SC - Sugar availability

[Phil & Susan Troy]

LYN M PARKINSON wrote:
> 
> In our area, PBS has been having a series of programs called "Into the
> Rising Sun", concerning the late 15th Portugese explorations of the
> African coast in their efforts to reach India and the spice trade.  A
> section tonight, which I wasn't able to take notes on but just note, was
> the colonization of a number of volcanic soiled islands, off Ghana, I
> think.  The sugar cane flourished, the slave trade made sugar much more
> widely available.  In 1517, revolts by the slaves made some of the
> plantation owners or managers move to Brazil, to set up the same process
> there.
> 
> I found this interesting because of the number of recipes we find in
> period that call for increased use of sugar.  It's so easy to say, "It
> got more popular"  without really thinking of what it took to make an
> item available.  Apparently, sugar cane doesn't flourish just anywhere.
> [Those of you with farm backgrounds are undoubtedly snickering at this
> 'city slicker'.]  Attempts had been made in a lot of places to increase
> sugar production for the demand at home.  So, tastes didn't really
> change--it was now possible to indulge those tastes.  And, they did.

The increased availability of sugar did happen, more or less, as you describe.
Before that, though, some sugar cane was being grown on the island of Cyprus,
too, which seems to have been the first wave of decreased costs and sugar-use
increase, maybe in the mid-15th century. I'm working from memory again, here,
so my date may be off a bit.

If you look at, say, the early 14th-century prototypes for _The Forme of Cury_
found in "Curye On Inglysch", then look at _The Forme of Cury_ itself, and
then look at the recipes in the manuscripts commonly known as the Two
Fifteenth Century Cookery-Books, you'll see that somewhere along the line,
many of the recipes that originally called for honey evolved into sugar
recipes with notes stating that you can use honey if you have no sugar, to
recipes calling for sugar. Of course these recipe sources seem to have been
for the wealthy "upper crust", while many of the later-period sources are
apparently intended for the lesser nobility and the upper middle class, so it
may well have taken that long for the increased availability to trickle down
to the middle classes.

Adamantius
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