sugar-msg – 3/7/08
Sugar and other medieval sweeteners. Honey, Carob. Types of sugar. Sugar processing.
NOTE: See also the files: Roses-a-Sugar-art, sugar-paste-msg, honey-msg, Sugarplums-art, candy-msg, carob-msg, Cypriot-Sugr-art, sugar-sources-msg, Sweet-Terms-art, Bakng-w-Sugar-art.
KEYWORDS: sugar cost refining medieval honey turbinado brown molasses sugarcane period history
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Stefan at florilegium.org
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From: haslock at rust.zso.dec.com (Nigel Haslock)
Date: 14 Mar 91 20:13:38 GMT
Organization: DECwest, Digital Equipment Corp., Bellevue WA
Well, I looked it up.
Sugar was 12 pence a pound for the lowest grade and the Baronesses
household bought about 56 pounds in a 7 month period.
I assume that this was loaf sugar and that fine powdered white
sugar was more expensive.
Almonds were 12 pence for 5 pounds and the household used 280 pounds
over a 7 month period. Raisins were the same price.
12 pence would buy 48 (1 pound) loaves of bread, or between 24 and
36 gallons of beer, or roughly 200 pounds of barley, or roughly
100 pounds of wheat. Milling the grain would cost you more.
The commentary notes that molasses was being imported to England
towards the end of the century.
Fiacha
Aquaterra, AnTir
From: ddfr at quads.uchicago.edu (david director friedman)
Date: 16 Mar 91 04:01:48 GMT
Organization: University of Chicago
"The commentary notes that molasses was being imported to England
towards the end of the century." (Fiacha)
Molasses (British "treacle") is a byproduct of sugar refining.
According to C. Anne Wilson (Food and Drink in England) they were
originally used for medicinal purposes. At some point after sugar
started to be refined in England (which I think happened in the
sixteenth century), the supply of molasses outgrew the medicinal
demand and they started to be used in cooking. So the culinary use of
molasses in England would date from late sixteenth or early
seventeenth century. They might have been used earlier elsewhere, but
I do not think I have seen any period recipes that mention them.
Cariadoc
From: ag1v+ at andrew.cmu.edu (Andrea B. Gansley-Ortiz)
Date: 21 Nov 91 20:38:27 GMT
Organization: Engineering Design Research Center, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Gentle readers, I recommend me to you.
Ferdinand and Isabella had supplies of cane sugar coming into their
kingdoms. It was not refined as it is nowadays. However, I do believe
that both molasses, and rum came back to their kingdoms as well as a coarse
cane sugar.
In a chronicle I read, it seems that Isabel and her children were very
fond of cane sugar and ate it seemingly at every meal. Again, if anyone's
interested I'll find the name of the book in which I read this. It wasn't
an ordinary history. It was much more interested in the daily lives of
Don~a Isabel and Don Fernando.
Su segura servidora,
Esmeralda la Sabia
From: habura at vccsouth19.its.rpi.edu (Andrea Marie Habura)
Date: 22 Nov 91 13:51:49 GMT
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY
I did more research on availability of sugar in period. All citations
are from the OED.
The word "sugar" first appears in English in 1299. It is referred to only
in inventories (e.g., "7 loaves of sugar") until 1425. There is a recipe
for a cinnamon-sugar dish (probably a dessert) from that date.
Sugar was first referred to as "white" in 1430, so purification techniques
were in use by then. (There's your molasses, Esmeralda.)
In general, sugars were referred to as being "of" a particular place: Cyprus,
Alexandria, Babylon, Barbary, Crete, and Morocco. The OED says that sugarcane
originated in China, but will grow in any tropical climate; I assume that
early sugar came from China, and was perhaps grown in warmer areas nearer
Europe later on.
The first literary reference to sugar is in Chaucer's Squire's Tale, and
is mentioned in conjunction with honey, bread and milk. (In other words,
the Good Stuff.)
Period foods using sugar: Sugarcakes (1587, made from sugar, butter, and
cream), gingerbread (also 1587), sugared almonds (Marlowe mentioned them in 1594), sugar meats (a confection of some sort, 1587) sugar pellets (1591),
which seem to have been sugar paste; they were served in bowls at feasts,
probably like our after-dinner mints, and sugar water (1450).
The first mention of sugarcane in English is 1568.
Alison MacDermot
*Ex Ungue Leonem*
From: Marion.Kee at a.nl.cs.cmu.EDU
Date: 22 Nov 91 20:04:00 GMT
Organization: The Internet
Greeting to the Rialto from Marian Greenleaf!
Herewith another chunk of my period food summary, this time the section
on sugarcane. I would like to find out more about the fate of the
by-products of the refining process in our period, such as molasses.
Anyone who's got a line on some good sources for this, could you please
send me private email?
While the summary below does not deal with the question of rum, I have
found references that seem to suggest that it showed up regularly in
Spain during our period. I don't read medieval Spanish. Does anyone
know of a source in English regarding medieval/Renaissance Spanish foods?
(Sources in modern Romance languages, or medieval French, I can deal
with, with effort.)
---------------------------
Some Notes on Sugarcane
by Marian Greenleaf, C.M., O.P.
m.k.a Marion Kee, 5615 Hobart St., Pittsburgh, PA 15217 <kee at cs.cmu.edu>
Text copyright 1988, 1990, 1991 by Marion Kee
----------------------------
The sources the following material was largely drawn from are:
Dawson, Thomas; The Good Hus-wives Jewell, E. Allde, London, 1596
(transcribed by Susan J. Evans, Falconwood Press, 1988.)
Dawson, Thomas; The Second Part of the Good Hus-wives Jewell, E.
Allde, London, 1597 (transcribed by Master John the Artificer.)
Encyclopedia Brittanica, Fifteenth Edition, Chicago/London, 1977.
Hieatt, Constance B. and Butler, Sharon: Pleyn Delit, University of
Toronto Press, Toronto, 1976.
Hieatt, Constance B.: An Ordinance of Pottage, Prospect Books,
London, 1988.
Murrell, John; A New Booke of Cookerie, John Brown, London, 1615
(transcribed by Susan J. Evans, Falconwood Press, 1988.)
Root, Waverly; Food, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1980.
Root, Waverly (ed.); Herbs and Spices, Alfred van der Marck Editions,
New York, 1985.
--------------------------
(Revision of January, 1991)
[Name:] SUGAR CANE
[Origins:] Near the Bay of Bengal, in India.
[In Antiquity:] Imported by the Persians from India
as a very expensive condiment, fifth century B.C.;
known to the Greeks and Romans as a medicine, but not cultivated
or imported by them. Mentioned in the Old Testament (cf. Jeremiah 6:20).
[In Period (where/when/as):]
China / probably throughout period / grown as condiment
Spain / Moorish Conquest (eighth century) / grown as condiment
England / 735 / imported as condiment
Italy / ca. 1200 / regularly imported and widely used as condiment, medicine
France, England, Portugal / fourteenth century / regularly imported and
widely used as condiment, medicine
New World / sixteenth century / grown and exported to Europe by the
Spanish in the Caribbean and Mexico; the Portuguese in Brazil; the Dutch
in the Caribbean and on the South American mainland.
[Comments:] Imported from India as a rare spice during
the Dark Ages; grown in the Near East by the Arabs,
as early as the eighth century; imported to Europe
from Egypt during the Middle Ages; Marco Polo remarked on its abundance
in China; Venice acquired a near-monopoly
during the Italian Renaissance, even importing the raw materials and
refining it in Italy; Columbus took sugarcane to America and established it
as a crop there (on his second voyage, 1494)
From: sbloch at euler.ucsd.edu (Steve Bloch)
Date: 22 Nov 91 17:21:00 GMT
jschmidt at gambrinus.tymnet.com (John Schmidt) writes:
>(Actually, there is only one point here, because in the two
>references I was able to remember, sugar is very much known.
Period English cookbooks call for both "sugre blake" and "sugre
blanche", but not terribly often; white sugar seems to have been used
primarily medicinally in Christian lands. The Arabic cookbooks often
call for white sugar, as well as specifying the use of raw "sweet
cane". In fact, the latter seems to have been common enough that one
could make a subtlety that LOOKED like sweet cane but wasn't, and have
it recognized. Sweet cane is also recommended for stirring things,
presumably to give them just a hint of sweetness. (BTW, my encyclo-
pedia says sugarcane is native to Asia, but doesn't specify where.)
--
Stephen Bloch
Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
>sca>Caid>Calafia>St.Artemas
sbloch at math.ucsd.edu
From: David Schroeder <ds4p+ at andrew.cmu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Sweet Thoughts, etc.
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1993 15:04:25 -0400
Organization: Doctoral student, Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Greetings good gentles --
I have recently been reading an entertaining volume, "Seeds of Change," by
Henry Hobhouse (a journalist, not a professional scholar). The book looks
at the historical import of five key plants or plant products: quinine,
sugar, tea, cotton, and potatoes. [c.1985 ISBN: 0-06-091440-8 (ppbk)].
Some of the more interesting tidbits are worth sharing. For example, here's
a chart of the relative cost of 10 pounds of sugar expressed as a percentage
of 1 ounce of gold (taken as an average of London, Paris, and Amsterdam)...
Period Sugar % Honey %
1350-1400 35.0 3.30
1400-1450 24.5 2.05
1450-1500 19.0 1.50
1500-1550 8.7 1.20
Note that Hobhouse doesn't cite his sources for this table and doesn't
mention that the "value" of an ounce of gold may have changed in the
last period due to the huge captured troves of the Aztecs and Incas,
but it's still an interesting chart, if only to see the relative expense
of sugar and honey. Clearly, using refined sugar in a dish would have
been an expensive proposition during almost all of the Society's scope.
Hobhouse also says:
"The sugar industry survived the gradual expulsion of the Moors from
the Mediterranean littoral, and was carried on by both Moslems and
Christians as a profitable, expanding concern for two hundred years
from about 1300. [Production was centered in Syria, Palestine, the
Dodecanese, Egypt, Cyprus, Crete, Sicily, North Africa, and Southern
Spain. *B*] The trade (as opposed to production) was under the domi-
nance of the merchant bankers of Italy, with Venice ultimately con-
trolling distribution throughout the then known world. The first sugar
reached England in 1319, Denmark in 1374, and Sweden in 1390. It was
an expensive novelty and useful in medicine, being unsurpassed for
making palatable the odious mixtures of therapeutic herbs, entrails,
and other substances of the medieval pharmacopoeia."
Apparently, sugar cultivation in the Caribbean basin was substantial in
the second half of the 16th century leading to cheaper sugar prices and
a shift in leadership in the trade from Venice to Amsterdam.
<snip>
I'd best sign off now and return to my reading... I found the book
remaindered for $1.98 at my local Borders Bookstore, so you may have
good luck finding a copy of your own.
My best -- Bertram
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
Bertram of Bearington Dave Schroeder
Debatable Lands/AEthelmearc/East Carnegie Mellon University
INTERNET: ds4p at andrew.cmu.edu 412/731-3230 (Home)
+------------------------ PREME * Press On * PREME ---------------------+
From: jtn at cse.uconn.EDU (J. Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Apple/Tinker cakes & Martha Washington (WAS: Breakfast poll)
Date: 26 Apr 1995 01:07:18 -0400
Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.
In the course of describing a recipe for apple cakes, Mistress Chimene
says:
> The recipe as my lord and I classically make it is white flour and white sugar
> so that's not period*. Exchanging honey would change the fluid balance
> drastically I would think; we've never tried it. *I have some very general
> evicence that sugar as we know it was available by ca. 1250 but was
> exceedingly
> rare, used in medicines and priced and considered practically a spice--nothing
> like as a replacement for honey until much later.
I have heard this claimed elsewhere, but have not been able to find evidence
for it, and the surviving cookbook corpus seems to contradict it.
In particular, out of 447 recipes from the 13th and 14th C in England, sugar
appears in 155 (31%), while honey appears in only 31 (7%). Likewise, out of
205 recipes from the 15th C, sugar appears in 86 (42%), whereas honey appears
in 14 (7%). (The sample from the 13th and 14th C is very nearly all the
recipes available; the sample from the 15th is much smaller relative to its
population, as well as in absolute numbers, but seems to be reasonably
representative.)
In other words, sugar appears to be one of the most common ingredients in the
cookbook corpus, while honey is relatively rare. Given the extreme frequency
of saffron in English cuisine despite its cost (it is the second most common
ingredient in the 13th and 14th C, after only salt; sugar, BTW, is third), I
find the argument from expense unconvincing, at least for upper class cuisine.
It is difficult to know how much sugar was used in individual recipes, as
opposed to overall; but we do know that they made candy of the stuff, that
they candied ginger and orange peels, and that they made honest-to-gosh
sweets, even as early as the 14th C. (We also know that many dishes that
called for sugar were _not_ meant to be overall sweet; there are often
indications of that in the recipes themselves, such as suggestions to
add sugar "to abate the strength", or to sprinkle with sugar before serving.
But in a genuinely sweet dish, there is little reason to suppose that
sugar would be used sparingly.
BTW, I would argue from recipes for cakes if we had many of them; but
I don't think that their absence can necessarily be taken as indicating
that they didn't eat them. We have no recipes for bread in the major
cookery collections -- for the excellent reason that those cookery
collections originate from cooks, that is, heads of _kitchens_; and
the kitchen was a separate establishment from the _bakery_, which was
responsible for the bread. I would not be surprised if cakes, were they
widely eaten, also fell under the bakery's purview. I am weak in the
peripheral literature of such things as household accounts and contemporary
literary accounts of meals and the like, which may be the best place to
look for evidence as to whether such things were eaten or not.
Cheers,
-- Angharad/Terry
From: mshapiro at nando.net (mshapiro)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: sugar
Date: 27 Jul 1996 02:38:04 GMT
Pat Lammerts (pat at lalaw.lib.CA.US) wrote:
: Liz Beecher wrote:
: >I know that you guys cover an earlier period but this then should apply
: >to you - we *do not* use sugar in our re-enactments of the English Civil
: >War (1600s). Sometimes we use honey but we never use sugar.
:
: Why don't you use sugar? Are you a diabetic? Are you claiming that
: sugar was not available or known or used during the 1600's?
:
: If so, you are sadly mistaken.
:
: There are many extant recipes from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries
: that call for sugar...
Leechdom mentions both powdered sugar and crystallized sugar in a 1392
cookbook. The Paxton Letters, a century later say "...send me an other
sugar loff, for my old one is do."
Sugar is _definately_ in period!
--
Marc Shapiro mshapiro at nando.net
THL Alexander Mareschal Canton of Kappelenburg
Barony of Windmasters Hill
Kingdom of Atlantia
From: alysk at ix.netcom.com(Elise Fleming )
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca,rec.food.historic
Subject: Re: Sugar (was Hersheys' commercials)
Date: 25 Jul 1996 13:52:39 GMT
talland at io.org (David Tallan) writes:
>>Liz Beecher (beecheer at hpohp4.wgw.bt.co.uk) wrote:
>>: I know that you guys cover an earlier period but this then should
>>apply: to you - we *do not* use sugar in our re-enactments of the
>>English Civil: War (1600s). Sometimes we use honey but we never use
>>sugar.
>
>WHY do you *not use* sugar in your re-enactments of the English Civil
>War? I know that sugar was used in late 13th century English
cooking...(material deleted)
Sugar didn't disappear. It became increasing common in usage in the
1600s and 1700s. If, however, the re-enactors are portraying poorer
folk they may not have used the amount of sugar the middle and upper
classes used, if they used sugar at all. The price of sugar had
certainly been dropping from Elizabeth's time on.
Robert May's cookery book was first published in 1664 and includes
sugar sprinkled on a neat's tongue pie. Sugar is added to a stewed
broth, a boiled leg of mutton, a boiled liver pudding, pasties of
various ingredients, an oatmeal pudding, a jelly of almonds, and so on.
It was widely used in dessert-type foods. So, sugar was certainly used
in foods around the English Civil War.
A question then would be...Has the re-enactor checked cookery books to
see if the food s/he is preparing had sugar added to it? Would the
battlefield cooks have brought sugar with them or done without? My
guess is that the common fighting man might not have used sugar in
foods but that the officers would have.
Alys Katherine/Elise
From: b.scott at bscott.async.csuohio.edu (Brian M. Scott)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca,rec.food.historic
Subject: Re: Sugar (was Hersheys' commercials)
Date: 25 Jul 1996 17:08:19 GMT
Organization: Cleveland State University
alysk at ix.netcom.com (Elise Fleming ) says:
> talland at io.org (David Tallan) writes:
>Sugar didn't disappear. It became increasing common in usage in the
>1600s and 1700s. If, however, the re-enactors are portraying poorer
>folk they may not have used the amount of sugar the middle and upper
>classes used, if they used sugar at all. The price of sugar had
>certainly been dropping from Elizabeth's time on.
[rest snipped]
In this connection it may be relevant that there is a Norwegian cookie
(more or less) called 'fattigmann', i.e., 'poor man', apparently because
it uses very little sugar. It does use an inordinate number of eggs, but
these may well have been much more readily available at the lower end of
the economic scale.
Talan Gwynek
From: gfrose at cotton (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Sugar (was Hersheys' commercials)
Date: 26 Jul 1996 13:09:45 GMT
Greetings, all, from Katerine Rountre.
Liz Beecher wrote:
: I know that you guys cover an earlier period but this then should apply
: to you - we *do not* use sugar in our re-enactments of the English Civil
: War (1600s). Sometimes we use honey but we never use sugar.
What is your evidence that this is an appropriate historical pattern?
The recipe corpus from the 13th through the 15th centuries does not
support it, and in fact contradicts it explicitly in both its assumptions:
that English cuisine had few sweetened dishes, and that it preferred honey
to sugar.
In fact, sugar is one of the most common ingredients in the corpus
from the 13th C on (among serious culinary historians, the English
":sweet tooth" is almost a cliche), and it is at all times more common
than honey. Precise statistics for