Sugar-plums and Sherbet: The Prehistory of Sweets by Laura Mason

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  • ISBN 10 1903018285
  • ISBN 13 9781903018286
  • Published Aug 01 2003
  • Format Paperback
  • Page Count 250
  • Language English
  • Edition New edition
  • Countries United Kingdom
  • Publisher Prospect Books
  • Imprint Prospect Books

Publishers Text

This is the first book to look beyond the brilliant colours of the sweet-shop shelf and talk of the humbug, gobstopper, peardrop and the stick of rock. As well as a history, it is also a recipe book with twenty tried and tested methods for sweets ancient and modern: the Penande from 16th century, the Manus Christi from the 17th, Mrs McLintock's Orange Tablets from the 19th and Chocolate Fudge from the 20th. The book has a comprehensible discussion of the technicalities of sugar-boiling as foundation for a history of individual sweet types and the fashions of their consumption since the Middle Ages. The book is illustrated throughout with prints and drawings which describe both the products and their means of manufacture. Particularly handsome are the drawings of sweeties by the Dartmouth graphic artist Simon Drew. Did you know how they got the letters into rock? How they twisted barley sugar? The difference between fudge and tablet? The connection between humbugs and an Arab sweet from 13th-century Spain (where it was borrowed from the Persians)? Laura Mason has written about sweets before, but never so completely.

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