency to like sweet things has resulted in a set of closely related symbolic meanings that circulate throughout the globe. The meanings of sweetness cluster in the pleasant range: good luck, prosperity, and social harmony. This sort of symbolic meaning is manifest in various traditional practices, such as placing honey on the lips of newborns (parts of Africa) and uniting newly married couples with a dose of honey (Central Europe). It endures in religious rituals such as eating honey at Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. See rosh hashanah. Such symbolic attributions of honey—signifying divinity, purity, good fortune—emerge from the actual properties of the substance, including the fact that it lasts a remarkably long time, and that it is immediately pleasant to taste for creatures like us. See winnie-the-pooh. This kind of symbolism is sometimes termed “exemplification,” where objects call attention to properties that they literally possess.
Sweetness is also easily extended to metaphoric usage, for something that tastes sweet is comparable to other things that are good and pleasant, as in the phrase “sweets to the sweet.” Sweet foods symbolize goodness, luck, and happiness in widely distributed cultures, though this does not mean that the same foods are preferred. Sweetness comes in many forms and intensities, so particular foods that carry shared meanings often differ. Nonetheless, in its various forms, sweetness retains consistent symbolic meanings, and the practice of eating sweet things at celebratory festivals is widespread and enduring. At the Chinese New Year, sweets betoken prosperity and luck for the future, for example. See chinese new year. The Hindu festival of Diwali, during which numerous traditional sweets are both offered to the gods and consumed by participants, celebrates the triumph of good over evil. See diwali. Sweetness also signals benevolence and hospitality, and hence sweet foods are served as gestures of welcome to visitors. While such usage is common enough to have become culinary social habit, eating sweets at celebrations continues to seem appropriate because of the expressive uses of sweetness to signify happiness and good things generally.
Sweetness in the form of refined sugar extracted from sugarcane was, for a substantial period of time, a luxury available only to those of means outside the areas where the cane flourished (originally South Asia). See sugar and sugarcane. Under circumstances of scarcity, the sweetness provided by crystallized sugar connoted wealth and privilege, a significance achieved by association of the substance with those who consumed it. This symbolic meaning diminished as sugar became cheaper and more widely distributed; and indeed, at present, refined sugar has the opposite association, with cheap and unhealthy food—a marked contrast with the ancient notions that sweet things connoted health (they were often even ascribed medicinal properties). See medicinal uses of sugar.
Sugars readily combine with other foodstuffs, such as butter, flour, cocoa, or ground nuts, and as such they are easily molded into representational shapes, thereby expanding the potential range of symbolism. Where the sweetness of the substance is appropriate for the occasion, the symbolism of the representation converges with the symbolism of the taste. With the candy hearts made for Valentine’s Day, for example, the symbolic meaning of sweetness unites with the symbolic meaning of the heart that signifies love. See valentine’s day. Wedding cakes are common celebratory dishes for which a confection may be decorated with images that signal fond wishes to a newly married couple; when shared with company, they distribute good wishes to those assembled. See wedding and wedding cake.
The malleability of confectionery permits the formation of substances with sweet flavors into virtually any representation, as with chocolates molded to resemble insects, buildings, fruits, or flowers. Sometimes the shapes are consistent with traditional meanings of the sweet: luck and happiness. Other times they achieve a more complicated meaning, such as the sugar skulls produced for the Day of the Dead in Mexico, during which meals are prepared to welcome the spirits of the recently departed. See day of dead and mexico. Such traditions indicate the complexity with which a taste functions within a symbolic practice. At the same time, the representational possibilities of easily molded foods can depart radically from traditional meanings and become ironic, comic, interesting, or merely weird, as with the manufacture of a chocolate spider. The symbolism of sweet things can therefore progress from deeply rooted traditions to transient representational whims, but it is the former that endure with the symbolic uses of sweetness to signify prosperity, welcome, happiness, and good fortune.
See also buddhism; christianity; hinduism; islam; and spirituality.