by James Walvin
Today, sweetness – and all that the word entails – represents many of life’s great pleasures and delights. All the more curious, then, that sweetness, in the modern world, has created some of mankind’s most serious personal and collective problems and dangers. Today, the desire for sweetness has become a risk to health and well-being for millions around the world.
When we think of sweetness today, we tend to think of sugar, but long before cane sugar made its seismic impact on human affairs, honey was mankind’s main source of sweetness in a multitude of ancient societies. For centuries, Arabic and Persian texts, for example (in geographic, travel and cookery books), made frequent references to sweetness in contemporary cuisine and in theology. The ideal of sweetness as a delightful earthly experience – a physical sensation that is pleasurable, happy and even luxurious – is matched by the promise of sweetness as a reward in the hereafter. The afterlife is often represented as a ‘sweet’ experience. Nor is this merely a modern Western Christian phenomenon. In a number of faiths, heavenly pleasures come in various forms of sweetness. On earth, it took the form of honey.
Rock art from 26,000 years ago, paintings from ancient Egypt and comparable evidence from ancient Indian societies, all portrayed honey as a source of local sweetness. The world of classical antiquity similarly provides an abundance of evidence about the commonplace use of honey – as a sweetener, as medicine and as a symbol. The literature of the classical world (like English literature) is dotted with the imagery of honey. In The Odyssey, Homer remarked:
Never has any man passed this way in his dark vessel
and left unheard the honey-sweet music from our lips;
first he has taken his delight, then gone on his way a wiser man.
(The Odyssey, bk 12, 1. 184)
Roman texts are likewise peppered with references to honey. Lucretius noted, when writing in the first century BC, that Roman doctors used honey to persuade children to swallow foul-tasting medicines:
For as with children, when the doctors try
to give them loathsome wormwood, first they smear
sweet yellow honey on the goblet’s rim.
(De Rerum Natura, bk 1, 1. 936)
More familiar perhaps, the Holy Bible has a profusion of images of honey. When the Lord led the Israelites out of Egypt, he led them to ‘a land flowing with milk and honey’ (Exodus, Ch. 3, v. 8). And the Old Testament, too, has numerous references to honey; the Promised Land, for instance, comes with milk and honey blessed’.
Honey was offered as a tribute to the gods in ancient Egypt and classical Greece, and has importance, too, in Hinduism. Many ancient societies had time-honoured religious rituals using honey: placing a drop of honey on the lips of a newborn child; a piece of apple dipped in honey on a Jewish child’s first day at school; and honey cake augurs good fortune when served on the Jewish New Year. All this is in addition to the enduring theme of honey, honey-making and bees in literature from the most ancient of recorded societies, right down to relatively modern English texts:
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?
(Rupert Brookes, from ‘The Old
Vicarage, Grantchester’, 1916)
Honey has, then, long been both symbol and sweetener. For centuries, it was a feature of medicine and pharmacology. From ancient China and India, to classical Greece and throughout the world of Islam, honey was prescribed as medicine for a host of maladies. Like cane sugar later, honey – when mixed with other ingredients – produced medicines prescribed by Islamic and medieval doctors. To this day, it continues to be used as medication in a number of communities that have remained relatively untouched by modern medicine, and also in a variety of ‘alternative’ treatments which have recently found favour the world over.1
All this was in addition to the more obvious role played by honey as a sweetener in various cuisines. Sweet foods were (and are) especially valued in Islamic societies, partly because the Prophet liked honey and recommended it as a medicine. Even after the coming of cane sugar, sweet foods, especially desserts made with honey, have retained a special place in Islamic societies and maintain their importance in a number of ceremonies and practices.
Honey remains an important element in Islamic life. The Koran makes regular comments on sweetness: ‘To enjoy sweets is a sign of faith . . .’2 Honey was thought to be Gods medicine, with a heavenly future promised in the form of rivers of honey. The Traditional Medicine of the Prophet (from the fourteenth century) claimed that the Prophet was fond of honey, and recommended it as a medicine for a number of ailments. Wherever Islam took root, there we find widespread and ritualised consumption of sweet foods, normally at the end of a meal, but also on specific days in the Islamic calendar. Honey was, at once, both medicine and food, its importance confirmed by a simple glance at the variety and richness of sweet foods in the Islamic diet to this day – on religious high days and holidays (the Prophet’s birthday, for example), at weddings, birthdays, burials, holy days, circumcisions and family celebrations. All are marked in varying degrees by the production of lavish sweet dishes, soaked in honey and sugar. The ingredients of such desserts must, of course, conform to Islamic law.3 Yet even before the rise of Islam, we know that honey had been used for a number of culinary and spiritual purposes: for nutrition, as medicine, and as a promise of future happiness.
* * *
Honey, then, had an importance and significance in a large number of ancient civilisations. It was a food in its own right and a customary ingredient in recipes and menus. But it also represented purity and morality. Both the Bible and the Koran depicted an afterlife rich in much-valued food and drink – milk, wine and honey. Mundane earthly matters were also scattered with honey. We know, for example, of more than three hundred recipes from the eighth to ninth centuries which have come down to us in the form of The Baghdad Cookbook (the highest level of Perso–Islamic cuisine), although many were inherited from much earlier societies. About one third of those dishes and drinks are sweetened, such as doughnuts, fritters, pancakes, rice dishes, sherbets and other drinks.
These tastes, and the culture of Islamic cuisine and food, travelled on the back of Islam itself as it expanded throughout what is now the Middle East and the Gulf, across North Africa, into sub-Saharan Africa and into southern Europe. Naturally enough, the cultures and habits of Islamic peoples, including their cuisine and their foodstuffs, went with them. They carried with them a taste for honey and the recently acquired taste for cane sugar.
We know that sugar cane entered the world of Islam from India. Buddhist cuisine in India had adopted sugar as a basic ingredient as early as 260 BC and, in time, sugar began to influence the cuisine of greatly diverse societies across South-East Asia. Sugar also moved slowly westward from India into Africa, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. As Islam spread, so too did the cultivation and consumption of sugar cane. By 1400, it was being cultivated in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, North Africa, Spain and possibly Ethiopia and Zanzibar.4
Sugar was on the move – in all directions. In 1258, following the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols, elements of local cuisine began a protracted movement eastwards to China and to Asiatic Russia. Indeed, this global transfer was to be a feature of sugar – it was part of imperial expansion. Major empires – Greek, Roman, Islamic, Mongol, Byzantine, Ottoman and European – all absorbed foodstuffs and cuisines inherited from older empires, states and conquered peoples. And all placed great value on the sweetening powers of honey and, increasingly, of cane sugar. Sugar thus became one of the unrecognized bounties of imperial conquest and power, seized and absorbed by conquerors then carried to distant corners of the globe where it shaped new tastes and a demand for the pleasure it brought. In the European context, it was also to bring unimaginable profit.
The transformations wrought by cane sugar, however, are hard to exaggerate. Scholars agree that sugar cane originated in South Asia, but evidence for the processing of sugar – refi
ning sugar from sugar cane – belongs to a much later period.5 Over many centuries, sugar cane cultivation spread outwards from its origins. The great explosion in cane sugar production in the Americas after c. 1600 has, however, persuaded scholars to concentrate on the westward movement of sugar, but a similar process was already at work to the east. Scholars of China, for example, have trawled Chinese sources to explain the growth of sugar cultivation and, most strikingly, the development of sugar technology and production in China. Over the long periods of the Ming dynasty (from the mid-fourteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries) and the Qing (or Manchu) dynasty thereafter, sugar not only spread to Japan, but it also became a major commodity in Chinese trade throughout Asia, much as it did in the world of the Atlantic trading systems.
Sugar is better known when it moved westwards, along a more familiar route through Iran and Iraq, and from there to the Jordan valley, the Mediterranean coast of Syria and to Egypt, then on to other locations in the Mediterranean. Sugar cane was being cultivated in Egypt as early as the mid-eighth century and, by the eleventh century, it could be found at various points along the North African coast, on Mediterranean islands and in Spain.6 The finished product – cane sugar – subsequently found its way, via the Crusaders, to northern Europe in the eleventh century. Of course, sugar was only one of a number of foods that were transplanted westward in these years, travelling and settling like the botanical flotsam and jetsam of human and religious migration and upheavals. Rice, cotton, eggplants, watermelons, bananas, oranges and lemons travelled along similar routes.7
Not surprisingly then, there is an abundance of evidence about sugar in early Arabic literature, with detailed accounts of sugar, its pleasures and its alleged benefits. It crops up in all sorts of literary sources. In The Thousand and One Nights (parts of which date back to the ninth century), a conversation between a poet and a slave described sugar cane thus:
It is shaped like a spear, but has no head.
Everyone loves it.
We often chew on it after sunset during Ramadan.8
These and similar passing references reveal a remarkable feature about the story of sugar – that from its earliest days down to the present, sugar has attracted a great deal of contemporary attention. The spread of Islam involved not merely conquest and conversion of enormous swathes of land and people, but the scattering of cultural habits, ranging from the world of print and learning to modern science, medicine and cuisine, with a number of scholars describing the spread of sugar production and consumption. We learn, for example, about sugar in the tenth century from an Arab geographer. In 1154, it was the turn of a merchant, describing his travels, to provide a description of sugar cultivation and production. We also have descriptions of sugar processing and the financing of sugar from late medieval Egypt.9
The spread of sugar around the Mediterranean was not simply a matter of cultivation, but involved new systems of agricultural production, methods of irrigation and technology of sugar processing, all in addition to the financial ability to develop sugar production and to distribute the final product – cane sugar. By the time of the Islamic defeat and expulsion from Europe in 1492, well-developed and well-known patterns for sugar production had been established. It was to be used (though transformed out of all recognition) by Europeans when they explored and settled the Atlantic islands and, later still, the tropical lands of the Americas.
The first major English encounter with sugar was in Palestine during the First Crusade of 1095–1099. Sugar cane saved Crusaders in times of starvation, and nurtured a taste for sweetness (and for other exotic commodities) which survivors took home with them. But sugar was both rare and costly, and was naturally restricted to contemporary elites. We can catch a glimpse of it in medieval household accounts documenting the purchase and storage of foodstuffs in the larders and kitchens of palaces, castles and religious houses. Monks in Durham described their sugar as ‘Marrokes’ and ‘Babilon’. The Earl of Derby’s sugar was listed as ‘ Candy’ (the contemporary name for Crete), while other recipe books described sugar as ‘Cypre’ (Cyprus) and ‘Alysaunder’. The Great Wardrobe accounts of Edward I for 1287 recorded the purchase of 6671b of sugar, 300lb of ‘violet sugar’ and a huge 1,900lb of ‘rose sugar’ (the last two, sugar mixed with powdered flower petals, were used as medicines).10 All of these sugars were clearly from the Mediterranean and had arrived in England via merchants in Venice and Genoa who, in their turn, had acquired sugar from producers scattered around the Mediterranean.
The volumes of sugar produced were small, but they increased as the taste and fashion for sugar spread among Europe’s prosperous elites. By the thirteenth century, sugar was regularly used in elite English households.11 In 1319, for instance, Nicoletto Basadona carried 100,000lb of sugar and 1,000lb of ‘candy sugar’ to England.12 Sugar was also common in French cuisine by the fourteenth century. In that same century, records show increasing amounts of sugar imported into the Kent port of Sandwich. (Imports into southern ports may explain why sugar took hold initially in the south, and came more slowly to the north of England.) Sugar was also landed in Boston, Lincolnshire, from Amsterdam, Calais and Rotterdam, and it was also imported through the more distant ports of Devon. By the late sixteenth century, ‘comfit makers’ – specialists in making confectionery from sugar – began to appear in major English provincial towns.13
By the sixteenth century, sugar was widespread in England; the Earl of Northumberland’s ‘clerk controller’ ordered more than 2000lb of sugar for his Lordship’s kitchen.14 Sugary confections – fruits in sugar, sweet cakes, preserved sweetened fruits – all had become so prominent a feature of royal households that monarchs appointed officials specifically to take charge of the confectionary department. The same official became skilled in the preparation of various forms of sugar and of sweet foodstuffs for the royal table. In time, in the larger royal households (notably in Hampton Court), there was a special bakery for sweetened foodstuffs. Formal recipes and menus prepared for royal and aristocratic households now included include sugary desserts.15 Servants were taught when and how to use sugar in the course of a meal (to be offered in a sauce for partridge and pheasant, or to be sprinkled on baked herring, for example). Revealingly, new eating utensils were designed to eat sugary concoctions. Elaborate and costly plates were reserved for sweetmeats, and special forks were provided to lift and raise sticky sweets to the lips. From the 1580s, early English recipe books described how best to use sugar, such as for stuffing rabbits and preserving fruits.16
European elites of all sorts – royals, aristocrats and clerics – adopted sugar both as a feature of their elaborate cuisine and as a means of flaunting their status and rank via ornate models and statuettes modelled from sugar. In this they were copying an older Islamic tradition of using sugar in elaborate displays of power and wealth. There were plenty of ancient tales of rulers and sultans organising elaborately sculptured displays to celebrate religious festivals. One visitor to Egypt in 1040 reported that the Sultan had used 73,000kg of sugar for a display which included a tree made of sugar. Another account from 1412 told of a mosque built of sugar – all of it consumed by beggars when the festivities ended.17 At an Ottoman festival in Istanbul in 1582, hundreds of sugar models were created to celebrate the circumcision of a son of the Sultan. It had models of animals and a castle which were so heavy it required four men to carry them.18 Among other things, such elaborate displays of sugar revealed the costliness of sugar; only those with very deep pockets could afford to finance such ornate displays of sugary confection. Coronations, military victories, sacred festivals – all and more were marked by elaborate sculptures in sugar.
As sugar spread from the Mediterranean to mainland Europe, largely via Venice, so, too, did the fashion for elaborate sculptured sugar. Europeans chefs, cooks and bakers adopted the ingredients and habits of Arab societies, but adapted them to local needs and tastes using moulds, or worked from a sugary paste. Chefs and their assistants quickly acquire
d the necessary skills; they created lavish and ornate sugary displays for festivals and ceremonies among Europe’s elites from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries.
Led by royalty, the French were both the European pioneers and the perfectionists of this new culinary art. Guillaume Tirel (nicknamed Taillevent), who worked in French royal households between 1326 and 1395, left behind a manuscript of recipes which made frequent and varied use of sugar for royal dishes.19 Although honey continued to be used, from the thirteenth century onwards, costly imported sugar cones became increasingly common in wealthy households. Often, though, that sugar was crude and had to be refined and clarified again in the local kitchen before being prepared for consumption. It remained far beyond the pockets of all but the wealthiest and most privileged in society – although we know it was for sale in a London grocer’s shop in 1379.20
By the sixteenth century, French cuisine was using sugar for three main purposes: to sweeten dishes; to preserve fruits, flowers and vegetables; and to mould into decorative ornaments and models, or to glaze. Sugar was mixed with various gums and pastes – notably with almonds to produce marzipan – to make a dough that has remained a basic ingredient of confectionery up to the present day. At much the same time, French cookbooks outlined the methods needed for boiling sugar to produce various syrups and crystallised sugary items (compotes, barley sugar and caramels).21
Best remembered, however, were the lavish sugary sculptures. In 1571, the city of Paris organised an elaborate dinner for Elizabeth of Austria, the new Queen of Charles IX. All who saw the event agreed that it was the most elaborate ever seen. Each course was heralded by trumpets and each was based around an appropriate theme. Dinner was followed by dancing, which was followed by a ‘collation’ – preserves, sugared nuts, fruit pastes, marzipans, biscuits and a variety of meat and fish – all of them fashioned from sugar paste. The main dining table was decorated with six large sugar sculptures telling the story of how Minerva brought peace to Athens.22