HERB - sugar [Long

Rauthulfr mwolfe at nwlink.com
Sat Mar 11 09:50:24 PST 2000


Since Iasmin de Cordoba was good enough to post her thoughts and findings 
on sugar, here are some snippits from primary sources.  Since I've pulled 
this out of some A&S documentation I did, I've moved the footnote citations 
up, expanded them and stuck them behind square brackets.  I've also 
replaced the staff "s" with a normal "s" to avoid having the whole thing 
sent out as HTML.
YIS
Rauthulfr


The European use of sugar dates back to the Romans as we know from the 
writings of Pliny the Elder.  Cane sugar was known although it was much 
less common than sugar from the Spiny Bamboo, “Bambusa arundinacea.”   The 
writings of the period do not make a distinction regarding the source of 
the sugar. As Veiling says in his translation of Apicius: “Only 
occasionally a shipment of sugar would arrive in Rome from India, supposed 
to have been Cane Sugar.”
[Apicius:  “Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome”, Edited and Translated by 
Joseph Dommers Vehling, Dover Publications, New York, 1977 P. 296

Regarding Saccharon or Tabaschir, Pliny says this:
Arabia also produces tabachir, but that grown in India is more 
esteemed.  It is a kind of honey that collects in reeds, white like gum, 
and brittle to the teeth; the largest pieces are the size of a filbert. It 
is employed only as a medicine.
  [Pliny, The Elder:  “Natural History: With an English Translation”. Loeb 
Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Bk. XII, Chap. XVII

References to sugar continue into the  Renaissance. We find the fifteenth 
century Tacuinum Sanitatus of Vienna says this about Sugar:

Nature: Warm in the first degree, humid in the second.  Optimum: The white, 
clear kind.  Usefulness:  It purifies the body, is good for the chest, the 
kidneys and the bladder.  Dangers:  It causes thirst and moves bilious 
humors.  Neutralization of the Dangers:  With sour 
pomegranites.  Effects:  Produces blood that is not bad.  It is good for 
all temperaments , at all ages, and in every season and region.
[Tacuinum Sanitatis, “The Medieval Health Handbook: Tacuinum Sanitatis”, 
Translated  and Edited by Oscar Ratti and Adele Westbrook, George 
Braziller, New York, 1976.

By late Renaissance the Sugar Cane, "Saccharum offinicarum" was well enough 
known to make an appearance in Gerard’s 1598 edition of The Herball. Among 
the things which Gerard says of the Sugar Cane itself are these:

The place.
The Sugar Cane groweth in many parts of Europe at this day, as in Spaine, 
Portugal, Olbia, and Prouence.  It groweth also in Barbarie, generally 
almost every where in the Canarie Islands, and in those of Madera, in the 
East and West Indes, and many other places.  My self did plant some shoots 
thereof in my garden, and some in Flanders did the like:  but the coldnesse 
of our clymate made an end of mine, and I thinke the Flemings will haue 
like profit of their labor
¶ The vse
Of the iuyce of this Reed is made the most pleasant and profitable sweet, 
called Sugar, whereof is made infinite confections, confectures, syrups, 
and such like, as also preseruing and conseruing of sundry fruits, herbes, 
and flowers as Roses, Violets, Rosemary flowers, and such like, which still 
retain with them the name of Sugar, as Sugar Roset, Sugar violet, &c.  The 
which to write of would require a peculiar volume, and not pertinent vnto 
this historie, for that is not my purpose to make of my booke a 
Confectionarie, a Bakers furnace, a Gentlewomans preseruing pan, nor yet an 
Apothecaries shop or Dispensatorie; but only to touch to the chiefest 
matter that I purposed to handle in the beginning, that is, the nature, 
properties, and descriptions of plants.  Notwithstanding I think it not 
amisse to shew vnto you the ordering of these reeds when they be new 
gathered, as I receiued it from the mouth of an Indian seruant:  he saith, 
They cut them in small pieces, and put them into a trough made of one whole 
tree, wherein they put a great stone in the manner of a mill-stone, 
whereunto they tie a horse, buffle, or some other beast which draweth it 
round: and in which trough they put those pieces of Canes, and so crush and 
grind them as we do the barkes of trees for Tanners, or apples for 
Cyder.  But in some places the vse a great wheele, wherein slaues do tread 
and walk as dogs do turning the spit: and some others do feed as it were 
the bottome of said wheele, wherein are some sharpe or hard things which do 
cut and crush the Canes to powder.  And some likewise haue found the 
inuention to turne the wheele with water workes, as we do in our iron 
mills.  The Canes being thus brought into dust or powder, they put them 
into great cauldrons with a little water, where they boyle vntill there be 
no more sweetness left in the crushed reeds.  Then doe they straine them 
through mats and such like things, and put the liquor to boyle againe vnto 
the consistence of honey, which being cold is like vnto sand both in shew 
and handling, but somewhat softer; and so afterward it is carried into all 
parts of Europe, where it is by Sugar Bakers artifically purged and refined 
to the whiteness as we see.
[Gerard, John: “The Herbal, or General History of Plants”. The Complete 
1633 Edition as revised and Enlarged by Thomas Johnson, Dover Publications 
Inc., New York, 1975, P. 38


RauthulfR Meistari inn Orthstori (OL, mCE, P-eX, Et Cetera)
or, non-SCA: Michael Wolfe M. A. I. S. AB-
*Practice Random Acts of Chocolate.....

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