Sugar (Arabic sukkar) is an ingredient that has been used for over a millennia in French cuisine. While sugar cane did not grow locally, thanks to the spice trade many wealthy households were able to acquire sugar (or what they called sweet salt) for seasoning. Originating from India and SE Asia, it was eventually grown in Southern European Islands of the Mediterranean. During the medieval era, from the 14th to 16th centuries, it was the most important export crop from Cyprus. By the 16th century, Malta over took Cyprus as the leading producer in Europe (see article 1), although it was also grown in Madeira and other warm, wet climates throughout the Mediterranean.
It wasn’t until the new world was discovered and Christopher Columbus‘ son started to plant sugar cane in the colonies (with free, enslaved labor), that the use of sugar rose exponentially. This would ultimately catapult the overseas slave trade once enslaved indigenous people died off from disease within the first century of production (see article 4). In medieval times sugar was a spice and mixed with savory ingredients. There was no unique dessert dish until the colonies were producing and exporting high quantities of cheap sugar. Sugar used in meat and savory dishes quickly fell out of fashion. There is thus a notable change in consumption, sugar was now used in higher quantities and in individual sweet dishes.
There were ‘sweet’ courses in prior years, but they would have been eaten in between other courses, not as a unique dish, as is suggested by one of the fathers of French cuisine, ‘La Varenne‘. France can lay claim to have created (or at least lay the groundwork for) what we know as ‘dessert’ in Europe in the 1600’s, a unique sweet course often served at the end of a meal (see article 3).
While today France still produces sugar in French territories like Reunion Island, Martinique and Guadalupe, it is much less in comparison to Brazil or Indian, and makes France the 9th largest producer in the world. Since 1811 at Napoleon’s request, sugar in France is now mainly from beetroots grown in the North. France the second largest producer in the world of beetroot sugar. One of the major producers in France is named ‘Sugar Daddy’, which will never cease to amuse me.
READ MORE :
1 Sweet Salt: Sugar Production in Medieval Cyprus – fergusmurraysculpture.com
2 FOOD : The History of Taste by Paul Freedman Food by Paul Freedman – Hardcover – University of California Press (ucpress.edu)
3 How We Got to Dessert – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
4 Sugar Masters in a New World | History | Smithsonian Magazine