Sweets for the kids, chocolate for heartbreak, ice cream during lunch wreck: We love sugar in each form — and the industry loves it too. Whether in bread, child meals, yogurt, or sauces, sugar is found in the whole lot we consume.
The common German consumes more than 30 kilos (66 kilos) of white crystal a yr. The times whilst possessing it changed into a sign of wealth and energy are most surely over; today, it’s notorious as something bad for our health, which makes us advantaged.
In the start, there has been fruit.
Like nearly everything else, the sugar must come to Europe before the craving could advance there. But how did Europeans satisfy their choice of candy treats before merchants introduced sugar to the continent?
Two thousand years ago, the fruit became the best source of sweetness. The Romans began growing it in Germany, and from then on, an extensive style of fruits, from apples and pears to plums and grapes, endured to be planted. The extracted and preserved fruit juice was processed into mush or jelly. “It becomes durable and could be used to sweeten meals,” explains Carl Pause, an archaeologist who curated the exhibition “Sweet Stuff:
Snacking in Neuss” at the Clemens Sels Museum in the German town of Neuss, placed next to Düsseldorf. Sugar extraction from sugar cane started within the early Middle Ages, imported to Europe from the Middle East. However, it became too expensive for the overall population, says Pause. Even the nobility may want to manage the handiest to pay for it for special occasions. Legend has it that the name of the well-known candy, bonbon, originated at these festivals. After trying out the sugar aggregate for the primary time,
French royal children had been stated to have responded enthusiastically, “Bon! Bon! (French for “right”), giving the candy its call. In the 18th century, the British began domesticating eir colonies’ sugar cane, producing sugar in big portions.
France led a war against Britain below Emperor Napoleon, who “desired to prevent the British from doing commercial enterprise,” says Pause. Thus, the so-called Continental Blockade positioned a stop to sugar imports. The struggle turned lengthy, and Napoleon was lifeless for years while sugar beet finally made it to Germany in the center of the nineteenth century. From then on, sugar was to be had by all people and — peculiarly — lower priced.
A supply of energy
Today, excess sugar is regarded as “white poison” and related to severa diseases. This makes it all the greater unexpected that it becomes observed where it might be least expected in pharmacies because ancient instances might be least expected.
As early as the first century A.D., sugar becomes stated to have healing properties. In the 12th century, drugs called “sine confectioners” consisted of 90 percent sugar. Five hundred years later, however, pharmacists used sugar in drugs, especially for preserving and correcting the sour flavor and energy source. The candy medicine was offered properly. Eventually, to improve sales, pharmacists sincerely neglected the energetic scientific ingredients, promoting only the candy meals — and the confectionery turned into born.
How pies became desserts
After the confection left the pharmacy, ithe variety of chocolates did not take long to widen. The cake was one sweet deal that, in the end, became famous. With its ethereal sponge cake base, sweet cream, and many cherries, the Black Forest cherry cake has become one of Germany’s most popular desserts.
Although it celebrated its centesimal birthday in 2015, this baked product’s forerunners existed at some distance again in the 16th century. However, the desserts of that point did now not have an awful lot to do with our modern-day expertise of what shape the Black Forest cake takes. Several hundred years in the past, they looked pretty exceptional.