SC - Re:coffee, tea or sugar

[Stefan li Rous]

Dan Stratton comments:
The coffee and Tea discussion is fascinating. Do you know about the Arabic
'connection' for sugar? I have been given to understand that sugar was imported
from the Middle East in Period, with the origins somewhere in the Far East, and
the 'American/colonial/sugar cane industry' only appearing late to post
period. 
I did find one comment on a Recycling poster to the effect that the first
sugar 
cane factory in the Americas dates back to 1509. No docs, of course.

For some information on the use of sugar cane and other sweeteners in period,
you might want to look at this file in the FOOD section of Stefan’s Florilegium:
sugar-msg         (46K) 11/21/97    Sugar and other medieval sweeteners.

The following two messages are extracted from that file.

Stefan li Rous
(My files can be found at:
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/rialto/rialto.html)

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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


From: Marion.Kee at a.nl.cs.cmu.EDU
Date: 22 Nov 91 20:04:00 GMT

Greeting to the Rialto from Marian Greenleaf!

Herewith another chunk of my period food summary, this time the section
on sugarcane.  
<snip>
- ---------------------------

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

<snip>

[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)
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